Service rant

I have been very quiet and "understanding" for almost a month now, but
I'm reaching the end of my patience. Plus, I have a bit of fun to add
to this story.

A bit of background. My Lenovo laptop quit reporting the battery status
a few months ago. Other than that, everything seemed to work fine, but
it was a pain taking it off AC because I never knew how much time I had
left. Also, because it always thought it was on AC, it never did any
power conservation.

Finally, on January 3rd, I took it in for service. First I tried
Decision One, where I have always had excellent service on Toshibas.
They don't do Lenovo. So, I had checked on Lenovo's website and found
that Compusmart was a warranty depot. I took it there and asked if they
did warranty on Lenovo laptops. The response I got was "I think so." I
was a bit taken aback, but he clarified by telling me they didn't get
very many in. (I suppose I should have turned and ran at this point.)

I checked back a few times over the next week or two... I'm not exactly
sure the timeframe. I was told the parts were on order. Finally, I was
told that they couldn't get the parts, so they sent the laptop over to
MicroAge. For reasons you will hear later, I believe this was about Jan
16th.

I continued to check every several days, and continued to hear that my
parts were on order, that he would call MicroAge in the morning and
check on it, and would call me back. (I still haven't recieved one call
back.)

This past Monday (the 29th) I was told by the tech at Compusmart that he
had called MicroAge and they had the part and would have it done on
Tuesday. Tuesday late AM, I called Compusmart and was told the courier
had been called. Tuesday PM, I was in the area so I stopped in at
Compusmart and was told that it wasn't my laptop that had been repaired
-- the guys at MicroAge had been confused. The motherboard for my
laptop was still on order.

Today (Wednesday the 31st) I recieved a phone call from Lenovo, wanting
to do a customer service satisfaction survey for the warranty work I had
done by MicroAge on January 16th. Would I be willing to answer a few
questions. I said sure.

(all Q and A paraphrased from memory...)

Q. Did the techs come out to fix the computer, or did you take it in to
the depot.
A. I took it in.

Q. How would you rate the professionalism of the staff at the depot
where you took it in, on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being the least
satisfied and 5 being the most.
A. Uhhh 3.

Q. How would you rate your satisfaction with the resolution of your
issue. on a scale of 1 to 5.
A. Zero.

Q. Ohhhh, okay. How would you rate their communication -- how they kept
you up to date on the status of your repair.
A. Zero. I haven't got my laptop back yet!

Her: Oh. Uhhhh.
Me: Ya. I brought it in to Compusmart on January 3rd,.....( told them
the story you have already read above.)
Her: Oh. Would you like for me to contact a manager about this?
Me: Yes. Definitely.

----------------------------------------

So. Draw your own conclusions. Either Lenovo ships their replacement
parts on slow boats from China, Compusmart has really lousy service,
and/or MicroAge has really lousy service. My only contact before the
call from Lenovo was with Compusmart who mostly seemed to blame Lenovo,
but seemed to shift at least some of the blame to MicroAge. I wonder
what the story would be if I called MicroAge. (Maybe that's what I'll
do tomorrow.)

(Are there still any Compusmarters on this list? Anyone care to
defend? How about get me my laptop back?)

ttyl
srw
Received on Wed Jan 31 23:47:56 2007