Lenovo replaced my HDD under warranty then sent me a bill
If I need to return my HDD that's fine... But why did no one ever mention this to me when I was making the warranty claim??
This is a big problem because after receiving my replacement HDD I tossed my old one. I call Lenovo to try and tell them this and see what the options are. They tell me that Lenovo will just send me a bill. I tell them I'm not paying a bill for something under warranty, and let's face it I never agreed to purchase anything from them in the first place. Finally the person tells me I can "escalate" this issue and speak to a supervisor... but it won't help because this is their policy and now I have to buy a new HDD from them.
So I tell them I want to go ahead and escalate this.
He tells me ok... oh wait there isn't a supervisor here I have to call back next week.
I call back next week and again no supervisor, but they promise they will report this issue and he will CALL ME BACK.
Of course it never happens.. and as time goes on Lenovo sends me a bill.
Now when I try to call back and speak to someone they just tell me they can't even help me now and try to transfer me elsewhere. When I get transferred it's no surprise that this department doesn't know what's going on and can't help either.
And when I call them back and give them my claim number... they just hang up on me again, and again.
I'm not paying for a HDD covered under warranty Lenovo. If I need to return it I'll decommision the new one and send it back to you in pieces.. and most likely foregoe the new X1 Carbon I was really wanting.
Anyone else had problems like this? Anyone have advice? Trying to communicate with Lenovo is a dead end.
19 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 54.5 ms ] threadBut if you want to talk to them you'll need to talk to their finance department, the details /should/ be on the invoice. If not, wait until the red reminders - they will have contact details for the accounts dept on them
Customer support which is likely outsourced, as many companies outsource their call centre and warranty fulfilment will have exactly zero tools to cancel invoices.
With a bit of luck they also feel that phone support is a stupid outsourced division and will immediately realize what has happened.
Either way, regardless of who is at fault I just want to actually talk to someone and resolve the issue. I've been on the phone for 1 hour this morning and someone is actually listening and trying to help so that's a plus. :)
Plus I also drill my dead HDDs anyway if it isn't encrypted, and keep them for at least a year to let the data (e.g. passwords, banking information) become less valuable to an identity thief.
Even a dead HDD is still often recoverable (depending on HOW it died, a lot have electronic failures or the head dies, the platters remain in working order). And while realistically nobody wants to steal my data, why take the risk? Drilling a HDD takes five minutes, and tipping salt water in takes a few seconds...
That said, your warranty may require you to provide them with defective hardware. You may be on the hook whether you realized it or not. They may eat it, but unlikely.
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/ht101058
Keep Your Drive
Under the Lenovo Limited Warranty, when Lenovo replaces a defective part of Your product, the defective part becomes the property of Lenovo. Under Keep Your Drive, You may retain a defective hard drive that is replaced under the Lenovo Limited Warranty. This Service applies to the original hard drive in Your product and any replacement hard drive provided for Your product under the Lenovo Limited Warranty. You must provide Lenovo with the serial number of each hard drive which You retain under this Service and execute any document provided by Lenovo acknowledging Your retention of the hard drive. This Service does not apply to any hard drive provided by Lenovo for a product not purchased by You
I have used Lenovo warranty service a couple of times over the years and it is always explicitly stated that the replaced parts need returning.
It seems to me that the OP chose not to read the warranty terms, or communications he would have received, and chosen to ignore any information told via their phone support. Then, the OP either discarded the hard-drive or used it elsewhere, and now wishes to claim that the end of the world has occurred and that Lenovo are evil.
Actually, every hardware supplier I know of requires the hardware back. It is extremely rare when someone doesn't (Amazon in the early days of Kindle spring to mind as the exception tends to stand out).
I got an X1 a few years back while in grad school in another state. My experience with the company started out poor when their fraud prevention made it nearly impossible to buy the machine. Making sure several forms of identification referenced my location and where the product was shipping (why does shipping have ANYTHING to do with purchasing!?), I ended up being unable to ship it to my desk at school, but did get the product to my apartment at least. All of this made the order several weeks later than I had anticipated, not that I had things to get done or anything. I know this doesn't have to do with product support, but it's foreshadowing.
Half a year ago, I spilled some water on my laptop. Disaster. In fact, my wife had done the same thing a week earlier to her Lenovo as well. Both keyboards were dead; we had to use externals until we could get the issue resolved. Funny, because the X1 has little holes through the keyboard to drain as though it is at least somewhat resistant to such things. It isn't.
I called the support line and actually felt like I had gotten pretty far until the guy on the other end quoted me something like $400 to repair the machines. What? I just need keyboards, that's not going to happen. Turns out full service repair out of warranty is crazy from them, I should call the "parts department" at one of three numbers he gave me and order the specific parts for manual repair. Okay, now I'm getting somewhere. I wanted just the parts to begin with (and thought I had asked for that). Of course, figuring out which of the random phone numbers was correct was another labor of pain.
We called the parts department for two months. They're open for exactly eight hours a day and the wait is no less than an hour in our experience. Pain. Eventually, we got through and received the keyboards for around $50/ea. I'm not new to repairing laptops, I just wanted the exact parts that belong in the computers at a reasonable price.
My X1 is several years old now and still chugging along. Someday its battery won't be sufficient and I don't know if the X1 Carbon will tempt me or not. As a Linux user, Lenovo is the safest bet I know of for laptops so I'm fully expecting that I'll deal with all of this again someday.
Because that is an extremely effective way of detecting fraud.
If someone's billing address is in location X and their shipping destination is location Y (e.g. X = Washington State, Y = Florida) then in terms of your fraud score, it shoots through the roof. This goes astronomical if it is cross-country (e.g. billing in US, shipping to Mexico).
If you're a student it might be worth your while calling your bank and having your billing address moved from whatever your home state is to the state where you plan on living. If you're doing online billing this won't have much impact day to day, but will make it so you dodge most fraud protection.
Unfortunately most (all?) banks don't allow you to add multiple addresses onto a single account.
Dell only beats it as I called them up while traveling and they actually sent a guy up a mountain in Guatemala to replace a failed HDD.
Perhaps you didn't get the next-day warranty?
I recently had to warranty return my Surface Pro 3 power supply because only six months in it has split near the Magsafe-like connector. Getting a new one was easy, they asked a few questions, asked me to send them some digital photos of the old one, and then sent me the new one.
The CS said they didn't need the old one back. So I was going to throw it out as the old one looked "dangerous" to me (the split had wire coming out, etc). However the day the new one arrived I got an email from Microsoft with a pre-paid FedEx label in it asking for the old one back.
Now I might have been irritated by this but here is the exact text of the email (names removed):
> Hi <whatever>,
> You recently contacted Surface Support regarding an issue with your Surface that required a replacement power supply to be sent to you. So that we can better understand the nature of the issue with your power supply, we would like to collect the non-working power supply from you, if you still have the device. We understand if you do not, as we normally advise disposal of the non-working device.
> Attached to this email is a FedEx shipping label. Please print the shipping label provided, pack your non-working power supply into the same box your replacement arrives in, affix the shipping label, then drop off at a nearest FedEx location.
> If you have any questions or concerns, please call us at 1-800-Microsoft (1-800-642-7676). Thanks for your cooperation.
> Sincerely,
> <name>
While they were inconsistent, the way the email was worded acknowledging the inconsistency definitely makes it better, and it also doesn't come across as demanding just a "if you can, that would be great, otherwise don't worry." I actually sent them the old PSU simply because the email was so polite and acknowledged their contradictory advice (and also I obviously hadn't thrown it out yet).
I am just posting this since it is effectively the same exact problem you had with Lenovo but handled in a massively better way.