A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

My laptop needs to go in for repair.

Unfortunately, I’m a slave to our machine masters. I can’t operate for an extended period of time without a computer. So, I took this as an “opportunity!” I have wanted a Thinkpad T61 for a while; but, they don’t exist anymore. Lenovo has replaced that model with their new T500s.

I used my Microsoft discount to put in an order! And, everything went downhill from there.

I could describe my terrible customer experience that resulted in my order cancelation (and purchasing a nice HP). But, I found a blog post that summarized it quite nicely… in mid-2007:

I have run into the following issues that made for a miserable experience with Lenovo. I hope that the technical support does not have the same issues, should I need to call them:

1. 30 minute or more wait times on the phone to talk to a representitive
2. Sales people giving me very different answers (one claiming there are no production snags and it should ship in a week or two, another claiming 4 weeks)
3. An estimated ship date of 4 weeks (4/20) after I purchased, without an explaination.
4. An “order status” stating “in process.” When I called to cancel, I was told it was already sent to “configuration”. Does this mean it was going to be shipped earlier rather than later? That may have kept me from cancelling my order.
5. Numerous problems with the website, including:
   1. broken links (ex: “contact” on the bottom of the order status form)
   2. Session timeouts that erase your shopping cart
   3. Broken “chat with a sales representitive” on the sales page
   4. TYPOS INCLUDING “SXGA” INSTEAD OF “SXGA+” that no one cares enough to resolve
6. Fake, on-going sales that keep changing names, pretending that the product is “on sale” to lure customers.

Yup, that sounds about right.