Lenovo, home of the (formerly IBM) Thinkpad’s is not exactly known as a price leader: those Thinkpads have a great reputation and a matching price-tag. But times are changing, and Lenovo is becoming budget-friendly: the recently announced Ideapad U series, the G550, and the all-in-one Ideacentre are all “cool” computers with an attractive price. For all my love of Netbooks I admit I got tempted to get my hands on a new Ideapad U350 – basically somewhere in between a superslim notebook and a netbook, for $599 – not a bad price.
And of course getting the free Windows 7 upgrade put me at ease that I won’t be stuck in Vista prison for long… but wait! How will I install the upgrade? Lenovo says:
Each upgrade kit will be mailed separately and contain:
- Windows 7 Certificate of Authenticity
- Windows 7 OS Upgrade DVD
- Lenovo Drivers / Apps DVD1
- Instructions on how to upgrade the operating system
But there’s a small problem: this unit does not have an optical drive at all – which is all fine with me, in fact I’ve removed it from another, heavier laptop: all I need is a lightweight, portable productivty tool, won’t be watching DVD’s. Still, the prospect of installing DVD-based sofware without a DVD-drive is not that heartwarming, so I fired up this email inquiry to Lenovo (after some struggle to find an address):
To: [email protected]
Date: 07/18/09 10:04
Subject: Windows 7 upgrade for Ideapad U350
I’m considering a U350, but wonder how the upgrade to Win7 will take place since these units don’t have an optical drive. If the upgrade is done via download, does that mean Vista has to remain operational and I can’t get a a ‘clean’ Win7 install?
Thanks a lot,
Zoli
Today I received the following non-response:
Dear Zoli,
Thank you for contacting Lenovo, the makers of ThinkPad and ThinkCentre products.
I understand that you want to know if you can place an order for a U350 and want to know about the Windows 7 upgrade. You also want to know how to upgrade since these computers does not have an optical drive. I request you to please contact our Sales Department to get accurate information about the upgrade and to get help in placing an order,
If you have further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us at 866-42-THINK (84465) option number 2. We will be happy to assist at that time.
Once again, thank you for contacting Lenovo.
What load of crap! Why should I call Sales Department? Doesn’t his email address read Websales? Customer Service 101: respond at the channel you were contacted at. And it’s not like I am asking for a very difficult, individualized answer: in fact my question is so obvious it should have been answered as part of the Win& FAQ @ Lenovo’s website.
Serious loss of credibility… what kind of support can I expect when I have real problems?
I never was a fan of IBM/Lenovo, but after a long research (which included two returned notebooks) I purchased Lenovo X200. I can confirm that their sales/support is incredibly slow and bureaucratic. Not a good thing, because it surely hurts their own productivity and certainly hurts customer experience. On the other side, I like the notebook;-)
As of the returned notebooks (not Lenovo):
-The first one featured a 32-bit OS on 4Gb of memory. There was no indication that they plan to ship 32 bits and no way to upgrade it. But the vendor immediately proposed a return and authorized shipping label, so the customer service was great.
-The second one was worse. There was a GPU chip that fries. The vendor learned about the problem several months before I purchase the computer. Instead of switching the GPU they tweaked the BIOS in a way that the fan was running on the full speed pretty much all the time. And it was a very loud fan. So it turned out to be an extremely loud notebook with a faulty chip. Not a good buy. The return experience also was bad. It was a consumer notebook and the vendor had completely different service reps and service rules for consumers and business. The fact that the notebook was purchased from a business account using vendor’s business web-site didn’t make a difference, they route service based on model.
My last incident was with Symantec. Spent about
an hour talking to a guy, who could not
understand a very simple problem. After an hour i
decided to drop it, and he kindly asked me if
it’s ok to close the ticket and mark the problem
as solved (he DID not even understand the
problem).
After 5-6 bad experiences with support outsourced
to India, if i hear the accent i just hang up the
phone or stop the online chat. I don’t blame the
support people from India, i blame their managers.
Zoli,
Thanks for sharing this – we investigated the email, and apologize for the circular fashion in which your question was handled. We are addressing the situation with the responsible team. In direct answer to your question, the present plan / program is to deliver the upgrades on DVD – currently no provision for direct download. This would require customers such as yourself to use an external, USB optical drive.
Best regards,
Mark
Mark,
Thanks for coming back here. Kudos on the service side ( and I see you do the same on various Lenovo forums), but you can’t be serious. Or if you are, I hope the emphasis is on present (plan).
See my new post here.