Big Thanks To Lenovo for their proactive support!

This San Diego chiropractor needs a new laptop! I have been spending 4 to 12 hours per day working on my websites, and my laptop is getting harder and harder to deal with. It is an old Dell with 512 mb of ram, and a 30 gb hard drive. It keeps whining at me to get more room! I have been a Dell customer for around 10 years, and bought around 10 computers from them. The last round of customer service trying to get my brand new computer to work got me to the point where it was time to look around and see what else was out there. Also the three year extended drop and spill warranty was only about $160. I guarantee that with the way my computer gets beat up they will lose money on that one.

So they got me. Not only was I satisfied and bought a Lenovo laptop with their excellent proactive support, they got me as a lifer. I am now a proud card carrying member of Lenovo customers and am telling everyone about it. No they did not pay me to say all of this, they simply treated me with good quick efficient customer service.

Thanks guys, and Merry Christmas!

I am an avid fan of consumer reports magazine, and now their website. I consider it very unbiased, and usually pretty right on. They did a survey of their users as to long term satisfaction with different computer companies, not just for quality or usability, but also including things like customer service, and what happens when it breaks.

Living my San Diego Chiropractic lifestyle I am very hard on my laptops. They break. They always break. I don’t think anyone will be able to make one that I won’t break. I move way to fast to be super careful with it. So when that day comes, I want to make sure that it will get handled quickly and easily.

The good reports at consumers report definitely swayed me toward buying I.B.M. I still associate that name with a windows computer. In the old days before windows, we referred to them as I.B.M. computers, as opposed to an Apple or something else. So consumer reports said that I.B.M. was tops for customer satisfaction along with Apple. I still will not buy an Apple because for hard core computer users like myself, I still worry if all of the software I want will be available, and will it work on an Apple.

Then when I started looking at the I.B.M. Thinkpad Tablets I realized it was exactly what I have been waiting for, for forever. You can touch the screen to select something. I have been trying to do that for 18 years with my computers, but this is the first one that it will work with!!

You can also draw right onto the screen with programs such as Illustrator or PhotoShop. And you get all of this with top of the line guts in the thing, and lots of Ram and hard drive space.

I do a lot of research before I make a purchase this big. I was planning on spending around $3500 on this puppy. (I end up spending less at the end of this)
I read up at consumer reports, and they still said I.B.M. rocked for customer satisfaction.

As I read more I read that I.B.M. had turned the laptop department over to a new company. I am still not exactly sure which part of the company had moved over, but for sure the name of the lap tops has changed to Lenovo. There is a Chinese connection in the whole thing, but I love Chinese, and they are smart hard working people, so that is fine. Almost all computers you buy are made partially or fully in China no matter who you buy them from now.

I always read reviews of products at CNET.com They were originally a yellow pages of websites before there was really a web of them. Lots of computer geeks go there. Most of the reviews, about 90% of the Lenovo tablet I wanted the x60, were positive. There were others that were negative about the customer service. The majority of those were about people having to wait too long to get their computers. I later found out that was because these machines have been so popular since coming out.

I then came across a deal that Visa was offering to its customers to save some money. Hint, when searching for an item to buy, Google it with the name of the product or company you are purchasing from and enter COUPON CODE. Google will often find pages that have deals where they list some special coupon code. They are not always valid for everyone, so read the fine print.

I still wanted to make dam sure that when I ran into trouble I could get help, and not just someone with poor English skills who could not help me. I love people from all over the world, but not when they are trying to tell me how to fix my computer and I can not understand them.

I decided that I would order it anyway, and that the few negative people were probably not reflective of the majority.

I then tried to order the machine online, and Lenovo’s website would not let me make the purchase due to some programming bug on their website. This concerned me a little. I decided to wait for Monday morning, and I would call and order it.
I kept searching for peoples experience with customer support. Then I found a guys blog who said he had posted that he had troubles with his Lenovo hard drive, and that this guy, David Churbuck, Vice President Global Web Marketing for Lenovo, had just sent one over right away. The power of blogging! So I googled David, and found a way to get in touch with him emailed him my situation.

I was hopeful that this would work, but not overly optimistic. Sure enough first thing this morning I had a super positive e-mail from David. Along with an e-mail from Maria Marinos
Inside Sales Executive of Lenovo US Direct who works for David, and an e-mail from Steve Furman who is a team leader for them.

I got a call from Steve, and we spent a half hour on the phone getting the order done. Now here is what impressed me with the whole thing. Number one, a guy at the top who is dealing with millions, tens of millions? or more dollars of computer sales, took the time to e-mail me, give me his work and cell phone, tell his staff to follow up with me. Then his staff member Maria immediately goes into high gear to get me helped, and then the guy in the trenches, Steve, is right on it and gets a hold of me ASAP. That is what I call customer service! That is the way we do it in our business, but we only have 5 staff members so communication can move quickly.

When Steve was on the phone he also down sold me on the memory I was about to buy. For some technical reason the 3mb memory I wanted to buy would not make that big of a difference compared to the 2mb option so Steve suggested that I get the 2mb instead and save around $400. I quickly agreed. Maria also threw in a free computer case for my troubles. Remember that other than the website not accepting my order, there had been no trouble!