To whom so ever it may concern,
A laptop by two big brands, Lenovo and IBM, has very efficiently managed to tarnish their reputation in my eyes. Not only have these brands rubbished their own claims of “customer service” but they slashed their own credibility as multinational brands. Not the kind of behavior that you would expect from such brands after they have taken away one’s laptop and refuse to fix it and send it back. There is no internal co-ordination between the two brands. As an alert consumer, I have taken the time to simultaneously follow-up on both the brands and surprisingly both their stories regarding my laptop’s service don’t match.
This recent ordeal began barely two months after I received a serviced laptop with a new motherboard and screen. On May 28th again my laptop malfunctioned and the service guy confirmed that the screen needed to be replaced. Optimistically I gave away the laptop and was promised a return on 31st May. Today, a mere change of screen has been snowballed into another enormous problem. The dire line every customer cringes to hear, “Mam, there is a problem with your motherboard so we will have to replace that as well.”
May I ask, how does a two-month old motherboard start to fail? What kind of second hand, depleted motherboard did these guys insert when it was repaired in March? How obvious can their delinquencies get! If they mentioned somewhere on the box that in Lenovo we will make your customers utter fools, probably I wouldn’t have brought it. One could probably find god, but getting in touch with Lenovo or IBM on the other end of a phone line is impossible. Firstly, contact numbers mentioned on their corporate website don’t work and if at all you do manage to get through to someone, they will merely keep you on hold for hours but never transfer your call to their seniors. IBM on the other hand tops the list because when I was at my wits end and threatened the IBM customer service guy with a consumer court complaint, he said, “Yes, go ahead.”
As you can see I have taken his “go ahead” very seriously and fired away on my first leg of bad-mouthing the two companies. It is preposterous that the two companies would make any customer run around in circles to only get the service he paid for. This step-motherly treatment has got out the devil in me. If we customers don’t buy your brands, let me tell you, you will probably end up in shambles. As an irate customer, I wouldn’t recommend these two brands to any soul, unless and until the latter gets some cheap thrill in getting into Lenovo and IBM’s shenanigans. Another revelation, my laptop is still under a warranty period, it is not even a year old! So imagine if this were to happen after that, perhaps I would have to bury it six feet deep.
Some Lenovo and IBM guys I encountered during my ordeal -
Vishwa, Customer-service, IBM (The go ahead guy)
Gopi, technical guy, IBM (Showed some kind of interest but nothing materialized)
Vaibhav, APL Solutions, Authorized service centre in Mumbai. (At a loss of words, always. Should stop using the rehearsed script)
Priya, APL Solutions, authorized service centre in Mumbai. (An exhaustive list of excuses)
Nerulkar, owner of APL Solution. (I think he is a fictional character.)
Complaint logged on - 28-05
Order No: 4270232890
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