The Case of Lenovo India

TLDR: Ordered a Z510 from Lenovo India’s The Do Store on May 31; received a damaged laptop on June 7; struggled for a refund/replacement, eventually sending a legal notice; received a refund on August 1.

This post started off as a rant, but has since become an analysis. I hope this serves useful to potential Lenovo buyers, especially since their recent Y and Z series launch in India with 3 years of extended warranty that is useless in practice.

My theory is that Lenovo has been recently siphoning off defective parts to India and has not hired qualified support personnel to make repairs, including business-critical Think-brand machines. This is different from the occasional defect issues faced by any company: Lenovo has no option but to offer a refund, or stall the customer until they give up. This probably explains many of the complaints observable on their Facebook page.

The following is a timeline of events, followed by the story in pictures:

Date	Event
May 31	Placed laptop order on The Do Store
June 5	Laptop ships
June 7	Laptop arrives defective, ticket created on The Do Store
June 7-9	No response to the aforementioned ticket
June 9	Phone-call to Lenovo support, asked for bill and photographs
June 11	Service order for engineer visit created and confirmed
June 12	Engineer visits and issues the DOA (dead-on-arrival) certificate
June 13	Engineer inspection results conveyed to Lencare
	Lencare asks for and recieves snapshots of the machine and carton
June 17	Lencare misses carton snapshots, asks for and receives them
June 18	Phone support asks me to email my invoice on the same thread
June 18-24	No response from Lencare
June 24	Phone support informs of rejection of my request, claims I complained too late
June 25	Send email justifying one-week laptop delivery time
	Start contacting lawyer
June 27	Requested rejection confirmation in writing (no response)
	Phone support asks me to CC the Do Store
June 28	Received rejection in writing via the Lenovo India Facebook page
	The Do Store asks me to send photographs of the machine
June 30	The Lenovo DOA team requests and receives my delivery challan
July 1	Legal notice is posted to NDSL distributors
July 3	Lawyer receives a call from NDSL distributors
	DOA certificate is issued, am asked for refund cheque details
July 4-11	No response to provided cheque details
July 11	NDSL ticket (created on June 7) marked as resolved
	Post from NDSL confirming manufacturing defect
	Email validating and confirming cheque details
July 11-17	No response to provided cheque details
July 17	Email from Proconnect, stating Bluedart pickup of the laptop
July 17-26	No communication
July 26	Proconnect informs me that GMS courier is making the pickup
July 30	Cheque received and laptop returned

May

May 31: Placing the laptop order

May 31: Order confirmation

June

June 5: Shipping notification

June 7: Laptop received; notifying Lenovo of the defect

June 7: Ticket auto-created

There was no response to this ticket (never was throughout the entire story). I made a few calls to Lenovo support. They had no idea about the aforementioned ticket or what The Do Store is. I was asked to provide additional details in order to obtain a DOA (dead-on-arrival) certificate.

June 9: Order bill requested by Lenovo

June 9: Photographs (batch 1) requested by Lenovo

June 10: Lenovo’s response to photographs (batch 1)

June 11: Service order created

June 11: Service order confirmed

On June 12, a support engineer arrived at my place, inspected the laptop and issued us the DOA certificate. We communicated this back to Lenovo. This started a long, long thread with multiple recipients across Lenovo’s partner network. I have masked out names and email addresses in the images that follow.

Also note that there were two Wipro employees who greatly sped up the process, but still could not do much in the face of Lencare’s incompetence.

June 13: Wipro manager conveys the engineer inspection results

June 13: Lencare requests photographs (batch 2)

June 13: Wipro employee forwards photographs (batch 2)

June 13: I organize the photographs better and re-send

June 17: Lencare ignores my email, requests photographs of the carton

June 17: I reiterate my email containing all the requested photographs

I had to use Dropbox due to Lencare’s 10MB attachment limit. This was not received well.

June 17: Lencare rejects my Dropbox link, requests attachments.

June 17: Wipro employee attaches and sends all the photographs

June 17: Wipro employee resends the carton photographs

Over another phone call to Lenovo support, I am asked to email the invoice on the same thread.

June 18: Sending my invoice

Following this email, there was no response for a week. I followed up asking for one (a response on this thread never arrived).

June 24:: Requesting a response after getting none for a week

To my surprise, further phone calls revealed that my case had been rejected. No reason was provided.

June 24: Requesting a reason for rejection

Seeing nothing working, I took to Twitter.

June 24: Twitter conversation 1

June 24: Twitter conversation 2

June 24: Twitter conversation 3

After more calls, Lenovo support claimed that I filed the complaint after 7 days of purchase (the laptop took 7 days to arrive), which was too late. I had still not heard anything back in writing. I emailed asking for clarification.

June 25: Asking why the provided reason makes sense

No response. I began contacting my lawyer. At the same time, I wanted a confirmed rejection from Lenovo in writing.

June 27: Requesting the verdict of rejection in writing

After even more calls to Lenovo support and more noise on Twitter and Facebook, I was asked to CC my email to another address.

June 27: CC’ing the Do store

I finally obtained a rejection in writing via Lenovo India’s Facebook page. They claimed it was due to “customer-induced damage”. Make note of this expression and notice how it is forgotten after sending the legal notice.

June 28: Receiving the rejection in writing

A distraction: The Do Store asks me to send in photographs of the product. I had to lose my cool at this point.

June 28: The Do Store requests photographs

Two days later, the DOA team wants to take a look at my delivery challan, to validate the claim that I received the product only on June 7.

June 30: Lenovo DOA requests the delivery challan

June 30: Providing Lenovo DOA the delivery challan

July

I had finalized the legal notice with my lawyer at this stage. It was posted on July 1. The header below has an earlier date since it’s from a draft.

July 1: The legal notice header

I heard back from Lenovo on July 3!

July 3: DOA certificate generated

I provided the details requested, but didn’t hear back for another week.

July 7: Requesting a response for my cheque details

Conveniently, the ticket I had created on June 7 was marked resolved. So it appears someone at the NDSL distributor’s had seen it but ignored it all this while.

July 11: Ticket marked resolved

I also received a nice post from NDSL distributors, claiming that it was a manufactoring defect and apologizing profusely. Remember the claim of “customer-induced damage”?

July 11: Post from the NDSL distributors

I also heard back from Lencare that they could not accept the cheque details I desired, because they needed the cheque payee to be the same person as the invoice recipient. I’m not sure why this took a week to notice.

July 11: Validating cheque details

July 11: Confirming cheque details

They accepted my details and said I’d receive communication within 8-10 working days, which I did from Proconnect supply chain management. Notice that they claim “Bluedart” would be making the delivery.