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Lenovo and UPS: A problematic pairing

Twice this year I ordered a computer directly from Lenovo and they shipped it via UPS. Both shipments got screwed up.

Michael Horowitz

Michael Horowitz wrote his first computer program in 1973 and has been a computer nerd ever since. He spent more than 20 years working in an IBM mainframe (MVS) environment. He has worked in the research and development group of a large Wall Street financial company, and has been a technical writer for a mainframe software company.

He teaches a large range of self-developed classes, the underlying theme being Defensive Computing. Michael is an independent computer consultant, working with small businesses and the self-employed. He can be heard weekly on The Personal Computer Show on WBAI.

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Michael Horowitz
2 min read

Twice this year I ordered a computer directly from Lenovo and they shipped it via UPS. Both shipments got screwed up.

Back in January I wrote about how UPS lost my computer. That machine, a desktop, was supposedly delivered to the wrong address. Lenovo built and sent a replacement computer and a few days after the replacement computer arrived, and roughly a month after the first one was shipped, the first machine magically showed up.

On October 8th Lenovo shipped me a new S10 Netbook (see The Lenovo S10 Netbook is here, count me in. On the 9th, I checked the delivery status with UPS only to find that the tracking number didn't exist.

The next day, when the UPS tracking number still wasn't in the system, I called Lenovo. They couldn't explain what happened and queued my query to another group with a promise to call back in a couple days.

By the 13th, UPS knew about package.

My package "experienced an exception". The address label was missing or illegible. That's a first for me.

Lenovo called on the 13th to say that the package had no label and they would have a new estimated delivery date tomorrow.
Update: The computer arrived before the new delivery date estimate.

Making a poor situation worse was that three out of the four times I spoke to someone from Lenovo on the telephone, I couldn't hear the person due to background noise as loud as Fenway Park in the World Series. That, combined with the accents of the Lenovo employees, meant that every sentence had to be repeated.

Of course, you can also communicate with Lenovo by email, except that an email about this wasn't responded to for 3.5 days.

UPS seems to be the only shipper used by Lenovo.

Update October 20, 2008. This did not end well.

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