The case of the unresponsive Lenovo Australia sales people
Recently Jeff has been showing off his Lenovo T61p. He was having stacks of problems with his Toshiba A7 which was out of warranty and breaking down so he needed a new one.
Its a nice unit actually - scores really well in Vista's performance and reliability checks and runs Windows Server Virtualisation like a dream. Keith Combs got one too!
I have the same Toshiba A7 as Jeff does - its also starting to fail on me and doesn't support Windows Server virtualisation which is important so impressed with the stories I also ordered one. After I did that on the 31/10 I sent a followup email to ask the possible Expected Time of Arrival (ETA) date. No response after two days. So I send another email - please tell me when I can expect delivery? Still no response.
I'm thinking that this must be some sort of order email address and doesn't respond. So the next day I call Lenovo in Sydney on their 1300 number and ask about it. They tell me that they are consumer sales and not corporate sales and that they cant tell me. Arrgh. I call the Lenovo Sydney office directly and ask to be put through to the contact on the purchase order I submitted. It goes straight to voice mail and I leave a message asking them to call me back when they have a moment. No response.
The next day I'm talking to Andrew Coates about TechEd stuff and we get on the topic of these units as I know he's ordered one too. He tells me roughly the same story. He's had one on order for two weeks with no responses to ETA requests...I'm getting a bit frustrated...he's already frustrated...
The next day I try again and this time the nice and patient receptionist suggests to call the persons manager. Wow - I'm thinking surely he will respond. The call rings out and goes to his voicemail. I leave a message. No response.
The next day I call the consumer 1300 line again and ask for creative suggestions to find someone in Lenovo that knows where my order is. They give me a phone number to call. I call it. It rings out and I leave a voicemail and wait a day. No response.
****Updated 3:26pm Perth time****
After a whole bunch of escalating and phone calls now today Ive gotten onto the right person at Lenovo and found out a few things. I have to say he was great and told me that theres a hold up some of the T61p's due to DVD burner supplies. Ive also found that the email address I was sending email to was an order processing only email that should have auto responded to me what it was there for but didn't. On the last note I found that our internal procurement people hadnt updated Lenovo's details with the correct contact at Lenovo so my numerous calls were going to the wrong person - so it wasnt totally Lenovos fault after all. Arrghh....whew....what a day....cant wait to get the unit though. Im sure it will be awesome!