Yet another friend enquired today as to whether IBM had made good on my broken IBM T42p laptop as they’re considering buying a Lenovo unit, so I figured it was time for an update to explain where we’re at; to be fair, I’ve kept quiet because I thought it was resolved, but read on…

It’s a month now since I was promised a replacement laptop by a gentleman at Lenovo, but sadly just as we were at the home stretch they’ve gone silent on me. Last I heard was that “documents had been submitted” and that “the process still needs to run through a distributor so I cannot make any firm commitments as to when the machine will be delivered”. So that’s alright then.

My (not very well) T42p arrived back at Wrenthorpe on 22nd December. To be fair, the screen had been replaced, but even as I powered it up to retrieve data from it in preparation for the new machine (as advised) it was starting to… well, it’s odd, it just goes very slow and occasionally seizes, and sometimes doesn’t boot at all. In any case, it’s still shagged, but I’ve not reported it as a fault yet because I was meant to be getting this replacement T43p machine and send the broken laptop back and everything would be happy and we’d all be relaxed. It even got to the stage of a disclaimer saying that “receiving the replacement unit would be in full and final settlement of any problem I had with Lenovo/IBM, but they weren’t admitting responsibility for giving me a problem unit”.

So, either there’s a shortage of T43p laptops, my emails are disappearing in transit, or some backpedalling has been done. Either way it would be courteous to at least let me know, but I think my emails are now being ignored. Should I just report this one as a busted unit again and go through the whole ’10-working-days-no-really-maybe-it’ll-be-longer-not-got-the-parts-in-guv’ charade, because after all I didn’t really want a reliable laptop did I? No, that’s why I spent so much hard-earned cash on it. It’s like dealing with DSG warranty repairs, only… worse.

Just in case anyone out there in IBM Lenovo-land gives a toss, the complaint ticket for the replacement is UB7845.

(Yes, I’m annoyed. More so at the radio silence than anything else.)