Lenovo Outlet Review
If you’ve been thinking about buying a computer from the Lenovo Outlet store, you may be concerned about what your shopping experience will be like. And the truth is that it’s a legitimate concern. It seems like whenever someone makes a major purchase its either a dream come true or a disastrous nightmare, and what you can expect your experience to be can be a major part of your decision to make your purchase from one company or another one.
The truth is that when it comes to the Lenovo Outlet experience, there are much more negative reports than positive ones. When researching this, I came across countless threads online that relayed numerous reports of unshipped orders, unresponsive and unhelpful customer service, and altogether major customer dissatisfaction.
Now, in all fairness, there were positive reports as well. Just about each thread that I came across had at least one report of a purchase that went smoothly, or even better than expected. For each positive report though, there were about 3 negative ones. Now we all know that people like to kvetch a lot more than they like to talk about their positive experiences, but there were enough negative reports to make a somewhat skeptical consumer like me think twice about purchasing.
All told, there were some definite positives that people reported, so I will just list the pros and cons as I found them, and let you make your decision from there.
Pros
1. You can get amazing prices. A lot of the products available at the Lenovo factory outlet were never even used. Forget refurbished, you can get new computers at much lower prices than you’d be able to find elsewhere.
2. You can end up getting a much better deal than you expected. Lots of customers have reported getting expensive hardware and software that wasn’t mentioned in the product specs. This is because all products sold through Lenovo outlets were custom built for people who either cancelled their orders, or sent the product back unopened (or in the case of Refurbished or Scratch and Dent, opened). So you just might end up getting some fancy pants software or hardware that you didn’t have to pay for, and weren’t expecting.
Cons
1. The longest and most bizarre order processing you’ll ever experience. From the time you place your order, it will be several days before the order actually goes through– meaning that they locate the machine and bill you. Then it will be another week to ten days before your item is shipped.
Do not expect to get a confirmation email, so make sure to print out your order confirmation– or better yet, take a screenshot or make a pdf.
2. Someone else might get the product you ordered. There have been quite a few reports of people who have placed an order, only to find that someone else had ordered the same item, and since they were the second person to order it, their order was canceled. However, they were not notified of the cancellation.
3. Not the greatest customer service. While some people have reported very helpful customer service reps, there have been many more reports of customer service people who were unhelpful, gave contradicting information, or were downright rude.
4. No exchanges. If your order arrives and doesn’t work, you will not be able to send it back and get a new one. The Lenovo return policy for their outlet store is that you can return it, but you cannot exchange it. Your only options will be to either go through tech support to try and fix it, or to return the product and place a new order. But they may not have another computer with the same specs available.
Basically, if you do decide to place a Lenovo Outlet order, you should go into it expecting that your computer might take a very long time to arrive, and with the understanding that you might not actually get this computer, but that if you do, you will be getting a really great product at an incredible price.
November 21st, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Thank you, this information is very helpful.
December 15th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
they are nothing short of a disaster to deal with – the slowest, dumbest and most unresaponsive in the computer industry
February 18th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
same bad experiance. I have send several emails to them. No answer !!!! What a crap….. They have no telephone…..anyone knows there number..?
March 3rd, 2010 at 6:07 pm
You are correct sir. I placed an order on Feb 21 and never received the confirmation email. I will never shop from the Lenovo Outlet again.
March 4th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
I’m just hoping I’m gonna get my laptop I ordered. I’m in no hurry, and I actually got an order confirmation…Well, the first one anyway. It’s been two days and I haven’t seen the second one they promised. I’ll post back and let you all know how it’s going. Anyone managed to find that phone number?
March 6th, 2010 at 12:58 am
I placed an order on Feb 25th 2010. Didnt receive 2nd email as of yet. Read bad things about this company
March 9th, 2010 at 12:09 am
I ordered a new T500 on 02/05/10 and received paperwork a few days later, informing me that my order would be shipped on 02/19/10.
After calls and E-mails I was told that it would be on 03/19/10 and today, when I made my second call after being mysteriously cut off, was told that they expected to ship it on 04/13/10. Needless to say, I cancelled the order. They would not confirm it so I took a name and they said to check my original order status report to see if it had been done.
I’ve used IBM’s for ten years but am leery of Lenovo now.
March 9th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Avoid at all costs. All issues listed above are 150%. THERE IS NO CUSTOMER SERVICE there – period, and Lenovo.com customer service reps are just plain rude.
Save yourself time and money and go someplace else.
April 26th, 2010 at 12:40 am
Here’s my order detail from an S10 order. Am HAPPY with it:
Your Order Confirmation #100023398 (placed on April 2, 2010)
IdeaPad S10 CA4333XF7 1 $220.00
Subtotal $220.00
Shipping & Handling $0.00
Estimated Tax $13.75
Grand Total $233.75
Was received April 19, looks like new (although the box looked like it have “been around” for a while). Works fine.
As they say, I guess, “YMMV”.
April 26th, 2010 at 2:49 am
As far as ordering a product and not getting it, you have to remember that a “refurb” is a one-of-a-kind item. You don’t order an “S10″, you order a particular one they reported having in stock (but subject to prior sale?).
The same is true if you return something. They can’t guarantee a replacement because they may not have any more. They only had one S10 when I ordered. So I guess is the reason for “they fix it or they refund and you reorder (IF they have another of what you had)”.
It WAS slow between ordering and actual approval of the order and a commitment to ship. I presumed, again, that that had to do with one-of-a-kind nature of the order.
Anyway, my S10 is just fine. Sturdy, easy to upgrade machine.
May 4th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
I placed an order and did get a delay in confirmation. I was surprised to see an upsurd shipping and handling fee. I called to cancel the order and the service rep (you have to call the regular Lenovo number since there is none listed on the outlet webpage) told me he would waive the shipping and handling but it would take a while. I said OK, and the product arrived in a decent amount of time. The computer is great. Thing is they never charged me for the computer. Instead of waiving the fee they waived the whole transaction but still sent the computer. Crazy!
May 5th, 2010 at 3:50 am
Morry thanks for you post, and this site. That gives me a good idea of what to expect if I do decide to gamble with Lenovo.
It’s too bad that there’s no solid computer company left these days. Dell/Alienware, has good specs, but I’ve experienced their patchy customer service first hand… probably similarly frustrating as Lenovo. Sony hardwares tends to breaks down easily. When Mac fails it’s rarely user fixable. Unfortunately those are the few companies that uses the latest DDR3, and the rest are second grade. Are Asus, or Acer any good?
May 19th, 2010 at 2:53 am
It looks like Lenovo made some improvements to their site. The outlet.lenovo.com site mentions faster order processing as a specific change. Anyone order a computer through the Lenovo outlet recently?
May 28th, 2010 at 1:28 am
I just attempted to order a battery using the new site, but I can’t
get past the “shipping address” section of the “checkout”. I keep
getting:
“There are no shipping methods available for the shipping address
entered. Please go back and verify your shipping address,
especially state and zip code.”
Which sounds absurd since I’ve tried two different addresses, both of
which I’ve shipped many things to in the past (ordered from different
web sites of course).
July 26th, 2010 at 9:53 am
1) Responsiveness: A few days ago (= before ordering), I sent them twice e-mails with a question aboout their international warranty. One was answered within hours, the other–if I remember correctly–between 1-2 days. Maybe I was lucky?
2) Talking of international warranty: They claim every laptop with a 1-year warranty comes also with a 1-year international warranty. Shipping to a repair center, if needed, at their expense. I’m all but sure that’s true (it would be better than some new Lenovo computers!)…??
3) Shipping address: They let you enter different billing and shipping addresses, but it seems that you *must* use the same address. If not, you get the error message of “no shipping methods available (…)” (see post above). At least when I entered the same information twice, there was no more problem about “shipping methods.”
4) Shipping time: They don’t provide any information about how long it’ll be before they ship… only how long shipping takes.
5) I’ve just ordered… but after reading all the comments here and elsewhere, I’m not sure it was a good decision. I *do* have time constraints… so I really hope they’ll let me cancel my order if they’ll take too long… but even more I hope they’ll just ship it and get my money and everyone’s happy…
September 11th, 2010 at 5:08 am
-Ordered a X201 Redistributed at a really awesome price
-Received confirmation email minuets later
-Credit card authorized, but not charged
-”Estimated shipping date” is 9 days later
-Made 1 call to CS regarding payment, CSR is no doubt from India and can’t really speak English, BUT, he answered my questions.
I’ll keep you guys updated when I get anything
September 16th, 2010 at 8:07 am
9/15/10 – Got a call from UPS this morning, and my X201 got here in the afternoon.
It is ironic because according to Lenovo’s order tracking page, the estimated shipping date is 9/16/10. My credit card was never charged either, they only did a authorization.
As for the laptop itself, it is perfect! Brand new, can’t find any difference between a “new” new unit and this “redistributed”unit. (I ordered a T61 few years ago from Lenovo’s main website) The batter shows 0 cycle, and everything is sealed with no sign of usage. For some reason they also included Win7 recovery disks which shouldn’t be there. (also found 2x Disc2)
I am extremely happy with this purchase. It only took 4 business days for me to get the laptop! There is one issue that will probably be solved once I call them – the warranty is suppose to be 1 year from the date of purchase, and right now it’s apparently still dated to sometimes in May’10.
*there is definitely some issues with Lenovo’s ordering/inventory system, but overall this is the best computer (PC) buying experience for me, especially the low low low price I paid. (paid 790 something, i5 with 9 cell battery)
September 28th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
I ordered a new T500 laptop on 17 September.
Free shipping, no handling charges: just the listed price plus sales
tax.
The web site was a joy to use — it allows you to filter the available
units by just about any feature/spec you could think of.]
I received an order confirmation e-mail a few seconds after placing
the order.
When I checked the order status page it showed an estimated ship date
about two weeks out.
The laptop shipped on 23 September (a week early) and arrived on 28
September.
The laptop is exactly as advertised: brand new, in a factory sealed
box.
I was a bit worried after reading of the problems that people have
reported, but a friend of mine ordered a laptop a couple years ago
from the Lenovo outlet, and he had no problems either.
It was a great deal, and the only way I could be happier is if they
still offered 4:3 ratio laptop displays. Still, it was nice to get a
high-res 16:10 display instead of those rediculously short, low-res
16:9 displays on current models.
October 20th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
I got a b500 series core 2 duo 25 inch screen all in one.
cost me $450. 4 gigs of ram, HD graphics, huge screen, everything built in, 750gb hard drive.
1/3 of the price, perfect condition. It did take 2 weeks to get here, but at this price, who cares!
October 29th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
I ordered and received an ThinkPad SL410. I paid $450 for a pretty decent machine with 4GB RAM and >300GB hard drive. The whole process from order, shipment and delivery went very smoothly and took only 4 business days to complete.
I am very happy with my experience so far but I do appreciate the tips Morry and others provide on this site. I will most likely buy again from Lenovo outlet.
December 22nd, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Bought an ideapad U460 from the outlet site. It arrived on time via UPS and was DEAD ON ARRIVAL. TS couldn’t do anything. Defective hard drive. NOTE: what is listed as new on the outlet website is actually refurbished. Did not know this till the CS mentioned it was refurbished since there are items that are listed as New and items listed as refurbished!! Beware.
January 17th, 2011 at 8:39 pm
As I website possessor I think the content material here is very fantastic , regards for your efforts.
March 9th, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Totally Below Standard and Pathetic Vendor. Never buy from http://www.lenovo.com. I am still waiting for my Order and today it’s been 16 Days and still in process. Not Yet shipped. Initially it was shoing estimated ship date 03/07/2001 and NOW they shows estimated ship date is 03/28/2011. Means they will ship my order AFTER 36 DAYS from the day I placed the order. This Folks should be out of business. Every one gives them 1 star and every one is disappointed.
June 8th, 2011 at 2:44 am
Stay away. Terrible customer service, and you get a call center in India where all they do is read from a script and refuse to help. I ordered a netbook for a new employee on 6-7. When my order status read estimated ship date 10-31, there was no way in hell I was going to wait. Well, they were closed, so I went ahead and ordered from Newegg (which I should have done in the first place). I called the next day and they refused to cancel my order. In broken English, they told me about the web policy of no cancellations. The supervisor told me the the estimated ship date was incorrect, and that the laptop would go out this week. Better yet, they said that I would be subject a 15% restocking fee if I sent it back. I then informed them of their web site policy of a full refund if they are in error, and the shipping date was an error. He still refused to waive the restocking fee if I sent it back. This is a little scam by design- put a shipping date so far out that people will have to shop elsewhere. THEN, they refuse to cancel the order so they can make 15% when you are forced to send it back. They dont care that you are unhappy, they get your money and wait for the next sucker. I’ll be calling Visa tomorrow to see what rights I have for dispute. THE Worst customer service I have ever received from an online retailer. It sickens me that people run a business like this.
July 12th, 2011 at 9:40 pm
I had bought 4 laptops in several occasions, no problems at all. they usually arrived within a week of order made.
August 18th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
I ordered for laptop and requested for cancellation next day because at local store it was cheaper. Cancelelation request was 4 days prior to shipping, arrogant refused, shipped, i returned unopened, they cahged 15 % cancellation , USELESS COMAPNY , BEWARE
August 29th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
I ordered a ThinkCenter M90z all in one on a Monday afternoon and received it via fed-ex on Thursday. I should note that I live less than 100 miles from the outlet warehouse in North Carolina, so UPS was fast. It arrived in good shape though some of the features weren’t as listed i.e. touchscreen does not work, built in camera does not work, one of the (already paltry) built in speakers was blown. But the price I paid was $400 – $500 cheaper than similar units are being sold on sale at other stores, so I am okay with features that aren’t working that I probably wouldn’t use anyway.
September 3rd, 2011 at 4:37 am
I’ve bought several computers from the outlet in the past few years and have had always had wonderful experiences.
My computers have arrived promptly and I have gotten some incredible deals.
I’ll buy my next computer from the outlet too!
September 17th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
I ordered a system over Labor Day weekend from the Lenovo Outlet. It was new, had everything I wanted, and was a very reasonable price. Despite their “Labor Day Sale”, the same system configuration at http://www.lenovo.com cost $300 more. On Tuesday morning, I called first thing to change my shipping address. After a conference call with my bank to verify my identity, etc., the credit department was satisfied and released my order… Or so I thought. I got an email the instant I hung up saying my order had been cancelled due to a credit card processing issue! I called Lenovo back and spoke to a salesman, who informed me that I would need to create another order because the system I wanted was purchased by someone else! Thankfully, he managed to find a system with better options than the first and price matched it for me. The initial ship date was set for 3 days from them, then 6 (weekend). However, it was waiting for me 2 days later (strange). I don’t know how they coordinate their shipping efforts, but they do. All in all, I walked out with a better deal and I am happy with the system they sent, but I had to spend over 2 hours on the phone dealing with them to get to this point. I would probably return to Lenovo Outlet if the price was good enough, but at least I know what to expect.
Lenovo outsources their customer service to India. It’s obvious these guys simply don’t care. They will always try to get you to complete an automated survey after they’re done helping you, but they’re relatively incompetent.
October 6th, 2011 at 2:29 am
Sounds pretty standard for the industry. We just had a very similar ordering experience as Morry, only from Dell, and not any outlet either. $1500 computer was supposed to have a touch screen. Comes slowly, arrives, no touch screen. Can’t be returned, they say.
Why do consumers put up with this purchase after purchase? It’s a mystery.
We won’t go back to Dell and now we won’t buy from Lenovo either. Are customer service and integrity in sales dead?
October 25th, 2011 at 12:28 am
I’m surprised to hear of all the negativity. I’ve ordered a T410 in mid 2011– brand new and a couple hundred lower than elsewhere. It arrived exactly as predicted and I got a confirmation email.
I did replace a somewhat flakey CDROM 5 months later for $36. Lennovos have a great build quality and there’s little substitute for them at outlet prices.