My experience with LapStore's used-ThinkPad warranty repair
service
My ThinkPad T40 arrived back from warranty repair today
(well, actually
yesterday, but I had to run off to the Gnome-2.26
release
get-together in Munich so I did not have time to open the
box then). I bought
it used roughly two years ago at LapStore when my R51
had died. I had bought the R51 new with a one year
IBM warranty but unfortunately within two years the
graphics chip with got
damaged and would freeze the notebook after a couple of
minutes. I then
decided that I do not really need a new notebook anymore, and
opted for a used
T4x series (there were no used X40s available at that time).
I chose LapStore because they offered a one-year "Garantie"
(guarantee? warranty?), which was rather
unusual for used notebooks - at best, you would get a one-year
"Gewaehrleistung" which is the promise to fix things which
were supposedly
broken already by delivery. Even better, one could
optionally extend the
warranty to two years, which I did. The notebook they sent
was in pretty good
condition (apparently a business
out-of-warranty return)
and I put in my R51's hard disk, the ipw2100 WLAN card and
the RAM
(unfortunately, I realized too late that the keyboard and
the CDRW/DVD drive do
not fit).
I was pretty happy with it (and LapStore in general, I
recommended it to a
couple of friends since, and e.g. my current flatmate bought
a T42 there a while
ago as well) until the fan started dropping out and making
weird noises by the
end of 2008. So just before the end of warranty, I sent it
(after removing
hard disk, optical drive and battery) in to LapStore to see
how their service is.
I also mentioned a clear bright spot on the display (apparently
some fatigue, you see
it often mentioned in ThinkPad eBay descriptions) and a
crack in the palmrest
between the cursor-right key and the hard disk slot. When
they sent a mail that
the ThinkPad had arrived at their site, I also followed-up
via mail that the
"indestructible" keyboard caps stickers they used to mod a
Scandinavian(?)
keyboard into a German one were pretty much destroyed by now
and would also need
servicing.
I assumed that they would service the fan (which looked like
a clear-cut
warranty issue to me) without arguing, but probably not the
display and
palmrest (and did not know whether they got the mail about
the keyboard stickers),
so when they sent another mail two days ago that they sent
the notebook back
without asking further questions, I became worried about
what happened at all.
So, long story short, I was totally positively surprised
when I opened the box
today and read:
"Aktion: Lüfter, Display, Palmrest und Tastatur getauscht"
(action: fan, display, palmrest and keyboard replaced)
The replacements are still used parts (and the keyboard is
still not a real
German one, but one with new stickers on it), but they
basically changed my
almost-totally-broken-will-fall-apart T40 back into a
almost-as-good-as-new T40.
(not sure whether that is positive or negative, but they
also forgot to remove the
service-hard disk they put in to test things, I guess I will
send it back to them)
So all in all, I am very much impressed by their service. I
would have expected
this kind of service from IBM/Lenovo if I had a manufacturer
warranty, but not
from some random sell-used-ThinkPads shops on the net. I
can now even more
strongly recommend LapStore as the place to buy good
notebooks. Certainly you
can get cheaper prices at some eBay stores, but you do not
get real warranty then
and what about the service?
I recommend geting
a T42
- I believe the T43 is inferior to it and the T40s and T41s
don't have
"LapStore Garantie" anymore. You can
get them without operating system and can customize the hard
disk, memory and optical drives - unfortunately you cannot
downgrade those, which is my only gripe with them.