You ever just finally reach a point where you've Had It?

I pass this along as an open letter to IBM, and a warning to anyone here
about buying from IBM.

I've seen all the same ads you have, and after being very wary for a very
long time, I finally decided to go for an IBM Thinkpad 560. Everything
said it was a great machine. So I called IBM to order it.

Only IBM doesn't sully its hands with direct orders. It sends you to a
secondary company, one of a bunch that handles that sort of thing, and you
place your order with that company. Okay, fine, I can handle that. I
place the order. I'm told it'll go out within 3 days, Federal Express. I
plan to have it all broken in so I can bring it to Worldcon with me to
avoid losing any work time.

A week passes. More. I call IBM. They have no record of it. I have to
backtrack to their secondary company. The secondary company misplaced it,
never bothered to tell me or IBM. Finally it goes out. Arrives with the
wrong spare battery. I call them again. They tell me that I should
package up the wrong battery, and they'll send me back the right one.
This was weeks ago. Still hasn't happened.

I used the Thinkpad for about 10 hours all total, just getting used to
Windows 95. Went to turn it on again, all powered up...it doesn't react.
Either I get a dead screen, or it hits the IBM in the upper right corner,
but nothing more, no beeps, no error messages, nothing.

So I call Technical Support. I spend over an hour with them, explaining
it, as they look into various books and can't figure it out. I take it
apart on the phone with them, still nothing. They tell me someone will
come by the next day to fix it (at great cost, natch). Or I can mail it
in, but I *need it* for that Thursday, when I leave for Worldcon, so I
can't send it out.

Next day comes, but IBM doesn't. I get two phone calls again, asking me
to explain what the problem is. I tell them. They say someone will be
over by the end of the day. Nobody shows. Tomorrow, they tell me.

So the next day, a repair tech from IBM arrives...almost two hours
late...and takes one look at the Thinkpad 560 before announcing he knows
NOTHING about this model...*doesn't even seem to know how to turn it on*.
I show him. He has no idea what's wrong, but goes into the other room to
take it apart. Spends 2 and 1/2 hours doing this (at $125 an hour) before
emerging to say he's got the screen to come on, but a) he has no idea what
was wrong, and it might go wrong again, and b) in taking the machine apart
he's totally bown the configuration, and do I have the configuration
disks? No, because the IBM secondary company never SENT me the disks.

So he says he'll take it that evening, and have it back in the morning,
thinking he may be able to download the software off IBM. He's come to
service a Thinkpad 560, but doesn't have any of the software for it, and
isn't entirely sure how to get it. It's now Thursday. I have no chance
of having this for Worldcon now, so I'm going to lose 4 days work because
of this.

I call in from the con, and I'm told he's returned with the IBM, and says
it now works, but he doesn't know for how long. So today I show up, and
find that it's in exactly the same condition as when I left, it hasn't
been configured, he simply and flatly lied to me because he didn't know
what to do, or how to do it.

So now I have a totally non-functioning IBM Thinkpad 560, for which I paid
a total of almost $6,000. Three phone calls to IBM after this have led to
zero response.

I've been buying computers a long, long time. I've gone through about six
full systems and 5 laptops, in each case they lasted long enough to pass
on to other people to use. I've never had this much trouble with a
product, and with their technical support, in 12 years. And you can't
find any kind of decent support or clues on where to go on their
convoluted, impossible-to-decipher web page structure. I signed onto IBM
Global Net, which has been equally as frustrating.

So if you're thinking of buying an IBM Thinkpad, folks, I'd urge you to
consider another company. This is the most hideous experience I've ever
had with a computer company, and if I'd had ANY idea how wretched it was,
I'd never have gone to IBM in the first place. This is an utter and
absolute disgrace.

jms


jms