The Last ThinkPad I Will Ever Own
This post is inspired by frustration, humiliation, and finally disappointment. After being a loyal ThinkPad customer for almost 15 years, my relationship with the brand must come to an end. Mind you, this is no small concern. Brand loyalty is the holy grail among companies and organizations who understand the power of customer lifetime value (CLTV). Lenovo, the proud (relatively) new owners of the ThinkPad brand apparently don’t understand CLTV.
Despite their being under contract with rival Dell, I convinced my employer to purchase a ThinkPad for me, citing my excellent run with them in the past. So, I acquired my first Lenovo brand ThinkPad (all of the previous ones, about 8 of them in total, had been made by IBM). Upon arrival, my brand new premium priced top-of-the-line X200s had a sound problem. A loud static-y “pop” at the end of playing back audio files. Not good for a professor who uses the laptop through a loud PA in an auditorium full of business students. Lenovo customer service had me send it back in for repair under warranty. Patiently, I did as I was told. During the week it was gone, I fell back to using my trusty IBM X31 that I’ve had for almost four years now. The Lenovo was returned a week later with a signed letter from the technician. Parts had been replaced and it was their goal to ensure “I was completely satisfied” with the service. After sending it in, waiting a week, and receiving it back, the “repaired” ThinkPad had the same problem.
I called again and was dumb-founded by Lenovo’s request to return it again to the same place as before, despite the fact that they offer on-site warranty service. They were quick to remind me that I had not paid for that service, which is true. But my argument with them was that the second time around should constitute an extra effort on their part to go above and beyond their policy in the interest of customer service. They refused. With hat in hand, I must tell my organization that the ThinkPad is not what it once was. Hence the humiliation.
As a consumer behavior researcher, it is an interesting phenomenon to actually feel so let down by a brand that I’ve been loyal to for so long. Lenovo took a great brand and ran the quality into the ground on two fronts: engineering and customer service. I once extolled the virtues of ThinkPads at every chance. Now, the relationship is over. It’s sad, really. Hence, the disappointment. Hence, this post. Hence, the case study I intend to write up on this. Hence, the passionate negative word-of-mouth I will disseminate using every opportunity I have as a consumer and certainly as a professor in marketing — henceforth and forever until the end of time.
Goodbye and good luck Lenovo. Your executive turnover and 27.4% drop in year-on-year profits makes sense to me now.
Yours,
Dr. Rader
Despite – perhaps because of – their “tankish-ness,” ThinkPads were usually tops on the PC side. Their construction, reliability, and even the pencil-eraser / nipple became the Gold Standard despite other short-comings. Having also used Toshibas, HPs, Dells, I’ve been consistently surprised by quirks: the most notable and consistent quirk was going to and waking from sleep.
Understood there’s variability in components used: graphics chip sets, drive controllers, RAM chips, all might change from batch to batch of the laptops based on what’s cheapest for the vendor to purchase that week. Understood this variability presents Quality Assurance challenges. But there’s a finite list of these variables, and they’re all running one of a finite list of Windows flavors (and when I used PC laptops, flavors of Windows were fewer than they are today). How these huge vendors and Microsoft couldn’t get around to ensuring a fundamental laptop function – sleeping, waking – worked near-perfectly is dumbfounding. More dumbfounding is the numbers of users (“customers”) put up with it from all these vendors.
What you mention – poor audio quality – is partially Quality Assurance, partially cheap components, and lots of customer ambivalence and inaction.
Your negative word-of-mouth campaign can be effective. Jeff Jarvis helped Dell move to act with his long-running campaign against them. In the end, it’s benefited Dell; perhaps yours will do the same for Lenovo.
Understood you’re a die-hard PC guy; in the end, though, you’ll be hampered by the platform (hardware+software) and the “Customer inaction” baked-in to PC vendors’ business plans.
With hope, your case study will include looking into Customer Lifetime Value as it relates to Macs. This won’t become a fanboi rant, but I have thousands of work hours on both platforms, neither are without issue, but the Mac’s CLTV to me has been greater by orders of magnitude.
smcnally
October 17, 2009 at 09:49
Funny you should mention Apple. After resolving myself that I’m finally divesting of the “tankish-ness” that I love, they definitely came to mind as a possible option. This is not so much because of what they are (which I know from sitting on the sidelines includes a lot of “good stuff” — Superior UI anybody?) but, as you point out, what the others are not. For what I (the university) paid for the ThinkPad, I believe I could get into a decent Mac. Another benefit: I don’t have to fight with them on it. Despite their contract with Dell, due to overwhelming requests from faculty, they have officially approved Apple as an alternative. Now, gotta figure out how to return this ThinkPad.
scottrader
October 17, 2009 at 10:08
good luck with it.
remember, too: on a Mac you can boot into Windows instead of the MacOS *and* you can have a Windows environment running as an “app” while in the MacOS. These options are available (presuming you already have a Windows license) via Boot Camp (gratis) and Virtual Box (gratis and libre). So, your favorite pieces of software, regardless of how obscure, will still work as they do currently.
smcnally
October 18, 2009 at 09:25
Scott,
I would totally support your initiative. Even though I am not that long standing activist of Thinkpad as you are, however I feel the same way. Lenovo is doing every effort possible to destroy the brand, which was built through such a scrupolous and hard work by IBM. I can bring another example of such behaviour by Lenovo.
One of the key perks for Thinkpad users was Vantage technology, which allowed to automatically scan the machine, and download all driver updates in one go. Certainly this was immenselly usefull tool. I am not a laptop design specialist, however I believe that while Thinkpad was owned (and developed) by IBM there were a lot of “technological spillovers” as we [Economists] may call them or positive externalities or even synergies between various parts of IBM holding. In that way some technologies developed within the framework of large enterprise solutions found their way to Thinkpad line as well. My understanding is that Vantage automatic update technology was originally developed for enterprise level solutions in order to deploy software on multiple machines within organization more effectivelly and then found its way into Thinkpads.
If one was following the forums latelly then he could see that at some point Lenovo decided to discontinue providing that automatic update service. That move in turn lead in turn to severe public outcry, which lasted for a couple months. As the result Lenovo brought the support back. Clearly Lenovo is cutting corners in every possible way in order to meet profit maximization goal.
I would take the whole argument even further when I suggest that IBM should not have parted with that line of business in the first place. Thinkpad line of notebooks at a time was a loss making division for IBM for considerable amount of time. Investment case behind divestment was such, that Thinkpad line is diluting “core” businesses within IBM such as divisions servicing large enterprizes. In a sense it was a drag on core business. However I would argue that Thinkpad line was creating enourmous brand awareness while owned by IBM within general masses. I think that at least would already be sufficient to justify the loss making division. In effect having Thinkpad line of notebooks on board for IBM is like constantly maitaining expensive marketing campaign. The only problem with that logic is that it is very difficult (if possible) to quantify that argument. I have not seen the numbers, however I would imagine that in the context financial valuation model for shareholders divestment of loss making division would make much more sense, than keeping it on board and creating some intangible, not measurable value.
Therefore we see , what we see. And it is a natural process that Lenovo is cutting corners. Because business objectives are different to what IBM used to have and it is a different company. I would have to agree that Thinkpad is dead as we knew it. Last thing I would to add is to thank Goldman Sachs for facilitating yet another M&A deal and making a fat slice of profit out of it.
o/
Denis
October 19, 2009 at 03:46
Thanks for the reply Denis. I’m with you 100%. I actually predicted this would happen, given many of the issues you discuss (including the “positive externalities” at IBM) and secretly hoped it wouldn’t.
Have a look at this for some seemingly relevant info. You don’t need an MBA to understand: A 27.4% year-on-year drop in gross profit (-94.8% pre-tax income) coupled with shake-ups at the “C” level spells “Oops” even given the current economic climate.
scottrader
October 19, 2009 at 09:10
just got an x200 myself, cheapest price i have seen anywhere, also came with led backlight and ultrabase.
such a kick butt laptop. so portable, fast, long battery life, sleep works great too!!!
sorrry about the x200s, maybe its to small for the power its packing!!!
❤ thinkpads
mike g
October 19, 2009 at 09:24
[…] discovered an interesting and devoted tribe as I have gone through gyrations with lackluster service from Lenovo. Despite the fact that the ThinkPad brand has changed ownership (from IBM to Lenovo) and in turn […]
The Power of Tribes « Scott Rader, PhD
October 19, 2009 at 13:51
Well, I think to be completely fair, I would not entirely agree with the fact that drop in revenues would necessarily be attributable to drop in quality of product. Such fluctuations in figures can stem from many factors. If you ask me, one should always conduct a careful analysis of company’s financials, consult a number of resources such as conference calls and annual reports as well as exercises certain degree of judgment in order to make good sense of company’s financial position. Every number has its own story behind it, especially in such a complex holding as Lenovo. That does not make me change my opinion about Lenovo’s quality.
Let me bring another example of Lenovo cutting edge professionalism. Not too long ago, Lenovo announced availability of faster processors for X301 model. The interesting detail was that according to UK version of web site, selecting new processor would drop total cost of machine by roughly 1,000 British pounds. Reportedly some customers did order the machine and received it promptly at severe discount of roughly 50-60%. Was that another marketing stunt or was that a genuine willingness of company to reward loyal Thinkpad fans, remains unknown!
Denis
October 21, 2009 at 01:13