Don't Buy Lenovo Online

It was too good to be true. Lenovo had a sale in June for its Thinkpad lines of laptops, so I placed an order on the 14th. The Order status proposes a shipping date of June 30th, which seems aggressive but reasonable. The 30th comes and goes, without notice of shipment. I check back on the 1st -- nothing -- on the 2nd -- and wow, they've changed the expected shipping date to August 4th!

That spurred me to Google for "Lenovo Shipping Time". That was an eye opener. Apparently Lenovo has had major difficulties in order fulfillment for years (at least since 2005). Reading the experiences of people a few things become pretty clear:

• Lenovo knowingly falsifies its expected ship dates. This characterization is accurate because Lenovo has had years to collect data by which to predict with great confidence whether or not they can ship laptop products, yet the expected shipment dates do not reflect an accurate accounting of this history. One might claim they were "overly optimistic" a few years ago, but not now.
  


• Lenovo appears to have supply-chain management problems it cannot overcome. Again, this characterization is reasonable because if they could have corrected their own failures by this time some observable change would have occurred, but the externally observable behavior of the company appears unchanged.
  


• Lenovo employs a kind of "bait and switch" methodology on setting shipping dates. The particular method by which Lenovo falsifies the expected shipment dates appears to be to set a single fixed date for all parts of the order, then when that date arrives to switch the ship dates, with the laptop portion being the furthest out. Consumer experiences have been that this behavior continues, with some people not getting orders fulfilled at all (cancellation offered according to federal law).

One could reasonably conclude that Lenovo is as bad or worse than any other no-name supplier -- hardly the world-class company that the former IBM reputation suggests.

Update: I called to cancel, explaining that they switched the shipping dates. I also explained that after investigating I found that Lenovo had a history of doing so, and that if I had known Lenovo could not fulfill such orders I would rather purchase from another vendor. The polite woman on the line informed me that the expected shipping date was July 9th. Ok, that's reasonable; if it isn't shipped by the 9th I'll call again to cancel without second thought.

Update: July 9th came. According to the Web site, shipment status wouldn't be posted until the next day, so I waited and prepared to make a cancellation call. However, on the 10th the order status shows as "shipped". So now I enter the next stage of the game and ask the questions: (a) did it really ship, (b) was the product shipped properly configured per my specifications, (c) did they intentionally ship a defective unit just to respond to my complaint, and (d) will it get "held up at customs" ? Given (b) or (c), I intend on making a return immediately, because Lenovo has a very bad track record in this area.