Memory upgrades and battery scratches

Question

Good afternoon all!
I couldn't find where to email Lenovo directly so unfortunately I'm going to have to post here.
I'm probably going to catch some flak for this but hey ho, so heres the thing, I bought two brand new Lenovo 3000 N100's 5 years ago, all good, they both came with a 512MB SO-DIMM and since I wanted more memory I bought 2x1GB SO-DIMM's which I put in mine and put the other 512MB in the other one giving mine 2GB of RAM and my mum's 1GB of RAM.
Doing this was easy peasy, unscrew *ONE* screw and the flap just slides out of the two slots on the opposite side of the flap to the screw. Job done.
Scroll forwards 5 years and times have moved on... a lot and it seems like we apparently need to MASSIVELY over engineer things now.
So I bought three Lenovo 3000 G570's, all good stuff and all came with 1x2GB and 1x4GB for a total of 6GB, all good but me being me and a Firefox tab whore, what with RAM being so awesomely cheap I decided what I was going to do was get 8GB (2x4GB) SO-DIMMS (Corsair), take out ALL my existing memory, put in the new Corsair 2x4GB SO-DIMMS, take out the 2GB SO-DIMM from the one I got my sister and put in my now spare 4GB SO-DIMM giving me 8GB of RAM, my sister 8GB of RAM, my mum sticks with 6GB of RAM and I have 2x2GB SO-DIMM's left over spare.
SO, my sister and mum have already unboxed theirs and all is well, I unboxed mine, flipped it over and there are no less than *FOUR* screws holding the flap in now, granted there is just one 'flap' covering the CPU/RAM/HDD/WIFI/etc so okay fair enough, it's a big 'flap' after all.
So I undo said four screws and I should just be able to slide the panel out now right? Wrong, obviously four screws were deemed not nearly enough to keep it in place, so there are now tabs which are actually clipped in around pretty much all sides of this panel.
Well okay this can't be difficult right? Wrong. Now I'm a firm believer in the notion that if it won't budge don't just keep applying more and more force until something breaks. So I'm looking all over this thing, testing it gently from different sides to see if I can prise it open but it's becoming quickly apparent that I'm expected to BEND the panel so I can get the tabs out around the sides!
MASSIVELY over engineered and COMPLETELY unnecessary, were the FOUR screws not already holding it in place okay? It certainly seemed that they were? Okay so I need to bend the panel to get the tabs out but I'm guessing it's a reasonably easy thing to do not requiring much force right? Wrong. So it became quickly apparent then I'm going to need quite a bit of force, the problem is it's the kind of force that requires a flat head screwdriver and despite my best efforts it was impossible not to mark the bottom of my nice shiny brand new laptop! But that's not the end of it.....
So I've undone the four screws and I've managed to bend the panel and prize out all that tabs as gently as possible all whilst doing my best to try not slip the screwdriver underneath the panel taking a nice stab at the motherboard/memory/CPU/wifi/etc underneath because that would just *really* make my day, so the four screws and numerous tabs would be it right? Wrong. It appears that there is something underneath the panel STILL holding on, "more tabs?!" I cry in despair as my engineering family background cries out "WHY LENOVO GODS? WHY?!!! Does this panel need to survive a thermonuclear explosion?! Does it need to stay on whilst being driven over by a tank?! WHY?!".
So I'm trying everything, gently wriggling it this way, wriggling it that way, lifting it this side, lifting it that side, EVERY conceivable way of removing the final tab underneath I tried.... and failed. I pour through all the manuals again, maybe I've missed something? Maybe I'm just being completely thick (it's not unknown to happen)? But no, the manual makes it sound as easy as breathing so I give it one last try, I lift the panel putting more and more force through it until eventually BANG it comes off.... and I sit there staring.... laptop on the table.... the panel in my hands.... and the now broken tab.....
link to image
....wonderful.
With sigh I proceeded to install the new memory and replace the panel which now ironically goes on and comes off again SIGNIFICANTLY easier now the tab underneath has broken off and do you know what? The panel doesn't seem to have lost any of it's ability to stay in place? Funny that.
The other funny thing is that when I go to 'upgrade' my sisters laptop, the panel comes off EASILY! Maybe during assemble mine was done differently? Maybe the tolerances on mine just made it too tight to come off easily but with another sigh I go to put the battery in my new laptop so I can check all is well and what do I find?
The battery has scratches all over it:
link to image
All three brand new laptop boxes had the Lenovo seal on them so the retail store couldn't have opened it and my sister's and mum's laptop's were all fine?
So dear Lenovo, I love buying your laptops, I've bought five already, I'd buy again but would you be so generous as to send me a new panel and battery? I'd really appreciate your help.
Regards,
Benji
image(s) >50k converted to link(s).  

Answer 1

hey LondonBenji,
awesome post that looks like a TARDIS... "Bigger on the inside". Anyway, sorry to hear on what had happened, I suggest giving our support team a call via
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