X201 Woes - Do not buy one

Question

I offer this as my story as an X201 owner and the 'support' i have been given by Lenovo. It is a sad but causionary tale and I would suggest that anyone planning to buy a Lenovo laptop takes note.
I initially sent this email on the 8th March and have thus far received no response to it:
I was given this email address to make a complaint regarding the ongoing issue I currently have with my new Lenovo Thinkpad X201 that I purchased from your website just before Christmas. Whilst your support staff have been generally courteous and polite (this is certainly not a complaint against them), getting some resolution to my problem has proved difficult, expensive and time consuming. My problem’s start with an intermittent fault with my wireless that seems to cut out for no reason and will not restart unless I reboot the computer. I initially contacted your colleagues on the 28th Feb regarding this issue after logging my issue online and being given an issue number 01DM8W5 . They remoted onto my laptop and whilst keeping me on the phone for 40mins looked at the various settings without changing much except 1 power saving setting within power manager. I was asked to get in contact should this solve not solve the issue and I was reasonably satisfied that they had attempted to fix the issue, I asked if this was a known issue and I was told it was not. As I work in IT I checked the relevant forums on Lenovo and found that a number of people have mentioned this issue. I include a number here for you to see
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-Tablet-ThinkPad-Laptops/Persistent-WIFI-problem-wity-my-X201-ta...
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x201-wireless-always-suddenly-turn-off-and-can...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/552579-x201-intel-n-6200-severe-wifi-issues.html
I have also included a couple of other articles that describe the same issue on other laptops (wireless card issue?)
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T510-Advanced-N-6200-wireless-turns-off-its...
As the issue occurred again, I contacted your team on the 1st March and explained that the fix had not done the job. Your colleague immediately stated that I should return the laptop complete for repair and probable reinstall and as I only have a carry in warranty I would have to bring it into one of your service centres. I explained that this would not be a problem (although I was not impressed at the idea given the expense of the laptop in the first place) and given that I live on the edge of London I assumed that IBM/Lenovo would have a service centre in the capital. I was still in discussion with your colleague when I realised that I was required to take this to Colchester which is 58 miles (approx 95km away). I explained that this was not acceptable and the offer of a courier was made (something again not easy given that it requires you to be in between 9-5 with no specific time given for collection and losing my laptop for at least a week, I do have to work). I explained to your colleague that I hadn’t tried  suggested fixes from your forum (uninstalled access connections, Intel drivers and tried reinstalling) and before wasting my/your time/money it may be advisable to try these first.
Sadly these also did not manage to fix the issues either so I contacted you again on the 7th March to organise a courier collection, another member of your team stated that issue number  01DM8W5 had been closed and I would have to open another (issue number A1LXVYL). Although annoying, I explained what had been happening and your colleague asked to remote onto my computer. I agreed and explained that on occasions when I have issues Fn+F5 may not work (it wasn’t). I also explained the fixes I had tried and that even though she denied this was a known issue the Lenovo forum suggested otherwise. She then proceeded to reinstall access connections and the Intel drivers, restarted the pc and after another 30 mins on the phone (at my expense) said it was now working so the issue must be fixed and she would not get the pc collected. I explained that the definition of an intermittent fault is that it doesn’t always happen and all she had done is reinstall what I had already reinstalled. She then opened a cmd screen and started a ping going and stated I was required to provide a print screen when it next happens. I explained that the ping would not stop as the computer was currently on a wired connected to ensure that the remote connection was not dropped (something that had been requested on previous calls and something I had explained to your colleague), at this point she seemed to be trying to get rid of me. As she would still not accept there was an issue I suggested that it would probably be best that I call back when the issue next occurs on a wired connection so she could see what has happen. She said this was the best plan and that was how we left it.
The issue has reoccurred today (8th March), and I have spoken to another one of your representatives. I explained what had been said previously and that they were welcome to log onto my pc to check the issue. I was now told this was not required and I would be sent an email with the details on how to post the laptop back to the service centre. I explained that a courier had been previously offered and then after checking this I was offered this again (9-5, no time slot). Luckily, my fiancé is off work tomorrow and is able to wait in for the collection, I hope it turns up. I checked with your colleague and I explained that I have copied a number of files etc to my new pc and would I need to back it all up. I was told that I could remove the hard drive and battery and just send back the shell for testing and I will be without it for at least 6 working days.
As you can see, I have not had a great experience with your support team wasting both my time/money to try and sort this out. As from tomorrow I am going to be without the laptop that I have spent the best part of £1000 on for a minimum of a week and my fiancé is going to have to wait in, possibly for the whole day, to have it collected. It also seems that your support representative seemed unwilling to accept that this is a known issue and didn’t seem to follow the same procedures for dealing with it. Due to these issues and the time/expense I have had to go to thus far to get my laptop repaired I would think that it would only be fair that my warranty to be reset from the date the laptop is finally returned to me for a whole year and if I encounter any further issues with the wireless I should have the option of returning the laptop in full and receive a full complete refund. I have been tried to be as reasonable as possible with your company and with your staff and I hope you that will be with me. I hope you understand my frustration and can return my laptop in fully working order shortly. If you could acknowledge receipt of this email it would be appreciated.
After receiving no response i contacted support again today (30th March) as the problem is still not solved and here is the update i sent in.
The laptop was collected on Wednesday 9th March in the box the laptop was delivered in. It spent a week in the repair centre and I was contacted by support to say that the centre now required my hard drive as they could not replicate the problem. I explained that this was unacceptable as I had personal data locked on the drive and had not removed it as I had been told to keep the hard drive. I suggested they were just going to do a complete system restore which the engineer checked and agreed with, they said they would send the laptop back to me so I could do this. I also asked if my complaint email had been received as I had received no response and I was promised that this was being escalated to management. I asked what would happen if the laptop still did not work, the support engineer would not give me an answer stating that management would have to decide this. I also asked for a timeframe regarding a response to my email and again this was not forthcoming.
When I finally collected the laptop from my local DHL centre which is only open/can deliver Mon-Fri 9-5 (do they think people don’t have to work) I copied all the data off of the laptop and did a full system recovery. Sadly this still has not solved the issue so today (30th March) I have again contacted the support line and explained that it still is still not working and I have still not received a response to my email. After a long wait whilst the engineer looked for my email I was assured that it had been escalated to ‘The Management’ and they were looking into it. I requested to speak to ‘the management’ as after all this time I was running low on patience but was told they were unavailable to talk to (even though the engineer had apparently just spoken to them) and I would get an email at some point (no timescale given again). I thanked the engineer for his help and finally received this complaints reference from him shortly afterwards.
I am writing this with a network cable plugged in as the wireless has indeed cut out again. I have done some research myself in the event viewer (something none of the support engineers investigated) and have found these entries that seem to occur every time it happens
The description for Event ID 5005 from source NETwNs64 cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.
If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.
The following information was included with the event:
\Device\NDMP7
Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6200 AGN
The specified resource type cannot be found in the image file
I also get the same error with event id 5007 and 5032.
So now if you could please organise collection of the laptop as soon as possible so I can purchase a reliable ‘business’ laptop it would be appreciated.
Regards
I have sadly given up and now all i want is my money back.

Answer 1

Thanks for your replies. The problem is not with the aerials or the connection. I'm pretty sure it's the card and I told them as much when i spoke to them. It does still appear in device manager, sometimes stating that the device can not start, not always though. When the issue occurs there are events in the event manager that suggest that the wireless card is playing up, something that none of the so called technical support even checked. The bluetooth remains working so and there isn't any real play in the swtich, so I would suggest that isn't the issue. I've read about almost exacly the same issue and they sent him a replacement wireless card, something i'd be quite happy to do but again something they refused to do.
As an update, i've finally got a response from their complaints department after being told to write to a different email address (sadly forwarding is something they don't know how to do) and I have been told that they will not give me a refund until the problem has occured 3 times. I did argue that it has happened many more times than that and given the 2 times they have remoted onto my pc and i time i sent it back this constitutes 3 times but I will give them one more chance to fix it. They once again wanted me to pay to send it in but agreed to a courier after a bit of coaxing. Luckily the fiancee has got a day off to wait in for the collection as it could be anytime from 9-5. Fingers crossed this will be the end of it, sadly the bitter taste it has left won't leave for a while.