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Comment by ndiddy | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, Lenovo is basically two different companies for their Thinkpad and non-Thinkpad machines. If you have a Thinkpad and have a warranty issue, they'll overnight you a shipping box with an overnight label. I had an issue with mine that needed a motherboard replacement and I was only without my laptop for 3 days. Meanwhile, I had a similar issue with a non-Thinkpad laptop and they emailed me a UPS ground shipping label, expected me to provide my own box, and quoted a turnaround time of several weeks. I ended up buying another of the same model of laptop and returning the defective one instead.

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Spot on.

Comparing to Apple (I run both Lenovo and apple kit) I’ve lost two bits of hardware with apple for multiple days on repairs in the UK. A friend just got told that there’s a 2 month turnaround on his custom M1 MBP 16 which has a logic board problem.

That scared the shit out of me enough to throw the money in on a Lenovo T14 gen 3 with NBD on site repairs. If I sell my apple kit I can afford to buy another identical machine and stick it on the shelf. I’m still £120 up on my mac and mitigated a whole bunch of risks.

A couple of T490’s is probably good enough for me to be fair.

It's odd to me that Apple has never offered a 24h turnaround (or cross ship) higher tier support package. This was a hold up for businesses using Apple machines for a long time. I guess enough employees started requesting Apple machines eventually getting businesses to offer them anyway.

They offer “express replacements” with applecare, I did it for my broken ipad. They overnighted me a new one and I sent the old one back to them in the included box/label.

> It's odd to me that Apple has never offered a 24h turnaround (or cross ship) higher tier support package.

They used to have an even more exotic AppleCare tier than that for Xserve customers - onsite hardware support within 4 hours if you had a problem during the business day. I don’t remember exactly how much it cost but I want to say it was less than $500.

Remarkably, the old product page for it is still up on B&H: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/283804-REG/Apple_M892...

In relevant countries / locations, that's a fairly standard option from Dell, HP etc for servers.

AppleCare+ does cross-ship in many situations

I consider Apple that they don't sell "non-Thinkpad" products. That's how I can easily pass the spect sheets which promise better-than-apple-for-much-less and pay a bit more and be happy about it.

It's almost as if you get what you pay for.

In Europe, even ThinkPad support is atrocious. It's done through some third-party resellers.

Pricing is also pretty atrocious compared to the US, which is sad as there are not that many alternative laptop brands with good Linux support.

It’s fine in the UK. Not sure about mainland Europe.

Prices in Switzerland are ok, to not say cheaper than elsewhere, but support...Unless in warranty, is atrocious. They asked me to send my laptop for "diagnostic" with unknown cost when I requested how to buy the part (out of stock on their website) to replace it.

Honestly, once it's out of warranty, I buy the part I need on ebay/aliexpress/etc. and fit it myself.

"being able to take it apart and put it back together" covers for a multitude of sins if you're me.

Others may feel differently, and, well, to each their own preferred set of trade-offs :)

By the time it's out of warranty you can afford a fully working parts mule off ebay to leave lying around.

If you trust ebay/aliexpress for battery, good luck. I am lucky enough to have been able to buy what looks a genuine one from a store here as I hope they sourced it from official Lenovo European reseller, which are available only for company (req. Vat number etc)

I've never yet accidentally bought a fake part off ebay (I'm sure I will one day, of course).

Requires a little paying attention to get decent odds, certainly, but it's far from impossible to do so.

My experience in the UK was bad.

Digital River was the third party maintenance company, never experienced such bad service. I'd purchased onsite support. Getting them to listen and actually book the repair was painful.

Ah ok I used them twice. Had no problems.

In US, ThinkPads have been especially popular in the corporate world, with some companies practically standardizing on them as business laptops; e.g. Microsoft used to be like 90% Thinkpads early-to-mid 2010s. I suspect that much of the support infrastructure benefits that we get are derived from it being that pervasive. Are they generally less common in Europe?

Maybe it depends where you are?

I have a Lenovo gaming laptop and I have a 4 year warranty with on-site service.

Not only that, even as an individual you can buy on site warranty and they will come to your apartment to fix your ThinkPad if you have any problems.

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