The story of my Thinkpad trackpoint

Lenovo asked me for a feedback for my experience with their customer service, so I wrote about it. I assume this to be TL;DR for their analysts, so I will backup the report here for safety reasons ;)

Prologue: The problem with my Lenovo Thinkpad T460p was the trackpoint. While I use the trackpoint, the mouse suddenly pulls against my desired direction top left, and when I let go, it goes bottom right by itself. Sometimes for just for about estimated 2-300px, sometimes down to the border of the display. Then it stops and acts normal again. I kind of ignored this for a couple of months until I heard that Lenovo will change my entire keyboard for free, so I went to get in contact with the Lenovo customer service.

1. Tried to file an issue on lenovo.com. Had a very hard time to find what I was looking for. After registering an account I found a link somewhere deep inside my profile page called “send an inquiry request” that opened a new tab with a page called https://www.managedtechnicalsupportaccess.com/mtsarva/lenovo.html. This website looks like some weird garage computer store homepage from the 90s, but not like the Lenovo customer service in 2017. Plus I needed to register a new account there again. Plus it was broken somehow, as the filing of an issue did not work, I can not recall what exactly was the problem.

2. Called the Lenovo hotline. The service person told me that yes this other site “is broken at the moment”, but took my issue and a minute later I got an email stating that my issue is being processed.

3. Two weeks later nothing has happened. Called the hotline again and the service person pretended to be very sorry that this ticket has been idle for so long and she would poke the issue, and a technician would call me to arrange an appointment at my place to exchange the keyboard. A day later I got an email stating that the ordered parts have been delivered. Another week later a technician actually called me stating “I will be at your place in 10 minutes, are you there?” I actually expected this appointment arranging to be less spontaneous, but well.

Sidenote: the T460p is by now most exactly one year old, and I enjoy the new keyboard very much, since the original one was pretty worn-out already. I decided to buy a Thinkpad, because I think this is the only laptop brand that features sane keyboards today. I do not like the Apple-style keyboards with flat surface keys and a millimeter key drop that most laptops feature today at all. So I am kind of disappointed that the keystrokes felt way too soft for many keys after one year and so the keyboard exchange because of the trackpoint incident came very handy.

4. So the technician appears with a mail package in his hands just like I would find it in my mailbox. He openes it up on my desk and finds not an exchange keyboard, but three pieces of just the red rubber buttons. We both look at each other and agree that this is not what we expected. The technician cursed about this for a while and promised to take care of this and be back very soon. That night I got the email again, that my parts have been purchased.

5. Three days later the technician came over again and exchanged my keyboard. I told him about my disappointment with the keyboard and jokingly sent him off with “see you in a year”.

Epilogue: The new keyboard is working fine, but after exactly one week the trackpoint started doing the same pulling the mouse bottom right as before. Should I call the customer service again?