UPDATE (5:40 PM / 21 SEPTEMBER): Lenovo Malaysia has responded to our query in relation to this story. Scroll further for the details.
ORIGINAL STORY (11:34 PM / 20 SEPTEMBER):
A recent purchase of a Lenovo Ideacentre All-in-One PC turned out to be a nightmare for a local customer Elise Joseph. In addition to having the PC repaired within a few months after purchase, she also claims that the warranty for the PC was activated long before her actual purchase date.
Elise who shared her experience on her Facebook page, further claimed that the Lenovo Ideacentre AIO PC (the exact variant was not mentioned by Elise) was purchased from a Lenovo brand store located at Wangsa Walk Mall in Kuala Lumpur. The purchase was made in early July 2020 and it immediately started causing issues.
That is when things started getting odd according to Elise.
Since she has yet to register her warranty at that time, she proceeded to do so online. When she keyed in the serial number of her PC into Lenovo’s online warranty system, it stated that the warranty for the PC was already activated, back in 2019.
When she eventually reached out to Lenovo’s customer service to report her issues, the customer service agent also confirmed that according to their records, her PC’s warranty begun in 2019. Once Elise pointed out that she had just bought the PC and proceeded to provide a proof of purchase to the customer service agent, the warranty details were then changed by Lenovo to match her purchase date.
Following her call, Lenovo then arranged for her PC to be repaired – and was replaced with a new motherboard. However, Elise claimed that the newly replaced motherboard was causing her PC to lag. She then decided to reach out to Lenovo once again to make a complaint. At this moment in time, she had reached her limit of tolerance over the bizarre error which happened to her newly purchased PC in merely just 10 days after its motherboard was replaced.
Yup, the letter “S” was missing during the shutdown process.
Elise once again reached out to Lenovo and now demanded that the company either replaced her PC with a different unit or refund her purchase. At the same time, she also asked for a proper explanation with regards to the disparity of her warranty dates that was mentioned earlier.
She stated that the response she got back from Lenovo was somewhat unsatisfactory. By then, Elise was starting to believe that the Lenovo Ideacentre AIO PC she purchased was a refurbished unit that was probably masked as a new unit.
In Lenovo’s final response to her, Elise said that the company brushed off her claim that the PC is a refurbished unit but was never able to provide a proper explanation on why its warranty had already been activated in 2019. Lenovo also offered to take back the system for further inspection but she decided to refuse the offer and replied back to the company stating that she was in the midst of filing a report with the authorities regarding the whole ordeal as well as her suspicion with the original status of the PC.
Then comes the other bizarre part of the story.
The following morning, she noticed that the wallpaper of her desktop had been changed. Not only that, Elise also stated that all of her personal files and applications within the C drive inside the PC had been wiped off.
She then lodged a police report on 17th September before posting her ordeal on Facebook through three different posts since the 18th of September. Elise posts have since garnered quite a number of response from netizens especially the second post and she had also notified users that updates regarding her case will be provided from time to time.
We have reached out to Elise through Facebook to obtain more information regarding the exact model number of the Ideacentre AIO PC that she had purchased. She has yet to respond to us but based on the video of the “Hutting Down” error, the PC’s stand base that was visible toward the end of the video didn’t match any of the Ideacentre AIO that are currently being listed on Lenovo Malaysia’s website.
So, it may be possible that the PC is an old model but that doesn’t have anything to do with its warranty status. While every manufacturer has its own policy with regards to warranty eligibility, warranty for a brand new PC usually starts on the day of purchase and definitely not on the manufacturing date of the device.
As for the data wipe incident, aside from unauthorised remote access, there is a possibility that it was caused by a buggy Windows Update implementation which is something that has happened multiple times before. Of course, this is something that is really hard for us to ascertain unless we are able to go through the system itself to look for signs of tampering or erroneous update.
We have reached out to Lenovo Malaysia’s representative to obtain their side of the story . We’ll update this post when we have an official response, or if Elise is able to shed more light on the unfortunate incident.
UPDATE (5:40 PM / 21 SEPTEMBER):
Lenovo Malaysia has responded to our query regarding with a brief statement below:
“Customer satisfaction is our top priority. We are investigating the cause now, and closely communicating with the customer with our full support.”
As you can see, there is nothing that we can deduce from that statement aside from Lenovo Malaysia acknowledging that the case does and the company is working to rectify it. At the same time, we also have yet to hear any new updates from Elise, so things remains as it is for the time being.
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Telegram for more updates and breaking news.
