"Repair opinions wanted" followup

["John H. Kim" <jokim@MIT.EDU>]

To recap, there were four problems.  Not my fault: lid cracked,
battery wouldn't stay in.  My fault: lower case cracked, keyboard
partially detached.  IBM refused to fix any of it under warranty.

I decided to pay the $516 to get everything except the upper lid
fixed.  $195 for the lower case, $151 for the keyboard, $175 for
shipping and labor (flat rate).  It turns out the battery latches
to the lower case, not the motherboard, so in essence I'm paying
to fix everything I broke.  I'm still pissed that they won't fix
the top lid, and I'm not sure how any future damage to it will be
handled (if its true as someone else wrote me that the lids are
extremely vulnerable to cracking).  I'm also disappointed prices
for spare parts seem to be based on the $4799 price the TP701 was
originally introduced at, not the recent discount prices.

Answering a few questions following my original post:

The loose battery wasn't impairing my work because I was running
the machine off AC.  It was useless as a portable with the loose
battery, other than my being able to bring the machine out to a
field site (a ship) with less hassle than a desktop.

The crack on the lid is on the right hand side, not between the
keyboard and the LCD.  I noticed it immediately when I got it back
from the previously repair because that's where I hold it to pick
the Pad up.  Before I sent it, the Pad had felt sturdy as a rock.
After I got it back, I felt a distinct pop as the crack allowed
the part of the lid to expand past its mounting.

I had no problems with speed or courtesy of service (with one
exception).  My gripe was that my experience with past repairs
led me to believe IBM was operating under the principle that
"the customer is always right."  Well, they didn't believe me
when I told them some of the damage wasn't my fault.  End of
story.

In the previous EZ-Serv, the main problem was a hard drive
failure while repartitioning.  The rep I spoke with was almost
hostile with me.  I spent five minutes trying to convince him
that it's OK for users to repartition the hard drive, which
shouldn't subsequently fail.  He gave me an EZ-Serv number with
the ominous warning (in a threatening tone) "But if they find
something on the hard drive to indicate you did something
improper, they will charge you for it."

I also tried to get my 750's battery replaced last month.  The
rep dug through his notes and determined the 750's battery was
only covered for one year.  That was news to me since the
Thinkpad ads back then had never mentioned this.  I searched
through the owner's manual and lo-and-behold he was right.
Given they replaced a battery without questions just six months
prior (nearly 2 years after my original purchase) and my other
recent experiences and you see why I think IBM is tightening
their liberal repair policies.

All this has led me to wonder.  All my EZ-Servs with my TP750
have been in 48 hours or less.  They were at the North Carolina
repair facility.  All my TP701 EZ-Servs have been at Tennessee,
and have taken about a week (in the most recent repair, 3 days
before they notified me there was a problem, 2 more days after
I agreed to pay to fix it).  Is IBM servicing the top-of-the-line
75x/76x machines better than the 3xx/5xx/70x?

I want to get to the bottom of this before I take Thinkpads off
my "highly recommended" list.  IBM's service is what made the
difference to me.
--
John H. Kim            There are only two industries that call their
jokim@mit.edu          customers 'users,' and one of them is illegal.