It's here!  Finally, Lenovo have sent my upgrade.  It installed without a hitch and I'm very pleased with my new OS.  They never did answer any of my recent e-mails chasing it up though.

OK, so I thought that I was finally making some progress with my "free" Windows 7 upgrade that comes with my new Lenovo PC.  It took a very long time for them to validate my purchase - they check to see that you really have bought a Lenovo PC that qualifies for the free upgrade.  I have no problem with that, but why did it take so long? In the end they validated my purchase 44 days after I registered for the upgrade.

So now they have actually taken my money, yes that’s right there is a £16 "shipping" charge.  Don’t get me started – it does not cost £16 to send out a piece of software.  Anyway, I have paid, they have taken the money off my card.  In fact, they took the money 12 days ago.  Their e-mail confirming the payment said: "A notification email with the shipping details will be sent to you when your order has been shipped".  Guess what?  Nothing.   So they have taken my £16 and not shipped anything.  So I thought that I would drop them a line via their Windows 7 Upgrade website.  So far all I have got is an automated response: "This is to acknowledge the receipt of your enquiry and you will hear from us within 10 business days".  Whoa! Two weeks to answer an e-mail?  What’s interesting is that before they took my money their responses said: "This is to acknowledge the receipt of your enquiry and you will hear from us within 1-3 business days".  Fascinating how they lose interest in you once they have taken your money, eh?

My wife told me that they were making a new Tron movie (the original came out in 1982) but even better than that, Daft Punk are doing the soundtrack. Sounds good, I really hope they don't mess this film up. So of course, I had to try and find a trailer, which I found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1IpPpB3iWI

Looks good so far. But then I also went and found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbBH3bNyge4 it's rework but still cool, Daft Punk are probably still fiddling with it anyway.  But I can't wait to hear the other stuff that they come up with, I think I'm gonna like it...

Umm, this must be the kind of thing that happens at a geeky wedding:

Yeah, I'm in there somewhere...

So, it's now been 21 days and I'm still waiting for Lenovo to validate my free Windows 7 upgrade.  I have chased them up again, and this is the e-mail reply that I received today: "Dear David, Please, be patient, our team needs some more time for checking all received POPs. Once your POP is validated you will receive a confirmation e-mail. Best regards Jana".

My question is: when should a customers patience end and be regarded as bad customer service?

I bought myself a new PC.  I’m pleased with it, a Lenovo ThinkCentre with a Quad Core processor.  It’s nice and fast and has excellent build quality, the first thing I did when I took it out the box was peek inside the case.

One of the reasons I bought from Lenovo was because they’ll give me a free upgrade to Windows 7.  I tried to avoid Vista completely, but as it turns out I will need to use it for a few weeks.  I can put up with that.  So, when my new machine arrived I filled in Lenovo’s on-line form to request my upgrade.  Part of the process is to prove that I really did buy a Lenovo PC, so I have to send off my proof of purchase (an invoice or a receipt).  I did that, which was easy because it can be done via e-mail.  All good so far.

But that is where things have stalled.  I can check my order on-line and it still says: 'Pending for Proof of Purchase'. I want to know that I will actually get my upgrade! After chasing them up via an e-mail (and it took about 5 days to get a reply) I get this: “Dear David, Please be patient our team needs some more time to check all received POPs. Once your POP is validated you will receive a Confirmation mail. Best regards Jana”.  It’s now been 11 days since I submitted my proof of purchase.  How long will I need to be patient?  Come on Lenovo.

Welcome anyway

...to my world.  Yeah OK, I've decided that I should have a blog.  I have been here before, started a blog added about two posts and then given up.  But I also should take down that ancient website that describes what I was doing about 10 years ago.  The best thing that I can think of replacing it with is a blog.  So this time I will just have to knuckle down and do some posting.  Plus, I'm not feeling well today, it's a saturday and so I had just as well take my mind off the pain by installing some blogging software.  Let's see how it goes this time...