This company unethically collected our personal information, and did not fulfill their order promise. They utilized false advertising in order to get some free PR.
That’s something that I had not considered. What does happen to all that information including credit card info that they collected? Perhaps the Privacy Commissioner of Canada would care to look at this? In any case, it was at just over 6000 signatures as I type this. Now do I expect that Lenovo Canada to act on this? No. But if the Canadian Government in the form of the Privacy Commissioner or the Competition Bureau decided to exert some pressure, then I suspect that their tune will change.
Say you spot a great deal online for a laptop and you try to buy it. You get your credit card and process the order which ends with your credit card being billed. Then a day or so later you get an e-mail saying the order is cancelled because the price is wrong. But you notice that the offer is still online. What gives?
That’s what Canadians are saying after Lenovo offered up a laptop that was regularly $1389 for $279. Here’s what the CBC had to say:
Over the weekend and into Monday, Lenovo’s website was offering a special price for the Y410P laptop of $279 — the regular price is $1,389.
Consumers were asked to enter the rebate code “DOORCRASHER” to access the deal. Many did, and received emails confirming their orders and processing payment, only to receive another email from the company later on informing them that the deal had been offered in error.
Now the company says that this was an error and has offered up $100 to affected consumers. But that hasn’t stopped consumers from being mad:
“Even upwards to 12 hours afterwards, the website was still fully functional and allowing more orders to be placed,” customer Calvin Leung told CBC News.
“We believe that Lenovo should honour their pricing advertisement since they have already taken our money and kept the advertisement up for longer than an acceptable amount of time considering it occurred on business days,” Leung added.
“Not only did Lenovo charge people’s credit cards, but [they] have baited consumers to get their credit card and personal information,” customer Emilio Lutchman said.
And if you take a look online, the rage is evident. Simply search for the hashtag #lenovogate on Twitter and you’ll find stuff like this:
Lenovo has a major problem on its hands. One that looks like it isn’t going to go away soon. I suspect that they will have to do much better than offer up $100 to appease those who were affected by this pricing error.
So Lenovo, will you do the right thing?
UPDATE: Lenovo has done this before in Australia and in China as evidenced by this video:
In terms of the latter, they honored the price that they posted and it cost them $16 million. So one wonders why Canadians are not afforded the same respect.
So, are you over the fact that Google sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo yesterday and are wondering why they would do it? I’ve got a reason, but let me recap what got us to this point. Google dropped $12.5 billion in 2011 for the patents. At the time, it was thought to be the best defence against Apple. However things have been going south ever since with News.com reporting that Motorola Mobility was bleeding cash:
Motorola’s results again weighed on Google’s profitability, with the unit’s operating loss actually widening to $384 million from $152 million a year ago.
Revenue, meanwhile, fell nearly 18 percent from a year ago to $1.24 billion, or 7 percent of Google’s total revenue for the period.
That’s not good and it’s a good reason why Google might have decided to take a $9 billion dollar haircut to get rid of Motorola Mobility. We’ll see if Google succeeds on that front seeing as Lenovo being a Chinese company faces significant hurdles in getting this deal approved by the US government.
The deal ends Google’s short-lived foray into making consumer mobile devices and marks a pullback from its largest-ever acquisition. Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola in 2012. Under this deal the search giant will keep the majority of Motorola’s mobile patents, considered its prize assets.
Shares in Google climbed 2.2 percent to about $1,131 in after-hours trading. Reuters reported the deal earlier on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the deal.
The purchase will give Lenovo a beach-head to compete against Apple and Samsung Electronics as well as increasingly aggressive Chinese smartphone makers in the highly lucrative U.S. arena.
Now, what’s interesting is this from the Google Blog:
Google will retain the vast majority of Motorola’s patents, which we will continue to use to defend the entire Android ecosystem.
So this is simply about the ability to make phones. Interesting. This deal still has to be approved in the US and China. The former might be an issue given the mistrust of China and Chinese companies that’s floating around at the moment. But we will see.
If you ask me what PC laptop to buy for business, my answer is usually Lenovo. The used to be the old laptop division of IBM and they make quality stuff. But that may not matter any longer as the news is out that the governments of Australia, the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand among others have started to ban Lenovo hardware from secure networks due to the fact that they fear that the Chinese owned company has back doors that can threaten their security. Now this isn’t new as another Chinese firm has the same issue. Huawei not only makes mobile phones, but it makes switching gear for mobile phone carriers. Thus it’s been accused of the same thing by Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA. A claim the company denies.
So. Here’s the $64 question. Are these fears justified or is this some sort of paranoia of the Chinese. Now I don’t claim to know all the answers, but I would say two things. First, the people who are making these claims need to show proof that these companies are conduits for Chinese spying. If they can’t prove it, then they need to put their accusations in the bin and not raise them again. Second, if you put a piece of hardware on your business network, you should evaluate if it could potentially pose a threat to your company. If you think it does, keep it off your network. And I would say that this would be true if the hardware came from anyone and not just these two companies. Because anything could be a threat. It doesn’t have to come from a specific place.
What do you think? Are people over-reacting or is there a legitimate concern here? Post a comment and share your thoughts.
It’s interesting what happens when someone muses about things publicly. Case in point is Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing. Here’s what he said to French publication LesEchos:
“As for BlackBerry, the file could possibly make sense. But first I have to analyze the market well and understand what is the exact weight of this company,”
Now you can read the full article here and it’s been Google Translated for your reading pleasure. Now, this news caused BlackBerry stock to bump up yesterday. But the question is this: Is this deal in the cards or is it just meaningless chatter? Good question. The thing that may help to answer that question is what sort of sales numbers that Blackberry can put up. From there, the rest will likely unfold shortly thereafter.
Poll: Will Your Next Computer Be A Lenovo?
Posted in Commentary with tags Lenovo on May 29, 2014 by itnerdLeave a comment »