Lenovo have failed to make good on their stated intention to amend their website to clearly show that "Mobile Broadband Ready" machines only accept whitelisted Lenovo cards after six months.
I'm writing an ACC complaint at the moment, alleging that they continue to sell devices with un-disclosed restrictions as a bait-and-switch tactic to force users to buy their marked-up 3G hardware.
I would welcome submissions from anyone else affected by this issue; contact me at the email address listed on the right hand bar in this blog, not via comments.
All Lenovo needs to do is fix its website to link "Mobile Broadband Ready" to a statement showing limitations, and to amend its product datasheets to show the PCI whitelist. This isn't a big thing to ask.
This is a purely private action and has nothing to do with my employer, past or present.
I was bitten by the same thing with HP several years ago, although I also had the added frustration of finding that the "Certified for SLED" designation didn't involve testing the WLAN card, which of course didn't work at all under Linux at the time. To their credit, they did ship me another (slightly more compatible) card free of charge based on the misleading certification designation, but I never pushed the other angle as you have. I wish you luck.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'd be interested to find out if there is any legitimate (however tenuous) rationale around regulatory approval or liability, or whether it is purely a matter of profit, as the amount of markup would suggest.