{"id":3,"date":"2009-01-18T17:58:55","date_gmt":"2009-01-19T00:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tech.stlview.net\/?p=3"},"modified":"2009-06-18T05:09:28","modified_gmt":"2009-06-18T11:09:28","slug":"lenovo-customer-support-on-the-way-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tech.stlview.net\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"Lenovo customer support on the way down?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a less than stellar experience back in 2006 with Lenovo customer support. Lenovo is the company that purchased the IBM PC business, but in reality, they had been building the well-regarded ThinkPad line of laptops for IBM for some time. When they were IBM, I had only two or three occassions to call IBM support, and each experience was satisfying – no knock down, drag out fight to get support. Simple answers and resolutions.<\/p>\n

This time, however, proved to be less than exceptional. I submitted my gripe via the Lenovo support web site. The problem was a file on a ThinkPad X60, IPSSVC.EXE was being flagged by Symantec Antivirus as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153threat\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, and was causing Symantec Antivirus to create huge log files. Over a period of less than a month, over 9GB of log files had been created! So, of course, you are saying to yourself, sounds like a Symantec problem. I also contacted Symantec support, and I was given some options (basically, configure Threat protection to ignore processes and internal objects – not an optimal solution, but it was a start). So, I submitted my complaint to Lenovo, asking them what IPSSVC.EXE was and how I could safely remove it from the system. I got a voice mail a few hours after I submitted that, with a case number and a phone number to call to follow up, along with the warning that if I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t call, they would consider the case to be closed. Closed? You haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t done anything yet!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I should mention that the first thing I did once I looked at one of the log files and identified IPSSVC.EXE as the culprit was to do a Google search on that process, and found a few pages refering to it being a Lenovo file that might be used for VPN purposes. Ok, not a lot of help there, since we use a different VPN client completely unrelated to Lenovo.<\/p>\n

I called Lenovo the next morning with my case number, and explained to the apparently young man what I had found – that IPSSVC.EXE was getting flagged by SAV about 11 times per second as a security threat, and the logs were becoming huge. I explained that I looked at the properties for IPSSVC.EXE across the network, and it was definitely a Lenovo file. Well, the guy did what I had already done – a Google search, and came up with the same information I did, but then stated that it must be a trojan or a virus, because that file is NOT a Lenovo file. I tried explaining three times that the System Properties were showing it as a Lenovo file, but he kept insisting that it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.<\/p>\n

\"Properties<\/p>\n

The phone call went downhill from there – me insisting it was a Lenovo problem, and the guy on the phone insisting the file wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t their responsibility. So I told the guy that this was an unsatisfactory customer support experience, and that I was terminating the call.<\/p>\n

It took me a while to make the connection, but eventually I looked at the Product Name entry, and found that it was related to an item called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Away Manager<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153. Ah, now we are getting somewhere. So, I ended up visiting the system and doing two things:<\/p>\n

1. Reconfigured Symantec Antivirus to ignore Processes and Internal Objects for Threat Protection.<\/p>\n

2. Uninstalled the Away Manager tool, part of the ThinkPad \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tools\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that the system is chock full of.<\/p>\n

I am still not really happy about how this turned out. For one thing, the fact that the guy wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t listen to what I was trying to tell him, that he had already made up his mind that the problem was not a Lenovo issue, I found aggravating. And after I hung up, I realized that as often as I may be on the other end of the phone, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think to pull the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153let me talk to your supervisor\u00e2\u20ac\u009d card. Although, I suspect that even if I had asked, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to get to talk to a supervisor anyway.<\/p>\n

So, thumbs down to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Lenovo.<\/p>\n

11\/22\/2006 UPDATE: I just thought I would paste in what the Lenovo web site says about the Away Manager (while I scratch my head wondering how other people got VPN out of this software\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6)<\/p>\n

Away Manager
\nThe Away Manager application allows you preselect and run routine tasks to maintain your system’s performance: <\/strong><\/p>\n