I have a Lenovo ThinkPad, and my warranty card says to call this IBM number to get help with it. That was interesting to me as I thought IBM sold Lenovo products, and apparently they do, but they still have product support for some of the older models. Apparently, mine falls into that category. After my dive down the rabbit hole, I went ahead and made the call.
While I wasn't sure what to expect, I can honestly say the greeting caught me off-guard. Instead of greeting me or saying thank you for calling IBM, it immediately said, "Your call will be recorded for quality purposes and may be retained for up to 60 days. The recording won't be shared outside of IBM." This made me pause, but it was at least quite upfront. After this, it gave me two options, "If you're calling about a Lenovo problem, including System X, press 1. For all other products and solutions supported by IMB, press 2."
I needed help with the old Lenovo laptop, so I went ahead and chose that. Then I had a few more options to choose from which included, "For Think-branded products, press 1. For Idea-branded products, press 2. For all server, storage, and network branded software, press 3." This was another easy one for me because I had a Think-branded laptop so I just pressed the button and waited again.
Moving through the steps was actually easy because the questions were logical and had to do with what I needed. All of it was very simple actually when you consider how many business clients IBM must have and support. I would have expected a much more complicated customer service center, but it wasn't hard to use at all. The next set of questions was, "If you have an existing case and have your case number available, please press 1. Otherwise, please press 2." I pressed two and was sent to a hold line with gentle music playing.
It took me about 4 minutes but Celia answered the phone and asked me how she could help. She ended up transferring me to a technical support specialist, but was pleasant enough and I didn't have to wait long to talk to the specialist either and my questions did get addressed. While the call may have started off weird, it ended fine and there wasn't a long wait so I can't complain about much.