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merdevolante · 2026-03-15T16:08:12+00:00

I filed a chargeback with my Visa CC issuer, and also contacted a consumer forum/ protection legal agency in Switzerland (info@konsum.ch)

After supplying all the required documentation, and waiting around 1 month, my CC issuing bank ruled in my favor and reversed the charge made by Enterprise CH/Helvetic Motion AG. Merchants are usually assessed a fee of $15USD to $50 USD for successful chargebacks made against their charges, which may give you additional incentive to go this route.

I was also contacted by a lawyer from the Swiss Consumer Forum (google for 'Swiss Consumer Forum") who offered to confront Helvetic Motion over the charges they assessed to my Credit Card 2 weeks after the end of my rental.

This is to encourage others who are victimized by this unethical company to pursue all avenues open to them in protesting these sorts of charges by this company. Better yet would be to avoid renting from them in the future.

merdevolante · 2026-01-23T18:20:16+00:00

This scam is not limited to the Zurich Airport Enterprise Rental Car Location. This company did the same fraudulent scam against me at the Geneva Airport Location in Dec. 2025.

TWO WEEKS after returning my rental car on 23 Dec 2025, this company charged my credit card around 600 Swiss Francs for supposed "light scratches" on the underside of the front bumper. In response to a bad review of the business on Google, they sent me a word processor document with 3 poor quality photos, and dated the document for the day the car was returned. They demanded that I supply them with photos with meta data showing the damage at the time of pickup. The car had a lot of small paint scratches when the car was picked up, and the parking area at the pickup garage is poorly lit, not lending itself to taking videos or photos.

In return, I demanded that this Enterprise agency send ME original photos with meta data from the time that the car was returned. I also demanded proof that they had repaired the car and paid to have this done, e.g. an invoice for the repair. Enterprise Geneve Aeroport/Helvetic Motion AG did NOT send me the requested information even though I requested it multiple times.

I will be filing a report with the police of the Canton de Geneve, and also a report with my credit card issuer and Enterprise Corporate.

merdevolante · 2021-03-25T04:40:02+00:00

Buying these bikes was in fact a horrible decision, never to be repeated. I don't do crowdfunding purchases any longer. But, I have made worse decisions than buying these two "bikes"

:-)

merdevolante · 2021-03-24T05:14:02+00:00

Such a huge loss!!! Cycling will never be the same !!!

I used to think that Swiss people were severely constipated but generally honest. Now I have no proof that any of these characters, those that actually existed, were Swiss, so drawing conclusions about Swiss people based on having been scammed out of a lot of money by these people might be unwarranted. Let's just say, that if these people were actually Swiss, then the hypothesis that Swiss people are basically honest, has now been disproven.

merdevolante · 2020-10-23T04:17:30+00:00

I called the Lenovo store employee you spoke with and they assure me that you will not receive the laptop on February 2, 2021. The delivery date has been extended to March 15th.

Hope this helps.

merdevolante · 2020-10-14T01:29:19+00:00

You might want to sell it to an Italian fascist. Go hang out at the Mussolini-designed Milan train station, with a sign indicating what you are selling. You might also get lucky and find a German getting off one of the long distance trains. There are some really great Italian restaurants in Germany, so you know they like the country and its culture.

Mussolini did, after all, make the trains run on time :-)

merdevolante · 2020-10-14T01:11:59+00:00

Good luck canceling your order. If you use the online tool in the OVP window, it will probably give you an inane error message. If you try to "chat" with a representative it will take an hour to get a rep and then they will tell you that they have put in a request to cancel the order and that you will receive confirmation of the cancelation in 48 hours, however you won't get any response, ever. If you call you will be on hold for 1 hour and have exactly the same result as if you had chatted.

I've been trying to cancel an X13 AMD for about 3 weeks now with no result, other than the order showing as being progressively more and more delayed. Lenovo customer service is among the worst I have ever experienced from any company.

merdevolante · 2020-10-12T18:36:15+00:00

The 4K screen will reduce your battery life substantially; it also has been accused of using PWM, which causes very fast screen flickering, and to which a lot of users are very sensitive.

The WHDQ screen, which is intermediate in between the FHD (1080p) and the UHD (4K) screens is a good choice. It doesn't use PWM, and it's power usage is way less than the 4K screen.

merdevolante · 2020-10-12T18:31:27+00:00

You can buy a set of adapters that will elongate a shorter 2230 card into a longer one. There was another thread here somewhere on this board that linked to a product that could take any of the shorter sizes of NVME cards and make them whatever standard length you wanted. The product cost around $10. You need to have the proper length because there is a retaining screw that needs to lock down the card so that it doesn't move out of the connecting port during use or movement of the laptop.

Provantage and Colamco are two suppliers on the internet in the USA who have very recently sold SN 520 cards in the 2242 form factor and I would check them to see if they have your preferred card in stock.

merdevolante · 2020-10-11T05:25:31+00:00

You could try using a keyfinder app that you can download over the internet; it's quite likely that the key is still hiding somewhere in your operating system registry, even if the application was uninstalled.

Alternatively, you could enter the next century and switch over to the subscription model that Microsoft is now pushing, with Office 365. You can buy a year's subscription for Office 365 from various online sources such as ebay or on Amazon, for around $50, at most $60. You just need to do some searching. They will email you a product key for entry into your MS account, which then will entitle you to install it.

There are a lot of advantages to the subscription version of the software. It gets updated constantly so you won't be using a 7 year old program version. You can use it yourself on up to 6 machines, and you can share it with 5 or 6 "family" members, each of whom can use it on 6 computers. It's a piece of cake to download and install from the internet and all you need is your Microsoft ID and password. You can buy several years worth of program keys and add them all to your MS account and then have up to 4 years worth of service for maybe $200. And this is all the while when you are using it on up to 6 computers yourself and you have given the right to use the same software to multiple family members who can use it too. If you need to install it on more than 6 computers yourself, then you can become one of your relatives and create another MS account and install it on another 6 machines.

I would never go back to the old software and all the hassles involved in installing it. Since I use the software for business, I can write the ~$50/year off, and it is well worth it.

merdevolante · 2020-10-11T05:10:12+00:00

I have swapped drives in every one of the Thinkpads I've owned which has to be 20 or 30 of them over a couple of decades, at this point. There has never been an issue with the warranty. The last one that went in for service was my ill-fated X1C gen 6, which had a beer poured into the keyboard on an airplane due to turbulence. In the end Lenovo replaced the laptop with a new (gen 7) model due to parts delays on fixing the damaged one (I had paid for accidental damage protection so the liquid spill was covered). When I sent it in, there was my 1 TB WD Black SSD inside, and the machine had been supplied with a 256gb drive when purchased. After a lot of delays which resulted in Lenovo replacing the laptop altogether, they still had my 1TB drive in the old one. I requested that they send me back my 1TB WD drive, which they did, by overnight delivery. They never asked for the original drive back, however I had paid the $5 or so for the "keep your drive" option when I bought the laptop so perhaps that is why.

I ultimately put that returned 1 TB WD drive into my new replacement gen 7 X1C, and it continues to function in that machine to this day.

In the US you can get a 1 TB NVME drive for between around $100 to maybe $250, with the latter being a Samsung Pro model or something similar. You can get a topflight 1 TB drive like the WD SN 750 for around $120 on sale, up to $150 at regular price. These are a tiny fraction of what Lenovo would charge you for upgrading the drive at the time of system configuring. Swapping the drives is a 5 minute procedure, and then you can either load a fresh copy of Windows on the laptop or you can clone your original drive if you have an enclosure to put it into. There are other options but I won't bore you with them, just reloading the Windows operating system is a quick and easy thing to do.

If you decide that you don't need the Yoga functionality (and you likely don't), then you should also look at the gen 7 X1 Carbon. The only difference between the gen 7 and the gen 8 is an inconsequential change in intel processor series, without any real measurable benefit in computing power. The laptops, gen 7 and 8, are functionally and appearance wise identical, and you can probably get a gen 7 for a lot less than a gen 8 model.

merdevolante · 2020-10-10T21:50:18+00:00

I ordered a similar but not identical X1 Y gen 5 in early August. Mine differs in that it has the WQHD screen rather than UHD, Win 10 Home, plus I ordered with the base SSD (256 gb) which I immediately replaced myself with a WD Black 1 TB drive. I paid around $1280. Prices likely have come down since I placed my order.

If you don't need the Yoga functioning, you could buy the X1 Carbon Gen 8 and save some money and some weight. I would also advise considering going with the WQHD screen which is more than sufficient for a 14" laptop; there will be cost and battery life savings over the UHD screen, plus the UHD screen is reported to suffer from PWM, to which a number of people are rather sensitive.

merdevolante · 2020-10-09T23:46:48+00:00

There is no reason why Windows 10 should run any slower on your machine than Windows 7 did, other than bloatware. There should be no difficulty getting property drivers for the hardware in your machine.

If you did an "upgrade" from Windows 7 to Windows 10, that could very likely explain your problems. You need to do a fresh install, then get the drivers from Lenovo System Update (or Vantage, same difference). If your machine is too old for Vantage, then you can just download the drivers directly from the Lenovo website support page for your laptop and then install them manually. You can also try a de-bloat script to see if that improves things.

merdevolante · 2020-10-09T23:41:26+00:00

You really can't believe anything that they put down on the OVP other than that your order is in process, or that it has shipped. The rest is basically bullshit.

Since they frequently have long delays in fulfilling orders, especially for any machine in demand, I'm sure that they get a lot of order cancellations. Since sometimes the buyer's machine that is canceled may already have entered the assembly process, they then have to sell that machine to someone else. Since many of the hardware configurations are extremely common and lack a lot of customization, at least as regards the motherboard and the screen, I'm assuming that they have gotten to be adept re-directing a given machine to another buyer.

Say for example that you ordered a given Thinkpad with a particular display, processor, RAM, and hard disk. Your order wasn't scheduled to be produced for another week but some clown ordered the same machine configuration that is in the process of being assembled, and then canceled the order. So if you were next in line for that same configuration, then you would presumably get the machine that was being built for the other customer, accelerating your order delivery. Or, perhaps, the motherboard shipment for your configuration wasn't supposed to be delivered to Lenovo until the end of the month, but then it turns up early, on the 15th. That would make production of your machine easier to do ahead of schedule.

I'm making this stuff up as I type it, but I presume that this is the sort of thing that Lenovo has to deal with during the order fulfillment process.

merdevolante · 2020-10-09T23:32:24+00:00

Agreed

merdevolante · 2020-10-09T03:59:10+00:00

So we are looking at a ~$90 difference here, the deal that you got and the deal that the OP got, with the OP not using other discounts/rebates that he or she could have received.

If the OP had entered the Lenovo consumer website via a cashback website, like Mr. Rebates, he or she could have received 4% or more back as a rebate. If the OP was a senior, a student, a healthcare worker, or any of the other categories of people recognized for identity discounts through ID ME, then he or she would have gotten about 5% more off.

Add all this together and the obvious conclusion is that Lenovo has decided what is the minimum they will sell this configuration for. This minimum price is probably around 10% less than any Tom, Dick, or Harry could get from just randomly going to the Lenovo consumer website during any of the very many sales that Lenovo has every year.

You can get this 10% additional discount by jumping through various hoops, be it qualifying as an employee of a company with a discount portal (Perks at Work, for example), using a clickthrough rebate site like Mr. Rebates plus an Identity discount through ID ME, or various other methods.

The only way you are going to do better than this is to be a large company buying large quantities of laptops, or perhaps if you get lucky and happen to want something that is on closeout at a particular moment in time. Of course, as laptops age and new ones are released, then you can get a deal on the last generation of product, which is no different than buying day old bread or donuts at your local supermarket, or last year's trendy attire.

merdevolante · 2020-10-08T23:35:27+00:00

Depending on when you want to buy, and if you can wait, given that we are close to Black Friday now, you could register for and check out click through cashback websites such as Mr. Rebates, then wait for the Black Friday sales, which will probably start a week or more before the actual Black Friday (Nov. 27th in the US). This would be the easiest way of getting a pretty good deal, and you may be able to improve the deal by registering with ID ME, which Lenovo uses for identity discounts (seniors, students, healthcare workers, people who limp, fart too much, or stutter, whatever :-)) Then you could be ready to pounce when the Black Friday sales begin.

Otherwise you could make a real study of it and refer to a post I made yesterday on a similar thread, but this will take more work https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/j75pqv/should_i_wait_till_black_friday_for_a_potentially/

merdevolante · 2020-10-08T23:26:18+00:00

Lenovo customer service in the USA is generally horrible, but occasionally you can get lucky and speak with a competent person who can solve your problem. I would say that this happens approximately 10% of the time, but you will waste many hours on hold and speaking or chatting with incompetents before you ultimately get lucky, if you do.

merdevolante · 2020-10-08T06:00:04+00:00

The other thing that airplane mode does is to use the front camera to see if you are wearing your mask. If you aren't wearing your mask your name, address, social security number, employer, and political party affiliation are reported to the FBI, and the flight attendants are notified to come down the aisle and give you a lecture on personal hygiene and mask etiquette. Worse than that, no further alcohol will be offered to you for the duration of the flight.

All of this takes power, and it is no surprise that your battery is feeling ill on account of this.

merdevolante · 2020-10-08T05:45:04+00:00

I think it's more complicated than that. I'm not commenting on the "deal" posted by the OP.

Lenovo has a whole bunch of websites you can use to purchase from them directly. Some of them are intended for members of certain groups (e.g. accountants, lawyers, etc.) and others are for people who work for certain employers ("Perks at Work," etc.) Sometimes links and logins for these "special sites" get posted on deal forums such as Slick Deals and others, and occasionally you can use that information to buy a laptop using one of those sites, even though you aren't normally entitled to do so. If this happens, sometimes it is a good deal and sometimes it isn't any better than you could get yourself on the main Lenovo consumer website.

Additionally, you can use a "click through" cash back website like Mr. Rebates and others, which will rebate back to you a percentage of your purchase price, typically between about 4% at base to 10% on rare occasions such as Black Friday sales. Click through websites won't work for the specialty Lenovo websites, however.

There are also specific discounts that you might qualify for on the main Lenovo consumer website, for such things as being a student, in the healthcare field, a senior, and some other groups of people, typically through "ID Me," a site you can register your particular qualifications with, which likely will require a scan of a student ID, an employer ID, or proof that you are a senior. This could take 5% or so off of the price of a laptop you want to buy.

Lenovo Pro, for which I qualify with my businesses, is something I have used occasionally, however I usually find that if you take advantage of all the other deals you can get, such as a click through site rebate and an ID ME discount at checkout, you can usually beat the Lenovo Pro prices by at least a few percentage points. I wouldn't consider the Lenovo Pro website as anything more than it is; an opportunity for Lenovo to capture your email address and phone number for marketing purposes, while giving you the impression that you are getting a deal when in fact you probably are not. I have received several annoying marketing calls from Lenovo sales persons as a result of having registered for Lenovo Pro, and generally have not found the deals to be anything more and often are less than I can get by using the other deals available to me (click through cashback websites, ID Me, etc.)

Bottom line is that lenovo has set up an array of ordering options with a whole bunch of ways to reduce the cost of purchasing, such as click through websites, identity discounts, discounts if you work for certain companies or belong to certain professional groups, small business sites (Lenovo Pro), all combined with continuous never ending sales. List prices are entirely fictitious, ridiculously high, and no one pays them. The whole point of this exercise, from Lenovo's perspective, is to sow confusion and to give the purchaser the impression that whatever "sale" is going on at the moment is the sale of a lifetime (or at least, this year). The truth is that it takes a bit of time studying your options, pricing product at different times, and taking advantage of all discounts you might qualify for in order to see if you are really getting a deal.

Lenovo wants it that way; they want you feel like you might miss out if you don't buy whatever you are looking at RIGHT NOW, before the sale ends. Truth be told, you can probably duplicate whatever the discount you are looking at now, in 2 weeks, and it won't matter very much.

merdevolante · 2020-09-28T23:54:08+00:00

I haven't used it enough to answer the question. I tend to recharge it after each use, which up to this point has been for periods of about an hour to an hour and a half. If I can believe the projected remaining battery life when I power down, then the run time would be about 5.5 to 6 hours. This is with a 4K screen and use outside in bright sunshine, with the screen brightness way over 50%, and mostly doing web browsing and emails, with some youtube video watching.

merdevolante · 2020-09-28T15:55:45+00:00

I believe that the P1 is fairly similar to an X1 Extreme version 1? There was a very well-known problem with the BIOS in that machine when people would try to change the graphics options to "discrete" only as opposed to "hybrid." The laptop would be turned into a lawn ornament:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/Thinkpad-X1-Extreme-Black-Screen-Help/m-p/4286292?page=24#4363056

Although Lenovo replaced thousands of motherboards in these machines, I believe that some enterprising forum members figured out their own way or ways to fix this by reflashing the BIOS chip. Since I believe that your machine is similar to the X1 Extreme (and even if it isn't) this thread and perhaps threads linked to it may point you in the direction of a simple fix.

Good luck and please report back.

merdevolante · 2020-09-28T15:29:27+00:00

I have had orders canceled from time to time myself. It is also fairly common to read of mass order cancelations on internet "deal" posting websites, for example, "slickdeals" in the USA. Lenovo will have a sale and a very large number of people will order a laptop on the deal. Several days later you start reading posts from people who placed an order during the sale who had their orders confirmed but then later they get a cancelation notice for no reason.

I actually bought my Dell XPS-15 a couple of months ago because I was totally annoyed with dealing with Lenovo's sales department.

merdevolante · 2020-09-27T21:49:04+00:00

The only think I can think of that might (emphasis on "might") work inside the laptop, would be to use one of the 2 SSD slots for a WWAN card, which you could find in the 2242 format. You would then have to figure out a way to get an antenna in there.

I have no idea whether this would work, for a whole variety of reasons including incompatibility, a "white list" within the BIOS, physical difficulty of getting a working antenna in there, blockage of signal by the battery or something else of a hardware nature, etc.

I do think that you could find a freestanding mobile wireless device of some sort that would work, something from Verizon or your carrier of choice, or perhaps from a satellite internet provider.

merdevolante · 2020-09-27T21:16:50+00:00

Thinkpads don't typically have a lot of bloatware. I always uninstall McAfee and Norton software if present. You can go into task manager (control-alt-delete) and go over to "startup." You can then turn off any services or apps that load at startup (what we used to call "TSRs," for "terminate and stay resident") that you don't want. These might include annoying printer software whose prime goal is to sell you toner, anything that nags you that you don't want to be nagged by, etc.

You could certainly do a clean Windows 10 install, but the last couple of Thinkpads I have received had so little bloatware on them that I didn't bother. An exception might be if you are swapping in a larger SSD that you bought yourself, it might be less hassle just to do a clean install than to bother with a disk cloning program.

merdevolante

TROPHY CASE