Nonprofits beware of Lenovo quirk

Small NP here. 1 employee (me) with a 13 member board.

I recently bought a Thinkpad T500 laptop from Lenovo. I love it so far but my experiance makes me want to caution my np friends.

I include the details of my name to aid in explaining my situation.

I am the Exec. Dir. of Potawatomi Wildlife Park (PWP). It is a  D.B.A. for Potawatomi Park, Inc (PP) which is a nonprofit private foundation.  We use the D.B.A. to clarify any confusion because another park in a major city an hour away has the same name (potawatomi Park) but is owned by that city.

I bought and charged my purchase on my private foundation's credit card which has my name as well as Potawatomi Park, Inc on it.. Had to pay the tax up front but was assured that a reimbursement would come once I submitted a copy of my state tax exempt form to their billing.

The odd requirement the customer service agent said was that the address on the sheet had to match our business address. I consider it odd as I have never come across that in the 25 years of doing business.

We just changed our billing address and changed most everything over to our physical address of the property. With updated state exempt sheet with new address listed on it, I sent it to Lenovo to be forwarded to billing dept.

Long story short, the addresses are the same but Lenovo has Potawatomi Wildlife Park in the computer and the exempt sheet reads Potawatomi Park, Inc. 

While the addresses are the same, Lenovo is denying our reimbursemnt request becasue "the names don't match".

Lenovo is not business friendly since I am not allowed to directly communicate with billing to explain the issue or submitt additonal documentation. Lenovo is not np friendly for requiring this quirky requirement. Businesses have divisions, multiple offices, D.B.A names., variations of names, etc.

To be so petty is not customer friendly. I have never had such an issue in the 25 years we have done business and this includes buying computers from Dell which was a much friendlier experience.

I will be glad to update this thread if I ever sucessfully obtain a reimbursment but for this experience I still issue a Buyer Beware warning.

Hi Gunpowder,

I'm sorry to hear about your reimbursement issue regarding your Lenovo Thinkpad purchase.

I would strongly encourage you to explain your problem over at the Lenovo Community Discussion boards.  The moderators there are often very helpful and can help clear up all sorts of matters.  It's quite possible they'll be able to look into your situation more closely and direct you appropriately.  You'll need create a user account to post messages to the boards.

I'd give it a shot.

Good luck,

Yann

Hi Gunpowder, I am sorry to hear of your problem as well.  We purchase all of our Lenovo products from a local vendor.  We get the same pricing as if we dealt directly with Lenovo.  Perhaps on future purchasing, you'd be better served to go that route? 

That really is too bad. Hopefully you have a low sales tax rate. Tell you what, next time you want a Lenovo system, buy it from me and you will have no such trouble. :-) Actually, if you like I'll be happy to email my Lenovo partner manager to see if you can get the tax reimbursed.

Best,

Zac

In reality it is more likely a state tax collection issue with your state (or with other states) that has forced Lenovo into this type of situation, the revenuers can get really aggressive and levy fines against retailers for not collection every penny of sales tax that the state thinks they should, so when two fields in a form do not match electronically, the default answer is to collect the tax.  And the impossibility of the change process is mose likely a security control to prevent retailers playing games with their sales tax collections.

There should be a process in your state to get reimbursed for sales tax paid.  Be glad you get any relief at all, I am from a state that NPOs are not exempt from sales tax collections.  If I buy anything for the org across the state line, I have to be sure they collect the sales tax.

Dave

Got another Lenovo employee trying to resolve the issue. He came across a thread I had on the issue in a laptop forum.

I did find an e-mail I had sent during the order process where i provided the correct billing name to the cust. service person. Apparently she didn't put it in the computer correctly.

 I did ask our accountant if there was a line item on the sttae tax form for reimbursements. she said they would just direct you to the vendor. Somethng about once it is in the state's hands a pry bar wouldn't work:)

Indiana Sales tax is 7%. Bad thing was my board allotted budget was $1,500. Due to sales promo changes over the holiday I ended up about $65 over budget. Add the $109 sales tax and I am really over budget. I plan to personally pay for the $65/$67 overage since it was my decision to go ahead with the purchase even though it was over budget. I felt it was the best computer for our needs and included a three year no fault warrently that I felt was important.

Update:

A Lenovo employee surfing the notebookreview.com  forums came across my thread on my problem and sent me  Michelle from Lenovo who helped me out. It took a combined 4-6 tries between my order agent and Michelle and 5 weeks but Michelle finally came thorough and I received word of a tax credit to my credit card!  I am sure I spent more than the $109.33 in time but I am happy that I was able to find someone @ Lenovo who was willing to help me through the process.
 

FYI, I love my T500 Thinkpad!

Mike

"The odd requirement the customer service agent said was that the address on the sheet had to match our business address. I consider it odd as I have never come across that in the 25 years of doing business."

I've seen that requirement before. It's one way to reduce fraud by assuring that purchases are not misdirected (to someone's house, for example).

Me too.  Our Amex won't authorize purchases with delivery addresses if we haven't called to let them know.

My point was the bureaucracy was pretty deep to get this issue resolved. Businesses use billing addresses, physical addresses, PO Box numbers, etc. If our tax exempt form was a PO box number UPS wouldn't ship there anyway.  The fact our billing address is our board treasurer's home is icing on the cake.

BTW, I strongly recommend the Lenovo T400/500 laptop.

That has to be extremely frustrating.  I am fortunate to live in a state that doesn't have sales tax.  Glad to hear that you were finally reimbursed.  Sometimes it isn't just about the money, but about the principle of the matter. 

Now that you clarified - I'm in the same situation.  My company uses a PO Box for billing that is in a different town than our street address.