Lenovo X200 128GB SSD order option gone, offers 64GB SSD for free
By Joshua Fruhlinger 
posted August 6th 2008 10:31AM
posted August 6th 2008 10:31AM
That wasn't fun at all, actually. Turns out the $-70 128GD SSD option for the ThinkPad X200 was not only a mistake, but the part isn't even available. Eager orderers received the following e-mail from Lenovo this morning:
We can't exactly hate on Lenovo for not honoring the mistake, especially since they're offering a 64GB SSD in exchange for free.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Dear Valued Lenovo Customer,
We are contacting you with regard to your recent Lenovo X200 order.
Please note that we recently experienced a web error which caused the price of the 128GB Solid State Drive to be erroneously listed at $0.
Unfortunately, we are unable to honor this pricing; in addition, the part is currently not available.
As a token of appreciation for your patience and understanding, we are pleased to offer you a substitute of either a 64GB Solid State Drive
or a 200GB Hard Disk Drive (7200rpm) free of charge in place of the 128GB Drive.
To accept this offer, please reply to this email and fill out the below fields by Monday August 11th with your selection.
*** If we do not receive a reply by that date, your order will be cancelled at that time.
We can't exactly hate on Lenovo for not honoring the mistake, especially since they're offering a 64GB SSD in exchange for free.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Holy shit this is completely extreme of lenovo. I can't believe it, they totally deserve for this to go viral all over the place. HUGE props.
I'm glad IBM /lenovo acted appropriatly as a 128 GB drive would have been way worse a hit money wise. To offer the 64GB SSD drive or 200 mb 7200 (nice speed for a laptop) was a novel move by lenovo. +1 for beign honorable champs Lenovo! :)
Remember the OCZ 64G is only less than 300 bucks now! This is absolutely a bad deal!! They should give us a 64G SSD installed inside and an extra 64G SSD!
OCZ is an MLC ssd. this is an SLC ssd. difference is big and price difference is way way bigger.
Are you sure a company who reject to give 128G will give you a free and fast SLC 64G?
Check the other option, 200G 7200rpm. Which should be less than $300 also!
If they really give out a $800 SLC 64G SSD, they should offer the option like 2X200G 7200 rpm at least.
Are you really stupid as fuck? Or are you just pretending to be?
You're getting a 64 GB SSD for LESS THAN NOTHING. They are paying you to take an $830 upgrade.
Jump off a building.
Engadget you are embarrassing those of us who received this windfall with your dumbass sour grapes summary. Great job recognizing the opportunity to compromise - my unexpected props to Lenovo.
Matt Rutledge
CEO
Woot, Inc.
Matt, what about "We can't exactly hate on Lenovo for not honoring the mistake, especially since they're offering a 64GB SSD in exchange for free." is sour grapes here?
The new title and text edits are good. Prior to those changes, the line you refer to wasn't enough to offset them, in my opinion.
Matt, I'm the editor who broke this story yesterday and agreed with Josh that Lenovo deserves our praise for righting this wrong. Especially when they could have taken the low road and just called it a mistake and not honored the orders at all. The retail launch of this model and many others (http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/06/lenovos-wtf-of-the-day-thinkpad-r400-for-200-marked-down-fro/) announced yesterday has been a giant clusterf#%u20ACk thus far though. We'll keep hammering them until they get their system under control.
Thomas Ricker
Where's my bandolier of carrots from the last Woot-off Matt :squint:
Hey Tom,
Can you get rid of the idiots that are trying to hock them in the comments?
@thomas & @josh: thanks for the story adjustments, response and great job highlighting this opportunity to begin with.
@jason - heh, we'll we had to save up for these 7454CT's somehow... hmm, maybe we'll throw one in a next lucky BOC to celebrate lenovo.
Dell, learn something.
If I am Dell, I will make a same "mistake" next week for 3hrs in midnight and honor all the orders...
or you can just ship yourself where you can no longer troll
What you do is sell the 64 GB SSD, buy a bigger hard drive (maybe 500 GB when it comes out), and save even mo'. :)
I turned down their counter offer because of the following reasons:
1) I respect them for not just canceling all orders
2) I don't need a X200...especially for $1500 and even with a free SSD. I don't think its worth it.
3) ...Because no one offered to buy it off me.
Glad to see there are people who will complain no matter what...
Somehow my endgadget comments forwarded me to ebay.
Wow. Kudos to lenovo, god know no one else would have done that for the sharp-eyed consumer looking for a deal. DAMN
I wondered how many people actually ordered it during the screw up... and how much it is going to cost Lenovo... it will be interesting to see who and how many is going to get fired from this screw up...
Wow, Lenovo is really bending over backwards to satisfy their customers. Big kudos to them. I hope other companies would look at this and learn something about taking care of their customers.
...and now, for some reason, Lenovo's website offers no Thinkpad X200 for sale at all. D'oh!
You Made a Typo Yourself 128GD SSD. GooD GoD!
The Drive has a Typo Curse.
Lenovo did make customers happy (kudos to them) while just scraping off a profit. They sold waaay more x200s than they would have otherwise. The total profit made due to the large sales volume was sufficient to recover the cost of the ssd. They also get customer goodwill and increase their chances at recurrent purchases by those customers (accessories, parts etc.) and/or new customers (friends of purchasers etc.)
Definitely gotta commend lenovo on not screwing the customer.
I would go for the 200GB instead of the 64GB...
For all the negative folks on the preview post, as you an see, Nthing to lose by trying. They who tried got a super fast SSD. Great. Point for Engadget, petty it is owned by the scumbag AOL who is member of the CFR that is pro war evil .... Anyway, for those who tried, congrats. for those didn't, there is only re great now :D
Basically, what they're stating in their action is that the laptop's production price (sans the SSD) is at least 830$ lower than the retail price. You "lucky ones" buy the SSD and they give you the laptop for a fraction of price as it doesn't make them loose money anyways. Now imagine, how people get ripped off while shopping with them on a daily basis. A steal is a steal. Those who were in the market for an SSD (and placed the order!) are the most "educated consumers" of our times. Kudos
I wouldn't be too surprised if they still made a profit on the machines that did sell... I'm sure there's some kind of markup on the +$830 SSD price.
such a good deal. i didn't jump onboard because i thought no company would ever honor/compensate their mistakes.
major props to lenovo.
anyone get a response or confirmation yet after making ur selection?
I got mine, took the SSD. I also got 5% off for being a student. Lenovo ftw..
Just got another email from Lenovo today since I didn't take action on the previous offer... They are processing the order with the 128GB SSD HD. Looks like they will honor the deal afterall...
Bet if you check your order status using account # and order # it will say
"Invalid Customer Number and/or Order Number" This was an automated response sent out by a computer. Somehow I doubt you will get the order since you didn't take action. Good luck to you if you do. Let us know
So, did you receive the 128gb SSD or not? We want updates!
just for the latest update on this deal...
After a long month (almost) of waiting, lenovo has shipped the laptop with a 80gb without noticing me what so ever, and i have try to their return center, they are trying to enforce their 15% restocking fee on me...im going to give them a fight for that.
but just thought to let everybody know at least one order failed for the 128SSD
*didnt get any email with the 64SSD or 200GB change. nor any email in between the 5th until 26th (shipment) that my order was changed.