Why do companies make it so difficult to purchase their products?

[Pudding]

I've always been fond of Thinkpads, from the first one I purchased second hand off ebay 12 years ago (which still works perfectly), to the one I purchased 6 years ago (which still works perfectly), to all the ones the school bought 4 years ago (which all still work perfectly). I've always found them to be well built and good to use (especially as I don't like using laptops without a nipple:p). I've also found it reassuring to be able to buy spare parts, not that I've ever needed to.

 

This summer we'd like to purchase 25 laptops which will be used at least part of the time for Art and Engineering. With this in mind we'd prefer something with, amongst other things, a little more grunt in the graphics department. Given my fondness for Thinkpads I looked at the Lenovo site and found that a low end Thinkpad can be customized to the specification we are looking for.

 

Here's the catch, although Lenovo have a product I wish to purchase, they seem to have provide no means for me to purchase them. Here is what I've tried:

 

• Purchasing direct from Lenovo -- they have a customer limit of 5 units
  
• Contacted some of the resellers listed on the Lenovo site -- they only seem interested in supplying stock options
  
• Contacted Lenovo to ask how to purchase their products -- they suggested contacting one of their larger resellers
  
• Pointed out to Lenovo that their larger resellers don't seem to be interested -- Lenovo suggested contacting a couple of smaller (non listed) resellers who should be able to help
  
• Contacted the smaller resellers -- they say that Lenovo will only allow custom build options for over 50 units
  

 

 

So, I could purchase 1 of the laptops, or 5, or 50, or 500, infact any number of them except anything between 6 and 49. This is not only annoying, as I'm after 25, but also (at least to my simple mind) completely baffling.

 

Does anyone know of anyone who can supply 25 Lenovo Thinkpads with a few options?

 

Otherwise I guess our money will be going elsewhere which is disappointing as I think that they have a great product. Why won't companies accept money?

[Millgate]

I should be able to help you out with this Pudding. We do Lenovo custom builds quite often so if you drop me an email with what you're after, i'll see what i can do

[Duke]

Find yourself a good reseller and never deal with companies directly. (unless you can get a better deal there).

 

Millgate are highly rated on here and I'm sure they'll look after you. Personally I've always used CCS Media - I tell our account manager what I want and I usually get a quote back for exactly that within a couple of hours.

[Fazza]

If you're purchasing more than 5 Lenovo computers from a reseller, ask them to ask Lenovo for some special bid prices as if you're after 25 Lenovo themselves will normally do a bulk buy deal via a reseller. I've done this in the past with Insight and got a good deal.

[TronXP]

Nearly all of our lenovo's have been custom built, we use our sales rep at Insight and he sorts out what we need, never had an issue getting hold of what we required.