Lenovo, CDW Get Kudos From Readers

When readers suggested that I balance our "Worst Vendor of 2006" poll by asking for nominations for a Best Vendor of the year, I must admit I had my doubts that such an exercise would prove very useful. After all, this is the Gripe Line, and my readers are not all that attuned to saying nice things about vendors. But it turns out to have been quite an enlightening experience, not just for who won, but for all th

When readers suggested that I balance our "Worst Vendor of 2006" poll by asking for nominations for a Best Vendor of the year, I must admit I had my doubts that such an exercise would prove very useful. After all, this is the Gripe Line, and my readers are not all that attuned to saying nice things about vendors. But it turns out to have been quite an enlightening experience, not just for who won, but for all the interesting smaller companies you may never have heard of before but might want to take a look at now.

The clear winners, running neck and neck both in terms of getting the most nominations and the most enthusiastic ones, were Lenovo and CDW. What surprised me most about Lenovo was the suggestion by many that things have actually gotten better since the China-based company took over IBM's PC business. "I have never seen a company stand by its warranties as well as Lenovo," wrote one reader. "During the year we had four occasions to request hardware assistance, on four different machines. In every case the response was immediate. One of our desktop machines turned out to need a new motherboard. Lenovo diagnosed it over the phone and a tech showed up the next day and installed it. The DVD drive on one of our Thinkpads started making strange noises -- new one showed up the NEXT day. Flaky add-in memory for another Thinkpad bugged us for a couple of weeks. Called Lenovo. No questions asked; shipped a replacement that arrived the next day. Didn't even ask for the old one back. They answer their phones within a couple of rings, the people are smart and actually interested in helping, and they know what they're doing. We'll never buy a PC from any other company."

CDW fans lauded the company's willingness to take their customer's side when the product vendor won't. "For Best Vendor of the Year, I nominate CDW, the one-stop supermarket for IT," one reader wrote. "It is possible to beat their pricing but not their customer-focused attitude and service. Orders large and small routinely arrive sooner than promised and there is never, ever any problem with returns for any reason. The incident that truly puts them on top in my mind occurred when I called to order some fairly exotic hardware, but the CDW customer service rep was unable to immediately find those parts in their system. Within one hour the rep called back to say that CDW could not help me, but here was the vendor's direct telephone number, a specific person to speak with, and the approximate price I could expect to pay for the parts. That level of customer service is truly a rarity in today's marketplace."