Reader Christian says he opened his recent Lenovo purchase only to get a nasty surprise: a deep cut on his finger from a box cutter left inside the package.

UPDATE: Lenovo wrote Christian back to say sorry and offer him a free battery.

When he called customer service to complain, they put him on hold for 10 minutes before coming back to say that they would make sure it never happened again, and was there anything else they could help him with today? Christian was hoping for something more heartfelt. His email to the Lenovo COO also went unanswered. C’mon, the guy deserves a price cut on his next purchase. Or maybe at least a coupon for some bandaids.

Be careful when you open up your shipments, you never know when the company might toss in some bonus Hepatitis.

Lenovo has not yet responded to a request for comment.

UPDATE: After this post went up, Christian got this email from a Lenovo customer advocate:

“Dear Sir,

I am responding to your email note to Lenovo’s President, Rory Read,
received on Monday. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention. I
want to assure you that Lenovo takes our customers’ satisfaction, and even
more importantly our customers’ safety, very seriously. We have forwarded
the details of the incident you reported to our team responsible for
manufacturing and fulfillment for their attention and action.

We regret any inconvenience this incident or your subsequent calls to our
customer service team may have caused you. As a token of thanks for
raising your concerns and as a valued customer, Lenovo would like to send
you an extended-life battery, at no charge to you. Please reply to this
email with the address to which you would like us to send the battery.

With appreciation and best regards,

Terry McCarthy”

To this, Christian says, “I’m glad that they acknowledged it. I wasn’t necessarily
expecting anything from them, except maybe a coupon for 10% off my next laptop that I may or may not purchase from them in another 3 years. It was a nice gesture to give me a free battery.

The conspiracy theories in the comments are entertaining – I guess that piece of red tape does kind of look like fake blood, and I did take the picture with my phone.”

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