Lenovo Notebooks Face Lawsuit Over Wi-Fi Problems

The Lenovo Group has faced lawsuits before over allegations that its notebooks are defective and have trouble connecting to Wi-Fi networks. Last month a new class action, filed in Washington, D.C., again alleged that the company’s Ideapad U Series notebooks are defective and often struggle when connecting to Wi-Fi networks. This breaches the company’s product warranties.

The company is accused of failing to remove the defective products from stores.

Michael Wheeler claims in the suit that Lenovo not only markets its Ideapad U Series notebooks as well-designed, but also advertises that the product provides dependable Wi-Fi connectivity. The suit alleges Lenovo made these claims despite knowing about a defect that affects the computers’ ability to connect to the Internet and, if connected, to operate at a fast enough speed for web browsing. Wheeler claims the company’s warranties have not been met and that their marketing is misleading.

Lenovo has previously blamed problems in its laptop computers on faulty Microsoft software, rather than offer a solution to the notebooks’ defects, Wheeler alleges. The company is said to claim that, as the problem can be fixed by a reset and is the responsibility of a third party, its warranties do not apply and the company has no obligation to repair or replace the affected notebooks. The new lawsuit claims that this only adds to consumers’ losses as a factory reset would require consumers to surrender their laptops to the company for a brief period of time.

The company is accused of failing to remove the defective products from stores, failing to tell customers about the connectivity problems, and attempting to conceal the nature of the problems from those who bought the product. Facing a large number of consumer complaints, the company eventually admitted that the computers contain a “hardware defect,” despite continuing a large national marketing campaign.

Wheeler seeks certification of a class membership including all those who purchased the U Series in the District of Columbia.

Online message boards and Internet forums are full of consumer complaints about Lenovo notebooks and their connectivity issues, with ConsumerAffairs.com giving the company a one-star satisfaction rating after almost three hundred reviews of the product. One user noted that “I can't connect to [the] router unless it's within 20 feet,” while another complained that when he bought his new Lenovo G580 “the wireless on it would not connect to the internet.”

A lawsuit currently being heard in California is seeking a common fund be created by the company to fund repairs to its products. As of July 2013, the judge refused to dismiss the request. Lenovo, in an admittedly gutsy move, claimed that it was protected from liability because while the defect was present, it was common knowledge by the time the computers were sold. The judge, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney, rejected the argument and the case continues.