Lenovo banned by ACDA

Amravati: After a spate of vendors across the country bore the brunt of irate
resellers, who resorted to bans as a form of showing their displeasure over
service issues, it is now Lenovo's turn to be in the crossfire. The Amravati
Computer Dealers Association (ACDA) has banned the PC vendor in their region.
The ban came into force on December 1, 2007 and is being supported by 45 dealers
who are members of the association. These dealers have opted to instead promote
and sell Sahara and Compaq PCs.

Talking to The DQ Week, Amarjit Singh Juneja, President, ACDA, said, “After
deliberating with all our members we took the decision to ban Lenovo in the
region. Lenovo owes us Rs 1 lakh; we are still to get last year's exhibition's
co-sponsorship money from Lenovo. Now we are going to have our next exhibition,
PC Utsav in Amravati. After so many reminders they have still not responded
hence we decided to ban Lenovo. Now we will wait for them to come to us and we
will see what we can do.”

This step is sure to have a negative impact on Lenovos's sales in the
region. Ravi Bhudlani, Director, Super Computer, said, “I used to purchase 100
notebooks from Lenovo every month but due to the ban I am not selling Lenovo
products. I am very much with ACDA for the ban and now I have started converting
customers and give them alternatives like Sahara and Compaq. We are trying to
sort out the issue with Lenovo but are not getting favorable feedback from the
company.”

Another dealer, Sachin Palsokar, Director, Sandal Enterprises was also of the
same opinion. He said, “Lenovo has already lost huge amount of business
because of the ban. I think last month alone it must have lost around Rs 22 lakh
worth of business. We dealers are very much with the association on the ban and
are selling Wipro and HP instead of Lenovo.”

ACDA's last exhibition, PC Utsav, was sponsored by Logitech and
co-sponsored by Lenovo. Singh further added that they were unhappy with the
treatment Lenovo has been giving them, that too over a small amount of money.
“We are still waiting to hold discussions with Lenovo or else we will be
compelled to take further strict actions.”

When we got in touch with Lenovo, a company official clarified that they were
in the process of resolving the issue, and would try and come out with an
amicable solution at the earliest.