I ordered a T61 the day Meyer's info was made public. I canceled my order two days later due to concerns of having my warranty voided.

IBM / Jabra Employee Purchase Program. Welcome to the IBM / Jabra Employee Purchase Program featuring Jabra consumer products and a few carefully selected Office. Lenovo & IBM Thinkpads CANADA EPP. It's called the IBM employee purchase program for a reason. You must know someone that works for IBM.

With all this speculation on the Meyer EPP situation, I decided to clarify with Lenovo via email. I asked specifically about Meyer's serial #, which I have edited out in Lenovo's response below.

7 Wonders 2 Full Version. Lenovo's response: Thank you for contacting Lenovo, the makers of ThinkPad and ThinkCentre products! The EPP program was set up for IBM/ Lenovo employees and their family and friends. Although it is legal to use the employee name and serial number, they should not be used without permission from the employee and we have been informed he did not grant permission for this. The EPP Terms and Conditions limit the number of purchases that can be made with any one serial number in a calendar year. If an employee's number is abused by persons the employee is not acquainted with, it denies the employee of the ability to share with family and friends. We have blocked certain serial numbers from the ability to purchase due to the abuse of the program. Although it is possible for you to place an order on our EPP site with the number XXXXXX, the order will not be cleared to ship If you have further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us at 1-800-426-3675 or you may reply to this e-mail.

Once again thank you for contacting Lenovo. Sincerely, USEPP Operations. GR23, nobody can give you a guarantee that there won't be negative repercussions. Disclaimer: IANAL and IAN an accountant. I am inclined to think that Lenovo would not sue buyers for this.

Even if they were to win in court, the money they would recover would probably not make the effort worthwhile. The best resolution for them would be to cancel the orders before they have shipped. The next best thing, as others have suggested, to cancel the warranty on the machines obtained through Meyer's employee rebate.

Someone pointed out a clause in there about fraud. Lenovo could refuse to provide support for those machines because the purchase was made under the fraudulent pretense of being a friend of Meyer. Click to expand.What really annoyed me was when people expressing doubts about the validity of the transaction or the possibility of ending up in an undesirable situation (laptop but no warranty) were summarily dismissed. I think they have good reasons to worry that the deal they thought they were getting would not come to fruition.

Before somebody asks. If I think the most likely outcome would be a cancellation, then why did spend so much time talking about warranties? Because although I think this is a less likely option, I have no reason to disbelieve the report from SkiBunny, who as an IBM employee seems well placed to tell us what has happened in the past when people abused the EPP. Rather than summarily dismiss SkiBunny, I tried to see how the warranty could be voided. I'm neither a lawyer or a participant in the Meyers EPP situation.

But I would think that anyone who was able to purchase an extended warrantee through this program would have a pretty strong case against Lenovo if they were denied coverage when something went wrong during the warrantee period. Regardless of whether there was 'misrepresentation' at the time of purchase. If Lenovo's policy is to deny coverage if there was any misreprentation, they would certainly have some obligation to make a reasonable effort to confirm the validity of the order before charging the buyer's credit card for the extended warrantee. With the current long shipping delays for products, Lenovo has ample time to do so. All they need to do is check with the employee whose name was used. On top of that, if they have knowledge that purchases made on this employeee's account will not be covered by the extended warrantees for which they have accepted payment, they would certainly seem to have an obligation to cancel the warrantee and refund the prorated amount of $$$ for the cancelled service contract.

If their policy is to do nothing until the buyer seeks service under the extended warrantee, I would think they would have a big problem. Do you think that Lenovo has no obligation at all when they accept payment for a service contract? Would it not be fraud on their part to red-flag these accounts; sit on the $$$ that was paid for the extended warrantee; then suddenly 'discover' the buyer's misrepresentation only when they bring the unit in for service? Wouldn't it be reasonable to conclude that Lenovo knowingly and willfully created a situation where they accepted money for a service which they had no intent of fulfilling? In addition, I would think that IBM/Lenovo's past policy on use of the EPP would be very relevant to the case. If significant numbers of purchases against a single employee's account were allowed to go through in the past, they should be expected to be aware of the fact that an employee's name/code could be made public.