[keldaris]

Yup, non-corporate customer support is terrible. The bright side is, everything is easily replaceable (or at least used to be until very recently) and if you don't want to do it yourself, chances are you can find a cheap third party tech to replace any screen, keyboard, etc.

Also, for what it's worth, in over a decade of using and recommending ThinkPads, I've never encountered a bad keyboard before. Dead pixels are fairly common, though.