Lenovo steals from their customers when their laptop hard drives die San Jose, California Nationwide

I don't think recovery disk costs much. To manufacture it is almost just the disk itself. Maybe it costs $2. "Unless the hard drive goes bad,..." is not a good excuse, since it is not unusual that hard drive goes bad. To rely on consumers to make recovery disk is not a good practice since many of them may not do it correctly and there is no way to know if it is done correctly until your hard drive is actually broken. The previous reply by ramjet sounds like someone from the manufacture. I am going to complain this practice to BBB and spread the words to many of the online retailer sites.

TO CHARGE $89 FOR A RECOVERY DISK CONTAINING SOFTWARE I'VE ALREADY BOUGHT IS A RIPOFF.

DON'T BUY LENOVO!

Pages 30 & 31 of the user guide contain directions on how to create system recovery discs. Did you fail to read or just fail to follow the directions?

Because people want cheaper and cheaper computers, something has to go when prices are ever lower.  One of those things is recovery disks.  Many, if not all, computers do not come with recovery disks anymore.  Unless the hard drive goes bad, you can recover completely from a hidden partition on you hard drive.  This is accessed with a few keystrokes which are different for different companies. 

If the hard drive goes bad you have to reload from external media.  Computer manufacturers include instructions for creating a set of recovery CD's/DVD's/Flash drives that you can recover from if your drive goes bad. 

If you neglected to create a backup image, you probably will have to purchase a set from the manufacturer. 

Of course this all assumes you have kept all of your data, files, videos, graphics etc. backed up separately.

I know my new HP laptop and desktop work this way, my wife's Lenovo does too.

A pain, but that's the way things are in the computer world these days.

Your seller was correct, you do not need a recovery disk from the manufacturer if you have done the image creation yourself as instructed.

Not a ripoff.

Which reminds me, I have not created an image for my new HP laptop.  I'm on my way now to get it done :-)