I've listen to folks say that they were the big box store's version of a Deere made to a price point to sell in Home Depot or Lowe's. But that said I had very good luck with mine. The deck part is what I didn't like. Once or twice a season, I'd have to remove the deck and scrape and chip almost 25 lbs. of caked on grass and dirt off the deck so the blades could clear the caked on mess. Granted I was not cutting conventional grass, I was doing defendable space weed cutting around my property. Also, the bagging system worked poorly and clogged often and that might have also been due to what I was cutting. Deck didn't seam to have enough suction to get the cuttings to the bags seamed to lead to the clogging and poor deck performance even using "High Lift Blades" The 20hp twin motor was reliable enough and never a problem, parts are easy to find at a Deere dealer.
Chris