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I basically came on here to tell anyone listening to not buy any equipment made by GXI Outdoor Power. If you want all the details, I posted a 6 minute You Tube video.
GXI Outdoor Power DO NOT BUY from this company - YouTube

Thank you.

Looks like they sell a bunch of no-brand stuff.

Well part of your beef is justifable .
Bad designs & not honouring warranty are genuine points of contention.
However parts prices are just you being cheap and nota justifable complaint as it is the same with every mower brand.
You can always buy an aftermarket part that will fit in the space a lot cheaper however weather the quality & durability will be the same is very much a moot point.
Amazon is chockers full of people selling defective parts they bought as scrap as good OEM parts to idiots too cheap for their own good .

bertsmobile1 said:

Well part of your beef is justifable .
Bad designs & not honouring warranty are genuine points of contention.
However parts prices are just you being cheap and nota justifable complaint as it is the same with every mower brand.
You can always buy an aftermarket part that will fit in the space a lot cheaper however weather the quality & durability will be the same is very much a moot point.
Amazon is chockers full of people selling defective parts they bought as scrap as good OEM parts to idiots too cheap for their own good .

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I could see your point if the parts were reasonably priced. Having rubber belts 16x a normal price tag is not reasonable. Having a tire that you can only replace the whole wheel at an inflated price and not just the tire is unreasonable. You did see the part in the video where they stated that won't honor a warranty just because you replaced a belt aftermarket. That's unreasonable. The point of my video was that the part should have been replaced FREE because it was under warranty. They didn't honor the warranty; therefore, they are not a reputable company, and you shouldn't buy from them.

The use of snow thrower tires on brush cutters is not unusual. DR, Swisher, Agri-Fab all use them. The can't just buy the tire is not unusual in today's replacement of complete module instead of just a single component, IE, have to purchase an entire air filter assembly to get the air filter or have to replace an entire engine blower housing to get a starter rewind spring . And they did honor their warranty up to the point that it states in the actual warranty page in your owners manual that unauthorized alterations will void the warranty. Unfortunately your use of the aftermarket belt voided the warranty. Maybe a little nitpicking but within the warranty guidelines.

The vines catching under the mower is common on that style of mower not brand dependent It will hook under the edge of the mower with or without feet and drag it off line, or in some cases will try to climb up the vine. And the skirting is more designed for tall weed and grass clipping not brush mowing, and while cutting brush I can see the skirts getting ripped off shortly. Not a good design, but more of a meet safety guidelines than function scenario.

Sometimes a warranty is not even worth the paper is printed on. A company's warranty is written by lawyers so they don't have to cover anything; unless, they are willing to do so.

In this case even if they authorized the replacement part you have to have it in writing as the spoken word is not worth the breath it is spoken on as they will deny saying it. Been there, done that one myself on a radio repair. I was lucky as I keep the email that authorized the mod.

Back in 1986 I brought a brand new Plymouth Sundance. It broke down with 800 miles on the odometer. I had it towed in my dealer repair shop along with myself. My warranty called for me to have a rental car while the car was in the shop. At first they refused to provide me a rental saying they don't know the repair was covered by the warranty. I had a 12,000 bumper to bumper warranty in hand. I fought with for 30 minutes with no results and it was getting late. Then I ask to use the phone. When I ask for my lawyer on the phone the service counter rep ran out out of the room. I ended with the worst rental I ever had. It had a bad CV axle but it made it the two weeks I had the car barely as it broke the last day 100 miles away on one my service calls. Needless to say it took 3 hrs to get back via the tow company. And they still tried charging me $2000 for the repairs. Again another phone call to lawyer got them to honor the warranty.

All this because of a failed distributor component. I have never brought another new car since. I just let someone deal with the headaches of trying to get a dealer to honor their warranty contract. I can repair most of my own vehicle problems myself so I just get a good used vehicle but most of the bugs have been worked out of.

Another GXI YouTube. The comments are pretty consistent - the machine is bad.

ILENGINE said:

The use of snow thrower tires on brush cutters is not unusual. DR, Swisher, Agri-Fab all use them. The can't just buy the tire is not unusual in today's replacement of complete module instead of just a single component, IE, have to purchase an entire air filter assembly to get the air filter or have to replace an entire engine blower housing to get a starter rewind spring . And they did honor their warranty up to the point that it states in the actual warranty page in your owners manual that unauthorized alterations will void the warranty. Unfortunately your use of the aftermarket belt voided the warranty. Maybe a little nitpicking but within the warranty guidelines.

The vines catching under the mower is common on that style of mower not brand dependent It will hook under the edge of the mower with or without feet and drag it off line, or in some cases will try to climb up the vine. And the skirting is more designed for tall weed and grass clipping not brush mowing, and while cutting brush I can see the skirts getting ripped off shortly. Not a good design, but more of a meet safety guidelines than function scenario.

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Nothing had been replaced prior to the muffler falling apart. Everything was OEM when the muffler fell apart so no they did NOT honor their warranty. The tires are a common size, GXI just doesn't sell a tire only a tire wheel combo. I get your argument, but this is a tire and wheel not some integrated part. I can see a company not honor a warranty if it was proven that an aftermarket part broke the mower. If you are saying that a company won't honor a warranty because you use an aftermarket part, then that's not a company that should be business.
The vines catching is a design flaw. Bradley's don't seem to have this issue.
As for the skirting, it's a brush mower. It's called the Brush Beast not the Tall Grass Beast. You're defending the company for using a part not designed for brush mowing on a brush mower?
The company is shit PERIOD.

rlmcameron said:

I can see a company not honor a warranty if it was proven that an aftermarket part broke the mower. If you are saying that a company won't honor a warranty because you use an aftermarket part, then that's not a company that should be business.

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Happens every day with stuff a lot more expensive than a brush mower. Ford will void the warranty if an aftermarket tuner has been used, and the ECU in the vehicle logs the changed tuner settings. Know of a guy in northern Minnesota that lost the 4 year warranty on his $60,000 tractor over a thermostat because the factory thermostat wouldn't allow the engine to run hot enough to properly burn the diesel fuel. And the issues he was having were documented by the dealer and the OEM prior to the thermostat being changed.

ILENGINE said:

Happens every day with stuff a lot more expensive than a brush mower. Ford will void the warranty if an aftermarket tuner has been used, and the ECU in the vehicle logs the changed tuner settings. Know of a guy in northern Minnesota that lost the 4 year warranty on his $60,000 tractor over a thermostat because the factory thermostat wouldn't allow the engine to run hot enough to properly burn the diesel fuel. And the issues he was having were documented by the dealer and the OEM prior to the thermostat being changed.

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Question here is who changed the thermostat. If the dealer did on the advice from Ford then they should not have voided the warranty. If the owner changed without authorization then they could nit pick and do it just to be jerks. OF course they are more worried about the EPA fining them instead making the necessary change and getting it re-approved by the EPA. Government bureaucrat policies are sometimes plain stupid. Sometimes the local mechanic has a better idea what is causing the problem than the factory as he dealing with real life problems.

It like my 73 IH PU that the factory 180 degree was too cold and I had water condensation in the crankcase. I went to an 195 degree which resolved the issue. IH later changed the thermostat spec for my 345 engine.

Of course now days the states stick a sniffer up the vehicle butt to see they are meeting the factory preset specs and then demand you make the vehicle operate worst just because someone miss entered factory information.

StarTech said:

Question here is who changed the thermostat. If the dealer did on the advice from Ford then they should not have voided the warranty. If the owner changed without authorization then they could nit pick and do it just to be jerks. OF course they are more worried about the EPA fining them instead making the necessary change and getting it re-approved by the EPA. Government bureaucrat policies are sometimes plain stupid. Sometimes the local mechanic has a better idea what is causing the problem than the factory as he dealing with real life problems.

It like my 73 IH PU that the factory 180 degree was too cold and I had water condensation in the crankcase. I went to an 195 degree which resolved the issue. IH later changed the thermostat spec for my 345 engine.

Of course now days the states stick a sniffer up the vehicle butt to see they are meeting the factory preset specs and then demand you make the vehicle operate worst just because someone miss entered factory information.

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It was a tractor that would throw engine codes because the tractor with its 160 degree thermostat would never reach operating temp. After around a year of the tractor OEM and the dealer trying different things to fix the issue, they basically told the guy we can't fix it. so the guy changed from the factory 160 to a 180 degree thermostat and that repaired the issue. The mistake the guy made was telling the OEM what the fix was. His reward was lose of warranty.

It's funny, i have 2 JD/stihl deslers near me. One is really good at taking care of customers and doing warranty repairs. Family owned and the owner works the sales floor.
The other is part of a group of JD dealers managed from afar. Folks tell me warranty work takes a long time and sometimes a hassle.
Go figure.

Hammermechanicman said:

It's funny, i have 2 JD/stihl deslers near me. One is really good at taking care of customers and doing warranty repairs. Family owned and the owner works the sales floor.
The other is part of a group of JD dealers managed from afar. Folks tell me warranty work takes a long time and sometimes a hassle.
Go figure.

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So you got a couple deslers there. A new term for a dealer I reckon.

Or it could like the JD dealer that the Stihl tech couldn't find a bad spark plug in a HS56 hedger or knew how to do pressure/vac test.

Getting back to the lack of proper consumer legislation and very weak government in the pockets of big campaign funders.
We fixed this decades ago with a stroke of the pen so any item can be serviced or repaired by any qualified tradesman ( that is TAFE or University certificates ) without it affecting the warranty unless the OEM can PROVE the service / repair caused a future failure .
We went on to include the use of off branded parts provided that they met the OEM specifications & again the OEM has to PROVE that the aftermarket parts were below the OEM standards and caused the failure .
On top of that from around WWII every thing sold retail in Aust has a manditory 12 month warranty.
Repairs have a manditory 3 month warranty and a repairer has to fix all of the problems or specify what was found wrong & not fixed .
The latter bit came in in 1980 and had a drastic effect on used car sales ( used cars ave manditory 6 months warranty ) .
American consumer laws are the weakest & most useless on the planet because every 2 years the parties have to spend massive amounts of money on election campaigns .
Your parties combined last election spent more on their campaigns than Australia spent on health and we have FREE hospitals for all down here and they were just the mid terms .
This reliance on external money for political power means that shonky operators making defective products like GXI Outdoor can flourish & prosper because the system relies on private people mounting court actions to do the job that the government should be doing .
BEcause of your extremely corrupt & politically biased legal system no one will sue GXI because there is no profit in doing it when they can sue Niki for millions because the shoes you bought did not make you run as fast as Eugine Bolt like the advertisement say it would .

As with a lot of things there is an amount of bluff in warranty claims
Kawasaki tried it on with me when a Z master came in on one cylinder because the rocker retainer had fallen off at 55 hours.
Their first attempt was to void warranty because I had fitted a Stens oil filter , a phone call to my Stens rep ended that one .
Toro then tried it on because I am not a factory trained Toro technician
A phone call to my federal member put that to bed in under a week
Then it was the aftermarket oil I used fault and a refference to the consumer warranty laws ( chapter & verse ) put that to bed.
Finally Kawasaki agreed that it was a factory assembly problem that should have been picked up by the dealer on the first ( in warranty ) service that was not done .
To give Toro due credit a year latter that dealer lost his Toro franchise so this was obviously not a one of event.
I regularly get mowers in that are out of warranty but had been dealer serviced since new only to find the rocker covers have never been removed in the 2 to 5 years since new .
All of the dealer ships around here are owned by a couple of large companies that are of course run by accountants .
All of them except the JD franchise do sloppy work ( if at all ) and are 100% focused on selling new mowers ( @ 100% mark ups ) so train their staff to hoodwink owners into believing that every fault is the owners abuse then offer a discount on an inferiour mower.
Just replaced the belt on a World Lawn Viper ( 100% rubbish mower ) charged the customer 1 full hour ( usually 20 min ) because they are such a bitch to work on .
The dealer gave him a "good trade in" on his Ariens Zoom ( that was perfectly good ) if he bought the Viper which he was told was better than the EZ JD and only 1/3 the price .

Bert, This I agree with about the US politics, Just too much involved and too much A kissing afterwards.

I just a belt a couple on a Bad Boy ZTR that is normal under 1/2 job that took well over an hour because hydros along with the belt idler arm had to partially remove just to get the drive belt pass the pulleys and the frame. Now that I know what a pain it is I will quote 1-1/2 hrs on future Bad Boy ZTR drive belt replacements. Some thing are just not as repair friendly as once were.

yep
In order to use thinner steel on the tension arm, the tension pulley has a top plate which has to be removed because the belt runs between the pulley & the pivot point .
There is 5/8 of SFA space to start with and the plate is held in with a nut & bolt, not a captive nut .
Three metric bolts & washers on each pulley cover one on the lifter side is also near impossible to access as it is directly under the frame rail , sandwiched between the solid deck support and the deck lift arm so for ay other customer it will be a full hour job, but he is a tradie with a lot of gear that I service .