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Very disappointed in John Deere for not backing their products. I have a d100 lawn tractor and it’s 6 months past the warranty. I have 33 hrs on the machine. It’s basically brand new. I was having issues with it moving forward so I brought it to my local small engine repair shop. He told me it’s a bad transmission. I had him replace it. I called John Deere and was informed that they needed to diagnose it as well as do all the work to it. And maybe they would help me out but couldn’t say a definitive answer on that. So I was supposed to have my guy pack it up and bring it to John Deere and take work away from him and get charged dealership rates to maybe have them pay for something. Regardless it was going to cost a lot more than my guy did it for. John Deere needs to do a better job standing behind their products. Especially in this situation where the machine had 33 hrs on it. Stay away

While it is dissapointing from your point of view JD can not take your repair shops word without checking.
I have made 3 warranty claims against Kawasaki one for an engine I did not fit & 2 for engines I did fit.
Each & every time they had to go back to an authorised Kawasaki dealer for verification as I am not a Kawasaki dealer, I just buy the engines through my wholesale supplier .
On one they had the dealer fix it on the other 2 engines I fitted they supplied me the parts gratis but would not pay for my labour, as the payment is done via credit against orders & I do not order directly from Kawasaki .
Your workshop might have done better going through TuffTorq as they made the transmission, not JD and ultimately Tuff Torq will be carrying the can for the replacement.
Also as Tuff Torq made the tranny they will want to know why it failed in the first place at 33 hours .

Waggzdrummer said:

Very disappointed in John Deere for not backing their products. I have a d100 lawn tractor and it’s 6 months past the warranty. I have 33 hrs on the machine. It’s basically brand new. I was having issues with it moving forward so I brought it to my local small engine repair shop. He told me it’s a bad transmission. I had him replace it. I called John Deere and was informed that they needed to diagnose it as well as do all the work to it. And maybe they would help me out but couldn’t say a definitive answer on that. So I was supposed to have my guy pack it up and bring it to John Deere and take work away from him and get charged dealership rates to maybe have them pay for something. Regardless it was going to cost a lot more than my guy did it for. John Deere needs to do a better job standing behind their products. Especially in this situation where the machine had 33 hrs on it. Stay away

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Yikes a D100 John Deere? How old is the thing? 33 hrs on something from 2011-2012 is incredible

Read this review a while back.

This is a fun, lightweight tractor designed for about 1/3 acre, flat lawns. This is a great mower for your small in-town lawn that you mow every week and you want to look the best. DO NOT expect this model to perform as well or last as long as the more expensive mowers or last on larger lawns. The engine is not designed for mowing on slopes. You may pull a small yard cart (John Deere 450 lb. 7 cu. ft. Tow-Behind Poly Utility Cart) but I strongly suggest that you don’t fill it with dirt, rocks or other heavy materials. It will accept the 2 bin bagger.

Let me repeat, don’t buy this lawn tractor because it’s the cheapest John Deere you can buy. It is only designed for small, relatively flat city lawns. I recommend this mower to very few people.

If it was out of warranty i doubt JD would do anything for you under warranty. That series of mower is there to compete with the box stores mowers. It is a low profit machine and it has the weakest hydrostatic trans available. My local dealer won't carry the low end series because of all the dissatisfied customers who purchase them. He says if you have any hills in the yard the trans usually lasts about 100 hours.

I agree that this tractor is cheaply made, but part of the problem is you. If your Chevy has a warranty problem, do you take it to a Ford dealer to have it done. Same thing in the small engine business. Your outcome may have been the same, but no one will ever know, because you didn’t follow the basic rules of warranty service. That part you can’t blame on JD.

If the OP has an E100 then he has a basic mower with a CVT transmission. Like stated earlier it's meant to mow small flat yards. Doing Anything else is looking for trouble.

All those Deere suffer from the K46 virus.

Consumer Reports and consumersearch.com regularly give the John Deere D100 series lawn tractor high marks for quality, cutting your lawn and dependability. Shows what they know, and what they get paid to report I suppose.

From another review.
General Transmissions makes the CVT transmission in the D105. Tuff Torq makes the transmissions in the rest of the D100 series lineup.

I think I'd take my chances with a CVT drive before another TT hydro.

Rivets said it all, and rightfully so. You bought the cheapest JD that they make, then, when it breaks, you take it to an independent repair shop, and you think JD should repair it? Get a life.

All warranty diagnosis and repairs MUST be made at a Dealership that sells the product....whatever brand it is!
People buy the smallest, cheapest mower to do the largest job.....I see this everyday!

Small engine guy said bad tranny so he replaced it. Hopefully you checked for debris around the unit and also checked the belt. Here is a video checklist, again hope he went thru the checklist before replacing.CVT pre-repair check

Unfortunately JD in an effort to gain marketshare from the big box stores has decided to market machines to compete costwise with the cheapest mowers. The ultimate result is a line of machines just as crappy as the other colored cheap mowers. Just because it is green it is not good.

I have a JD D110, live in town on a lot just big enough for a rider. I knew what I was buying, got a good deal and I am pleased with the results. Have had no real problems since buying it in 2014 and now have 86 hrs on it. Like it has been said prior, these machine were made to compete with other low end mowers but I feel that they are still built better then them but not as hefty as the other JD models

bakerg said:

I have a JD D110, live in town on a lot just big enough for a rider. I knew what I was buying, got a good deal and I am pleased with the results. Have had no real problems since buying it in 2014 and now have 86 hrs on it. Like it has been said prior, these machine were made to compete with other low end mowers but I feel that they are still built better then them but not as hefty as the other JD models

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Well Stated!
Not sure how things work in Canada but here in the States, anywhere a John Deere riding mower is sold, (yes big box) the machine is set up by the local John Deere dealer. This leads to an overall better customer experience with their new machine. I don't know of any other brand that does this.

Same in Canada, bought the mower at Lowes but was serviced by JD dealer a few miles from me. Tried to buy from dealer but they could not beat Lowes's price.

The local Lowes here sells the low end JD stuff and tells buyer who the nearest JD dealer is for support. The mowers are set up by a 3rd party that assembles mowers and grills and such for Lowes. A guy i used to work with retired and went to work for the 3rd party company. He setup all brands of mowers Lowes sold. The JD dealer HATES those mowers. Zero profit from sales but loses money when mechanics have to spend time diagnose problems that may not be covered under warranty or reimbursed and the dealer labor rate is $98/hr. Dealer says most come in for bad trans and JD won't warranty them and customer makes the dealer the bad guy. Dealer told me a couple years ago JD made him carry the low end stuff. He has a couple he has never sold.

bakerg said:

Same in Canada, bought the mower at Lowes but was serviced by JD dealer a few miles from me. Tried to buy from dealer but they could not beat Lowes's price.

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Well what do you expect.
Lowes pay around 1/2 the price that the dealer does for the same mowe
so they can sell it to you at a 25% discount and still be making the same profit that the dealer would make selling it to you at full price.
It is a disgusting side effect of free trading which allows those with very deep profits to starve smaller operators for sales and force them to undertake loss making repairs.
I get a lot of new mowers in for repairs because the local dealers quotes 4 to 10 weeks to look at a warranty claim repair and quite frankly I do not blame them either.
The franchise management demmands that they take in loss making warranty jobs but very few actually want to do it unless there is nothing in the workshop at all.

Remember we are talking only the low end of the JD lineup here folks. Just the 100 series so it's not like it's the entire line. As far as warranty remember once again that these 100 series mowers carry a 2 year warranty making actual factory warranty claims lower probability than that of the s240 and 300 & 500 and up series tractors. Statistically the big box purchasers are a higher impulse purchase and have a much lower inclination to follow proper routine maintenance guidelines, so they will one day provide the service dealer service profit. What Lowes pays John Deere for their 100 series tractors would interest me greatly, so if you could please provide me with paperwork beyond just saying that you know wholesale pricing that would be great. I have a connection to a local factory service JD dealership here who BTW is wildly successful and has 2 dealerships because they know what they are doing and treat their customers well.

Back in '03 I bought a L100 (basically the same thing, but with a manual transmission) $1,500 out the door with MA sales tax, which was 5% at the time. I sold it to a friend who abused the hell out of it - left it outside, uncovered, never maintained it, etc.., and it ran for YEARS afterwards. Only thing I had to repair on it during the time he had it, was all the safety switches that failed.

Quality across the board has taken a nosedive, whether it's a GM product, a washing machine, or a low-end lawn tractor. As a mechanic, I see it all. The state of manufacturing today disgusts me. Just look at what you could buy in the 1980's for a reasonable, working man's price. Alot of that stuff is STILL out there, doing what it was designed to do, 35+ years later!

Smithsonite said:

Back in '03 I bought a L100 (basically the same thing, but with a manual transmission) $1,500 out the door with MA sales tax, which was 5% at the time. I sold it to a friend who abused the hell out of it - left it outside, uncovered, never maintained it, etc.., and it ran for YEARS afterwards. Only thing I had to repair on it during the time he had it, was all the safety switches that failed.

Quality across the board has taken a nosedive, whether it's a GM product, a washing machine, or a low-end lawn tractor. As a mechanic, I see it all. The state of manufacturing today disgusts me. Just look at what you could buy in the 1980's for a reasonable, working man's price. Alot of that stuff is STILL out there, doing what it was designed to do, 35+ years later!

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But the problem is what we buy today is the same price as what we bought back in 1980 when the wages were 1/2 what they are now
Dads first petrol mower cost a months wages , now days you pick most up for 1 or 2 days wages so should you be surprised that as it is 1/30 the real price ( hours worked ) that iti is 1/30 the quality ?

Here in the states, the cheaper "box store" units are 2-3 weeks pay (average - depends on your line of work. I believe average wage nationwide is $50,000 per year, before tax of course. Varies greatly by state, too). Back in the 80's, it was roughly the same. You got ALOT more for your money going all the way back to the dawn of the industrial revolution. Seems to have taken a turn for the worst in the late 90's, and has taken a nosedive from 2007 onward. Everything today is garbage, whether its a lawn mower, washing machine, blender, toaster, car or truck. Thank God aircraft aren't built by these same standards, or we'd all be running for cover ...

gotomow said:

Well Stated!
Not sure how things work in Canada but here in the States, anywhere a John Deere riding mower is sold, (yes big box) the machine is set up by the local John Deere dealer. This leads to an overall better customer experience with their new machine. I don't know of any other brand that does this.

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Back when I bought my L100 (2003), it was uncrated and tossed on the floor by employees - the dealer had no part of any of it.

If I remember right, recently, I thought I saw the local dealer's sticker on a unit on the floor at a Home Depot. I could be confusing this with a customer's unit. I see too many tractors ...

I've heard from others that the dealers have nothing to do with what the box stores sell. The box stores tell JD what they expect to pay, and JD delivers ... which is probably why they're so failure prone now.

There are 2 JD dealers near me one is 4 miles away the other is 8. I am told by the dealer i deal with for parts parts that the box stores have a deal with JD that the nearest dealer to the box store is the one the store tells is the servicing dealer. The dealers don't have anything to do with the initial delivery. The dealer also told me that if JD does any warranty work on the box store mowers that JD made no profit on that machine so JD covers almost nothing. The other dealer is the further away dealer and basically quotes 8 to 10 weeks to get to it so they just go away.

Now I know that USA wages have not been keeping pace with inflation for a while and wage rises for employees have bee fairly well flat fo the last decade, but I seriously doubt that they were $ 50,000 back in the 80"
$ 20,000 would be more like it.

bertsmobile1 said:

Now I know that USA wages have not been keeping pace with inflation for a while and wage rises for employees have bee fairly well flat fo the last decade, but I seriously doubt that they were $ 50,000 back in the 80"
$ 20,000 would be more like it.

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No, not $50,000 - whatever the average national wage was in the 80's. I can't remember the exact number, but any person with a job got alot more bang for their buck back then, be it cars, dishwashers, or lawn equipment. Just about everything was built good (except for domestic compact cars, and the Chrysler K-car ... and the GM 350 diesel - they were awful).

Probably find a lot of mowers out there for $2400 these days. Spend that stimulus check. Back in 1980 I was making $5 an hour in an engineering department. Bought the old John Deere SP mower for $450 - that hurt - but it still mows every week here. Never had the head off.

So you SP push mower cost you 2.25 WEEKS wages and now days people wonder why a ride on that cost slightly more is not built well .
We forge that money is an artificial entity . It is just a means of converting your labour into things you need.
So everything has to be converted into hours worked, not the numerical value of the dollars spent .
even then it is not a true comparison as most people progress to higher value jobs as they get older & more experienced .
Average wage rates work best bu even then you have to be careful because back in the 69's, my dad like most lower working class men had 2 full time jobs or at least some second source of income .
But average hourly rate is he best we can do as it excludes salaried people as they wee not on hourly rate and it is salaried executive income that skews the wage rate higher.