I bought this, by the time it came home after taxes it was around $3800. I'm a home user with 3/4 acre of grass. I had a John Deere 111 riding mower for nearly 21 years which I spent around $500 for all those years in repairs until the engine blew up after a Valve job. Getting a new engine & having it installed was expensive so i decided to look around for a new better alternative mower. Hopefully this time a Zero turn Mower.
FYI I'm a home owner and it was really going to be tough to sell to my wife that I had spent over 7k on a new zero turn mower [like a scag ,etc] so I bought this unit on august 2011. Being made in the USA was a great incentive to buy too.
As soon as it came out of the box it would not drive straight [as previously mentioned here]. I spent hours on the phone with the manufacturer trying to get this thing fine tuned so It would drive straight without keeping one handle back. [uneven handle position to keep it straight on level ground]
Before I had 8 hrs on the thing, the hydros specially the left one was leaking what seamed to me like a lot of hydro fluid. This same thing has been reported by others all over the internet. I called the manufacturers help line [919-550-3221 ext 1] company told me that this was "normal" since they had a lot of extra fluid on the Hydros, Before 10 hrs the mower not only was not going straight, I had to park it [for 2 hours minimum] after 15 mins of use so the hydro fluid could cool down and I could drive it straight and put it back in the garage. Hours on the phone with the manufacturer... "try this, try that" nothing worked 100%, it pretty much was trial and error. Unfortunately, I travel a lot for my job so I could not spend every weekend working on this thing.
I parked inside for the winter and opened up again for season 2012. I realized the left hyro was shot so I called GXI to see if they could send me a new one. They blame it on the peelers hydros and don't want to take ANY responsability for a mover that has less than a year of Home owners service! Since I had moved to a new house and all receipts and stuff where in boxes, I could not provide the receipt [even though I did have a credit card charge for the mower]. After 2 days of back and forth conversations they decided that since I could not provide the receipt [mower had less than 12 hrs on meter] they decided they would NOT provide a warranty. I called home depot, they said call the manufacturer for the warranty. I had to buy the Hydro and pay for shipping too ! That set me back around $350.
Then finding a repair service that will work on this thing provided to be impossible. Even though their website has over 20 places that are within 2 hours drive, NOT ONE PLACE new they were in the list of repair center on GXI website , never had they heard of a Z beast, NEVER had they had any training on these machines, NEVER had they signed a contract to be a service center! How I know this, I called everyone within 2 hour drive distance one way that GXI had on their website as a repair place. Now 09/2012, with less than 17 hrs on the mower of light home owner use. I got the drydros drive belt snap in half. This also broke a metal part that holds the fine tuning of the hydros. Now the belts is $68 at Home depot and who knows what the other part is. There is 2 week wait on the belt too. This is not an easy mower to work on. You pretty much need a car lift to raise up and work on it. I though It would be years before I would be having such problems. I could keep you here for a long time explaining what I've been though with this mower in 17 hrs of operation. I'm going to fix it again and if I cant sell for half what I paid for it, I will be donating to my unions charity to see if they can make better use of it. I will start saving for a real zero turn [ not this POS] and be going back to real store and buy a regular riding mower. I'm Done with the Z-beast and the GXI company. So much for buying from the small guy made in America deal... I know a lawyer will get on this company sooner or later and get an Et al lawsuit and win millions. Northern Tools also sells this same mower with a different name. Be careful with this company and if I where you don't buy anything that has a Z beast or GXI name on it. To end, I would appreciate anyone who owns a Z-beast and is having the same problems to please contact me via email. I will try to get a lawyer that might want to get a bunch of us and sue the GXI company.
This from someone who wrote about this mower: I purchased this mower through Home Depot online - it now has 50 hours on it, and I have spent countless time repairing it. Now the triaxle drive has burnt out and Home Depot will not stand behind it. I have owned the mower for less than 90 days. It throws belts, bolts continue to rattle out of it, you cannot adjust the deck as it was shipped to me out of alignment, it is nearly impossible to adjust the hydrostatic drive so that the mower does not move when it is supposed to be in neutral, no-one knows where to get parts for it, and no-one wants to work on it because they have never heard of it before. BUY A DIFFERENT BRAND FROM A DIFFERENT VENDOR!
