Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
See, that's the kind of junk I'm talking about when I say there's meetings discussing how to save a few cents on a product since the customer won't immediately see the need. Of course, a line must be drawn on cost, features, durability, etc, but it drives me nuts as a consumer when I see that my life with a product could be made way better if the company had spent the extra 5 cents, and even charged me 50 cents more.
Rather than tout a product as "maintenance free", simply put in the drain plug, and advertise that the competitors "maintenance free" won't hold up as long.
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This decision was a bit more complicated than that. John Deere used to make a private label mower that was sold in Home Depot. When they decided to paint that mower green and yellow to draw on the brand equity they ran into resistance from their dealer network. Basically the dealers didn't want to work on low end junk and people that pay $1500 for a riding mower don't expect to pay AG dealer rates for service. The "answer" to the problem was to make the low end mowers "maintenance free". Since the transaxle was no longer serviceable why not save some money by removing the drain plugs?
The problem is that people that want to take care of their mower and do proper maintenance now have to remove the transaxle from the mower to change the oil.
John Deere's decent riders start with the X-Series