In my limited experience, no, it was not worth purchasing a John Deere.
In 2004 I bought a new LT180 from Ritchie Tractor in Maryville, TN for $3500. Ritchie is the local JD dealer. The unit I purchased was not one sold by the big box stores.
I used the LT180 only for cutting my yard, which covers about 1/2 acre. Each season I log about 10 hours on the LT180. At the end of the 2008 season (5th season with this mower), it began to go slower, especially on an incline. At this point, I had about 52 hours on the machine. When I started cutting in the spring of 2009, it got worse very quickly, to the point were I could only cut about 300 sq ft of level ground before it would go no further.
I took it back to Ritchie Tracker where I purchased it. They confirmed that a new transmission was required. (It should be noted that all scheduled maintenance has been performed even more often than required and at this time there were only 60 hours on the LT180.) Ritchie told me the charge to replace the transmission would be over $900. Obviously, I was less than happy considering that there were less than 60 hours on my LT180 and the dealer made no offer to offset the full cost. They said I could try to contact John Deere corp for support. Yet when I asked for the contact info, they would not provide it. (I half way expected them to say "I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.") After pointing out the absurdity of this, another person at Ritchie agreed to contact the JD rep and provide them with my contact info. Over the next week, I had to make a couple of more follow up calls to the dealer before the JD rep called me back. After much discussion, they agreed to provide a credit of $300 toward cost of a new tranny, as long as it was done at that JD dealer. So the net cost to me was about $600.
My LT180 has a 48" deck and hydrostatic tranny and cost $3500. My neighbor bought a mower of a different brand with 48" deck and hydrostatic tranny at a cost of $1500. He has had no issues, uses his much more than I use mine, and let me borrow his for the month mine was at the dealer getting the tranny replaced. In hind sight, I made a large mistake buying this Deere.
After much investigation following my initial problems, I found that the Tuff Torq 46 tranny used in the LT, and other lines was not up to the task. It could be that other models without the TT46, may be fine. However, the totally unacceptable experience with Deere precludes me from ever taking a chance with them again. My advice to those who want a Deere is not to buy one with the Tuff Torq 46 tranny or from a dealer where you cannot get good references from someone who has experienced an adverse situation. After all, everyone's nice until there is a problem.
Good luck
paid 50 bux for it.:wink: