Not sure from details given as to where you bought this mower. We see it all of the time though on the internet. Heck I probably did it one time myself. There are thousands of items sold that work great, somebody buys one and for some reason there is a problem and therefore they are supposed to all be junk.
I bet that there is a way to get this warrantied. There are too many of them that run hundreds of hours with zero problem to lump them all into the junk category. Now if you have a dealer that is not a good dealer then that dealer probably won't be in business for long or they would not be in our neck of the woods.