Funny thing about Forums, you will see all the nastiness about any subject. Just like selling by word of mouth, seldom do people speak about how well they were treated, serviced or prices given. However, people normally speak about their bad experiences almost exclusively. For every one good experience with a particular product or sales company you'll hear bad a hundred times.
Point being, you may have seen 20 folks have negative statements about any particular brand, but, they say it hundreds of times. Unlike a fist fight, you kick the shyte out of each other, its over with and go grab a soda or a beer and get back to work.
For every reported problem with any one brand or model mower on this forum, there are hundreds of thousands units out there that have never experienced anything other than operator abuse. A person that doesn't treat their mowers like a four wheel drive mud buggy is irritated when they experience a fail. However, it is a machine, machines have failures. Raptor doesn't have an excessive amount of failures greater than any other brands.
I subscribe to run'em like you stole'em, if you break it, fix it. I suggest you all do the same.
Let the good times roll!
Max