Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased this mower based on the good reviews, and the fact that my old, 20 year old mower, was burning oil and generally not performing as well as I'd like it. Personally, I'm a big fan of electric motors and other battery run items for the home (as opposed to gas), not for any green environmental reason, but because they tend to be much easier to maintain, and can be better for a given application than a gas driven motor. Since I have a relatively small lawn, this seemed like a good purchase. I received the mower, unpacked it, and charged it up per the directions with no problems. Tried out all the accessories, and they were easy enough to put on and take off. Went out and mowed the lawn. My impressions were that the motor generated more than enough torque to do the job. It was a little heavy for moving around, and I personally did not like the start lever -- it felt cheap and loose to me. I would have preferred that the start level be a bit more solid. Compared to the old mower (even with the old mower having a sharpened blade) it did a fairly nice job with the lawn. After finishing, I cleaned the unit off, and plugged the unit in to recharge, initially, it seemed to be working correctly. I went out to do some trimming, and when I returned, I noticed the charger flashing a red light at me (which I assume means there was a problem, it wasn't detailed in the manual as to what exactly it means). Overnight, it failed to charge the battery, so I called the provided number, talked to some people who didn't really seem to know what they were doing, and eventually was told to bring it to location x for service. I bring it over there and drop it off. During the next three weeks, nothing can get accomplished. Essentially, the people at location x have to call the Earthwise people to get the parts to perform warrantee work, except the Earthwise people never seem to respond. I talked with the owner of location x, and he said that it was always like that with Earthwise. I called another location from the Earthwise web site (nearby) and they essentially said the same thing. Fortunately, I was lucky and still had the old mower to do mowing with. I ended up returning this to Amazon as defective, as, even if it could be fixed, I wouldn't want to be relying on this product as my sole mower, based on the repair experience. Heck, even I can take apart a lawn mower gas engine and repair most things in a day (assuming I can find any part I might need.) Grass doesn't stop growing while your mower is in the shop, and three weeks+ would have been a debacle if this were my only mower! Again, my issues aren't with the mower itself, just that if it should break, you will probably have difficulty getting it repaired quickly, and I can't recommend the mower (or any Earthwise product) based on that. If you do get the mower, one thing that I did discover was that if you remove the battery pack, it makes the rest of the mower much easier to handle (such as for unpacking, or lifing into the back of a vehicle for transport, or lifting back into the box to send back :-) ). I did like the design where the battery was self enclosed, and simply plugs into the mower.