If the price of entry to this sport were only in the range of Robust or Oneway or Vicmarc, many of us would not be participating at all. That hurts every turner. Someday, maybe I'll own a Oneway.....
However, I think 4 years is far too short for the money spent, even on off-shore makes. Production turning, that would be a different matter altogether. When I was buying I seriously wanted to buy the Laguna. Beautiful looking machine with nice features.... on the surface. But then I kept seeing all these issues, and I doubt that the total number of units sold was very high. That scared me away. They have some work to do on the quality control front, IMO - a bit of a crap shoot with them. So I went with Grizzly instead, reasoning that while there were some issues in early models, the number of units sold by that big "retailer" was likely very high. Meaning the percentage of units with issues was probably very small. Besides, most of the issues reported were design flaws, not inferior parts. Most of those were designed out in newer models, like mine. And I can buy 3 of my lathe for the cost of a single Oneway. Still, I think overall the Laguna lathes are good, as are lathes from Powermatic, Jet, Nova, and Rikon. Harvey is a relatively new player that is likely quite good too. Time will tell on them.
To the OP, good luck with the bearing replacement, if that is the problem. It's not that big of a deal, cost wise, and you'll learn a thing or two about your lathe along the way.