I'm sure it does. And maybe getting one of these is like buying produce at a discount grocery store (quality control on parts all over the place ranging from total crap to pretty decent)

Most people that bring me these types of bikes to fix don't even lube their chains, so by the time they bring them to me to ask for help fixing them, practically nothing works. Gear and brake cables all seized up. Loose gravelly headsets. Wheels so wobbly on gravelly hubs it's nuts. They ride way better after I work on them and the people are very happy, but the best I can do still leaves the bike in condition that I personally wouldn't want to ride it more than a couple miles at a time. No one who's asked me for help has the skills that wphamilton has, so I don't find it difficult to believe that his cheap ride works better than any of theirs.

There will still be issues on dealing with cost cutting that they do. For example, doesn't it have twist shifters with a plastic shift mechanism? And I assume the brakes are of the variety where you have to put in whole new shoes rather than just replacing the pads. Once you get past a certain point (which is not even that high), it would cost enough to get it up to scratch that I'd just get a different bike. Again, I haven't specifically worked on a Denali.