Aria usage feedback

[Ukase]

With bare feet, the scale seems to work as expected. But, I can't figure out why it won't give a weight reading when I step on it wearing shoes. 
I don't always need a bodyfat% reading, but I do want to see my weight when I'm dressed for reasons of my own. You seriously can't expect people to take their shoes off every time - are you? 

If so, I will send this back to you and get a better scale.

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[USAF-Larry]

Interesting question, @Ukase. Don't know the answer, but I personally would not weigh myself on my Aria 2 scales while wearing shoes. I would be concerned about scratching the glass and damaging the sensors that measure body resistance.  Besides, the extra 2 pounds for the shoes would mess up my weight trend line....   

[LZeeW]

@Ukase  Could you be more specific about what happens?  Does the scale not come on at all?  Are you getting an error code?  Does it read you as a GUEST, because your weight with shoes is different enough from your weight in bare feet that it doesn't recognize you?  Do you get an image of a head with a question mark in it, another symbol that your scale isn't recognizing you?

I think a little more information might help troubleshoot your problem.

[Ukase]

Larry - if standing on a scale with shoes on would have a negative impact on the scale, then the scale is the wrong scale for me. 

I am a numbers nerd, dork, geek - whatever you want to call it. 

I wake up - weigh myself in bare feet. No problems. 

After a workout, breakfast and a shower, I'll weigh myself again, just to see how much fluid I might need to drink to re-hydrate. 

After lunch, since I know how much my shoes/shorts/shirt weigh, I like to see if I've had enough fluids. The notion that the scale can't tell me my weight - that's a problem for me. 

Yesterday, however, the scale functioned properly, gave me my weight and a ? on the body fat reading. I'm fine with that. 

This morning, however, there was a great deal of variance in the readings. 
I lose 3#'s of sweat from the workout, but somehow gain 3% body fat? That's over a 6# of fat increase from burning  800 calories. I know that with bio-impedence, the more dehydrated you are, the less accurate the reading is. I would have thought that with the price of the scale (only 100 more than every other scale that does the same thing, just won't log to Fitbit for you) they would have improved the technology to account for such things. They haven't. They're using the same 20 year old technology, and dress it up with some uploading of data to the website for us. 

I'll use it as a baseline for the morning readings, as it was a gift, but man, what an over-priced scale it is. Not very happy, given the humongous price tag.

I stepped on the scale, and it gave me an ERROR message. Simple as that. 

Strangely enough, when I come out of the shower, and weigh myself again, my weight remains the same, yet my body fat % drops by 2-3%. I attribute this to my feet being slightly damp. So basically, the scale has no way of actually calculating body fat. It doesn't do what it's supposed to do. I can work with that though. I just have to weigh myself under the same conditions. The point is, I shouldn't have to. I should be able to step on the scale, shoes or not, and it should tell me how much I weigh. Simple as that. 

I know that body fat scales are just a marketing gimmick and are pretty much as worthless as knowing how much you weigh, when it comes to determining if you're losing fat, as opposed to lean tissue and water. Bio-impedence sounds good in theory, but in practice, it's just without value to me. 

But to get an error message - after I've dropped 50 pounds...that's really insulting. 

What's really worse is that this post has been here for over a week, and nobody from Fitbit has apologized or offered to replace or refund the product. They always leave all the work to the customer.