Lithium batteries are twitchy beasts. They require carefully controlled initial charge current in phase 1, then carefully controlled voltage to top off in phase 2. They're damaged by overcharging. This is why everything you own with lithium batteries has a charge controller chip designed to do exactly those things. Undoubtedly the blaze has such a chip, or performs similar functions by firmware as a cost saving measure.
In my opinion, the blaze charges the battery, senses it's full, but instead of turning off the charge circuit, continues (over)charging the battery, damaging it a bit each cycle.
In my opinion, if it has a battery charge controller chip, the chip is defective, or it's connected incorrectly (design error), or its full signal is being ignored by the firmware. If it's done in firmware, there may be a bug in the firmware, which would explain some users' complaints the problem manifested after an update.
In my opinion, any normal user will leave the blaze in the charger too long, whether it's 10 minutes or overnight, resulting in some damage to the battery each charge cycle. This is because they don't sit there and watch it charge, then pull it off the charger the instant it displays full. No user should have to do that. If the battery is being damaged a little every charge cycle, that would explain the users who see failures after some months rather than immediately.
In my opinion, this was most likely accidental, but fitbit saw a high rate of warranty returns and devised a way to profit from them. I imagine them saying "gee, so many returns, this is costing us money. Let's recover some of it by selling these defective returned units to QVC, ebay resellers etc as tested/functional." (My reasoning: where else would such resellers be getting those units in quantity but directly from fitbit?) They sell to unsuspecting buyers, most of them (having learned helplessness) just give up, throw it out, buy something else. Fitbit has profited. Some small % complain, and fitbit tries to sell them a new unit at well above wholesale. If it works, more profit for fitbit!
In my opinion, the upright way to handle this is to offer a battery replacement service for some nominal fee, eg $40 (for the $2 wholesale battery plus return postage), but they have not seen fit to do so.
"Customer service" claims fitbit has no repair department. (what??? Oh. They simply resellers of chinese designed product? Maybe) A "repair dept" capable of swapping batteries could consist of one desk with a T3 torx, 000 phillips driver, and a pail of batteries. Once a week someone swaps all the blazes that came in that week at 5-10 minutes each. Done. But they choose not to do that.
In my opinion, they have no intention of addressing this problem so long as the FTC is asleep at the wheel, so nobody is forcing them to do the right thing. IMO the FTC is indeed asleep at the wheel and fitbit will never do the right thing. They're making money from sleazy business practices just within the law, and not getting in trouble, so why should they change?
Short form, either replace the battery, or sell it on fleabay for $20 to someone who will. And never buy any fitbit product new ever again. And tell everyone you know how fitbit supports its products. That's all you can do. Or move to Australia, where fitbit got spanked and told to behave better.
And if you do replace the battery, be aware your blaze is defective in materials and workmanship even if you didn't detect that fact immediately, and never let it charge overnight. Maybe put it in the charger first thing in the morning, and take it out when you're about to head out the door, something like that. It's safer to charge it less than 100% than to let a defective charge circuit damage the battery.
If I get mine running, I think I'll cobble together a gadget that interrupts the usb current after an hour, as a workaround for the design defect.
Just my two cents.
PS: The moment I saw that fitbit wants to charge $100 for a replacement plastic watch band, I should have smelled a rat and never bought anything with their brand on it. Lesson learned. They had to work hard to bring me to this opinion, but they succeeded.
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