Fitbit Blaze lifespan

[BriV]

I have a Blaze for 14 months now. It started playing up a week ago - the left hand side button is not working and my screen is stuck in sub-menus. I can scroll up and down but I can't go up a level and scroll left and right.

I contacted fitbit support. They offered advise in the lines of "clean around the button" with a toothpick. My unit is just out of warranty (2 months over) . However you would expect a better lifespan from a brand that is in the higher end of the market - there are Chinese replicas around for a fraction of the price. 

I am rather upset as fitbit support is not offering any maintenance/ repair options as I have purchased original authentic product, but not from their authorised re-sellers in Australia. 

Any advice?

Moderator edit: Updated subject for clarity

[FerdinandFitbit]

Hi there @BriV. Great to see you in the Fitbit Community Forums! 🙂

I'm sorry to hear that your Blaze has been acting up and thanks a lot for getting in touch with the Support Team for assistance.

Now, when it comes to the warranty, it is of 24 months for Australia, so if you purchased the tracker there, you should be covered still. The only problem I see is that you mention you purchased the tracker from an unauthorized re-seller which may create conflict at the moment of claiming the warranty where there's not much else that can be done.

If you have any other question, feel free to let me know and I'll be happy to help you out!

[BriV]

Hi,

I purchased an authentic product in good faith from a legitimate online shop in Australia. 

I was experiencing long going problems with Fitbit Flex (remember that disaster of a product?) and I was talking to fitbit support for a long time. The Flex was purchased from Dick Smith, who then went into receivership so I couldn't get proper care either. The support team convinced me that the Blaze is going to be such a better experience - they neglected to even mention about authorised and unauthorised dealers. 

I have now logged a complaint with ACCC as I believe I acted as a reasonable person in good faith. Australian consumer laws are rather explicit around warranty and post-warranty obligations of manufacturers. In the instance of "unauthorised" reseller- I feel fitbit is not making any effort to create customer awareness and to stop this practice. How does a reseller get the product - obviously these are authentic trackers, not fakes. They are advertised and sold openly on ebay. Ebay has a very responsive team following on authenticity and global marketing segregation of products - I am sure if Fitbit has contacted them, the items would've been removed from the site.

So all in all, I am very disappointed. I should have learnt from my fitbit Flex experience that the products are not reliable. And should have gone for a Chinese replica - at least I would have expected the lack of warranty support.