Loss of synced steps

[jthiker]

I am losing great confidence in FitBit.  After a couple of months of the trackers (Blaze and or Charge HR - I have both) not syncing periodically today the weekly report shows a loss of steps that were specifically synced.  I have been making a point of syncing every couple of days because the phone app doesn't seem to do it.  Saturday evening after 12K plus steps I synced and both trackers and the app showed the steps.  Today I receive the weekly statistic report and see that I lost over 6K of steps for Saturday and who knows how many on other days.  The online stats are not correct either so It's not a report issue. 

Anyone else have this problem recently. 

Ready to move to another company. 

[Belindawilli]

Yes! Had around 8000 steps at 12:30 and now Fitbit is only showing around 2000!! Is there anyway for this to be corrected??

[PureEvil]

@jthikerand @Belindawilli,

In my experience, there are typically one of two reasons why folks 'lose' steps:

• They have two trackers paired to their account and are not ultra disciplined about how they wear it and how they're synced.
• They depleted the battery on their Fitbit and started to use it before syncing.

Allow me to explain...

Two trackers:  Just for reference, this is the article on multiple trackers.  If you have two trackers paired to your account Fitbit (like say... a Blaze and a Charge HR), then you have to be ultra disciplined about how you wear them (which is to say never register activity on both at the same time) and sync both and in the correct order (first sync the one you're removing, then sync the one you're putting on).  I have 3-4 trackers paired to my account and never lose steps, but I'm meticulous about syncing.

They advise: "For best results, do not wear more than one tracker at a time and sync each tracker before taking it off and putting on another."

Note:  If you carry one with you to the gym while wearing the other, this will likely register activity on both, so that may be the source of your grief.

If you happen to register activity on two trackers (including carrying it in a gym bag, purse, or backpack), it's anyone's guess which activity Fitbit is going to take.

@jthiker, if you use one tracker significantly more than the other, I'd consider removing the other from your account to see if this still occurs.  I believe that it won't.

Depleted battery: Fitbit trackers are like wall clocks...  They track time happily while they have power and stop when they don't.  However, when they have power again (you charge them), they continue to keep time right where they left off.  In other words, let's say that you depleted your battery yesterday around 8am, you got home and started charging it around 7pm.  Your Fitbit still thinks that it's 8am, so it's 11 hours behind.  What's more important about this is that any steps that you register after that will also be 11 hours behind.  So if you finally synced at 12:30pm, up until that moment, it thought that it was 1:30am, and your 2000 steps will have registered between 12am and 1:30am (before the time was corrected).

The moment you sync it'll correct the time, but those steps will still be credited to the wrong time.  If you happened to have depleted your battery, simply make sure you sync your Fitbit before you start to use it.

I hope this helps.

[jthiker]

Thank you for your response but neither of your 'causes' apply to my losing
of steps. I am now meticulous about syncing due to the Fitbit app not
syncing on it's own. I synced both trackers on Saturday evening and made
sure both trackers had the same number of steps and other statistics. As
well I made sure the dashboard reflected the statistics present on the
trackers. Also, both trackers were charged prior to the syncing.

Appreciate the input but in my case it does not solve the error of Fitbit.

[jthiker]

Thank you for your response but neither of your 'causes' apply to my losing
of steps. I am now meticulous about syncing due to the Fitbit app not
syncing on it's own. I synced both trackers on Saturday evening and made
sure both trackers had the same number of steps and other statistics. As
well I made sure the dashboard reflected the statistics present on the
trackers. Also, both trackers were charged prior to the syncing.

Appreciate the input but in my case it does not solve the error of Fitbit.

[PureEvil]

@jthiker,

While this is all fair, but allow me to frame it differently.

Let's say your lawn is getting too much water, it's gotten to the point where it's muddy and you can't even walk on it.  This is the symptom.  There could be a number of causes, which might include...  A lot of recent rain or you left the sprinklers for too long.  You can't really control the first, you should be able to control the second.

The loss of steps is a symptom, not the cause.  While I can understand your frustration, in order for Fitbit to fix the issue, they need to know the cause, not the symptom.  Personally, I still think it's a multi-tracker problem.

One of the reasons why I suggested removing the least used tracker from your account, is to narrow down whether it's a multi-tracker issue.  If the problem goes away, then it's a bug with parsing activity from multiple trackers.  There are other ways you can narrow it down:

1. Look at your daily and weekly stats from your activities page.  You may capture screenshots and paste them into a document (or OneNote) with your personal notes.
2. Verify that they're what you expect before and after syncing each tracker.  I'd be willing to bet that your 'loss' of steps occurs after syncing one particular tracker.

It may be as simple as one of your trackers is registering activity (by Fitbit's multi-tracker algorithm) when it's not worn and you may simply get Fitbit to send you a replacement, but they can't really determine that until they know the cause.

I hope this helps.