Charge 5 battery issues- 2nd time a device stop working 2 months after the warranty expires

[Csanders1012]

I have been a happy Fit Bit customer since 2016. Started with the Charge 2. When it was misplaced while removed at an amusement park, I happily purchased another Charge 2. Three months after the warranty ended for the newly purchased Charge 2, the battery stopped charging. I reached out to customer service, they were not able to honor the warranty since it had passed, which I understood and to my surprise, they were able to provide a 30% discount for a new Fit Bit purchase as a courtesy. Great. I took them up on their offer and purchased a Charge 5. Three months into owning the Charge 5, the battery stopped charging, I reached out and it was replaced under warranty. Now I am having battery issues again and I am 2 months out of my warranty period. I reached out to customer service and since I am out of warranty, they offered the same 30% discount for a new fit bit purchase. I feel let down by Fit Bit. I purchased 3 devices from them, had battery issues with 2 out of 3 and my only recourse is to continue buying a product that doesn't even last me a year and a half. At first I thought the offered discount was good customer service and a way to retain me as a customer, now I feel as though Fit Bit is aware of their faulty batteries and offer the discount as a way to avoid accountability for a faulty product and want consumers to purchase new devices each year once it inedibility fails again. I love the app, loved the devices, and would recommend the device to anyone who asked me about it as I truly believed in the product. I am saddened that I no longer will be a customer moving forward because I can't trust that the device will actually last outside of the warranty period. 

[Surfista · Accepted solution]

I would suggest you keep your failed charge 5 and any records you have. I am hopeful that at some point the company will have to refund the purchase price to all of us who have experienced this same product failure multiple times. If they do, we will probably need to return the defective devices to get our money back.

[Csanders1012]

Three months after the warranty ended for my Charge 2, the battery stopped charging. I reached out to customer service, they were not able to honor the warranty since it had passed, which I understood and to my surprise, they were able to provide a 30% discount for a new Fit Bit purchase as a courtesy. Great. I took them up on their offer and purchased a Charge 5. Three months into owning the Charge 5, the battery stopped charging, I reached out and it was replaced under warranty. Now I am having battery issues again and I am 2 months out of my warranty period. I reached out to customer service and since I am out of warranty, they offered the same 30% discount for a new fit bit purchase. I feel let down by Fit Bit. I purchased 3 devices from them, had battery issues with 2 out of 3 and my only recourse is to continue buying a product that doesn't even last me a year and a half. At first I thought the offered discount was good customer service and a way to retain me as a customer, now I feel as though Fit Bit is aware of their faulty batteries and offer the discount as a way to avoid accountability for a faulty product and want consumers to purchase new devices each year once it inedibility fails again. I love the app, loved the devices, and would recommend the device to anyone who asked me about it as I truly believed in the product. I am saddened that I no longer will be a customer moving forward because I can't trust that the device will actually last outside of the warranty period. 

[Csanders1012]

I experienced the same dead device post update on my Charge 5 as a lot of others in this forum. Posted about it on another post. Basically this is my 3rd Fit Bit device to have the battery completely die and the 2nd device to suspiciously die (literally both times) within 2 months of the warranty expiring. When my device died again last week after the update, I started my customer service journey with the chat feature, who then emailed a 35% discount. This was unsatisfactory, as this being my 3rd device to experience issues, I felt this was irresponsible of Fit Bit and I was unwilling to throw more money at a device that does not even last 14 months. I then went back to the chat feature and asked to escalate my complaint. The chat rep said he would make a case and I would hear back via email. I received this in response: "With regards to this matter, we see that your device is no longer in the warranty period, and therefore isn’t eligible for replacement. That said, as much as we'd like to give you a replacement, we're unable to do so. Nonetheless, as we do not want to leave you empty handed, we offer the courtesy discount in order to help our customers to reduce the cost of purchasing another device, once these are out of the warranty period, in an effort to keep them within our family". So, basically the same answer as the initial auto generated 35% discount offer. I responded back to this email that this solution was unsatisfactory and explained how this was my 3rd Fit Bit device to have the battery completely die and the 2nd device to suspiciously die within 2 months of the warranty expiring. I expressed my disappointment in the company and mentioned it was suspicious that this same exact issue was mentioned/viewed/commented on over 90,000 times in the Charge 5 Fit Bit Community Forum. I then received an email back with this response: "Upon reviewing your case with the previous representative, we found the interaction where we offered the discount, however, we would like to further investigate about this. 
Please note that the last time your device synced, was 1 day 4 hours ago and the update is still pending, meaning that we are unable to confirm that the battery drains due to the update. Please sync your device and then try to complete the update, if the update is unable to complete, it should show an error message, please take a screenshot of it and attach it to your reply, that will allow us to put it on file and match it with the information that we see on our system.". I responded back with a screen shot of my Fit Bit app that has the last sync time noted as 5:44am this morning and the "update tracker software" option greyed out. I then finally got an email that advised my case was "escalated to Fitbit’s highest level of support" and a "one time exception" replacement was offered. 

It's not the best case scenario, who is to say this device won't experience the same issues within 14 months, but I am at least satisfied I will have a device to use and not have to fork out more money.

I hope this helps anyone who is as fed up as I am with this Charge 5 issue. 

[rikki74]

I've now had the same problem with two devices - one is my wifes, the other is mine, purchased within a month of each other.  One had issues after about 13 months, the other at about 15 months.  

Essentially, the battery in one now lasts less than a day and the other doesn't seem to be able to hold charge at all!  It is still, techically, working, but after changing to 99% (never went beyond that when charging), its now reporting it is dead again a few minutes later.

Not very impressed.  Surely these devices should last more than a year?  But with a 1 year warranty on them, nothing I can do about it.