Charge 5 won’t hold a charge

[Randy6470]

I fully charge then leave the house and it’s dead within the hour! Just started happening this week

Moderator edit: format

[Kiume]

It held the charge for maybe 16 hours and then died. Gonna do some more fiddling to see if I can get it to stop bugging out. Otherwise we prolly all have to just wait for a new firmware release 😒

[comdelatorre]

mine just did the same thing. it held a charge for about 18 hours after waiting for it to turn on for two days and is now failing to charge at all. i reached out to customer support and they said i don’t fall under the warranty “yet” so to wait 3-5 days and keep trying and if not to reach back out. i’ll keep everyone updated!

[SunsetRunner]

I've stopped wearing mine. Probably look at a competitor's product soon. This is a lesson for fitbit in how to alienate their customers. Acknowledging the issue inside of giving scripted responses would have gone a long way towards keeping the trust but they'd rather play games and have people replace the products they broke with their firmware update. 

[Marc_SI]

Happened to me a week ago. Don't remember if I did any updates on it, but if one was available, then I must have updated it. My Charge 5 is less than 1 year old, so it's in warranty, plus I payed for extra warranty from the store where I bought it, that the store offers.

Mine charges only to 99% (won't even come to 100%), then it depletes in 1-2 hours.

When I returned the device to the store they said I have to fill a form online. So I did. The claim was denied.

I want a working device! Fix this one, brand new or give me my full money back through the store I bought it from. Such a disgrace that we have to deal with this over forums when our devices are in full warranty.

Moderator edit: format

[Gninoked]

Same here - seems to be some sort of bug.  I'm losing about 3-5% every 5 minutes.  Sometimes it's rebooting itself too.

[comdelatorre]

6/1 update!!

I called customer support directly and discussed my issues with the Fitbit charge 5. After they gave me some troubleshooting instructions, I walked through them with customer support on the phone and nothing ended up working. They said in order to activate the limited one-year warranty on my Fitbit, I had to wait 3 to 5 business days and keep trying to troubleshoot. Well, I waited and still had no success so I called back yesterday and they gave me some additional troubleshooting options that did not work. After they escalated my case, I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with customer support. At the end of our call, they determined that the warranty covered the issue due to abnormal activity and they are issuing me a brand new charge 5 OR 50% off another, newer model. I decided to order the same watch. It will be here in 5 to 10 business days.

I hope this helps!

[Isabel06]

I charged to 100% twice today and it drains and shuts off in less than an hour. Still under a year and with the warranty but nothing has been fixed.  

[ian.pennington3]

Going on other people's posts I think the new one will do exactly the same, let us know if you can how it's going after a few weeks thanks

[Dobbinsj]

I went thru all the steps I could to reduce the updates, battery usage and
then I called them. My watch was only 7 months old so they sent me a new
one. We will see if it, too starts having problems

[ian.pennington3]

Yea let us know about your new charge 5 down the track thanks

[keibri28]

I had the most unhelpful chat with the Fitbit “bot” or whatever it was this morning. This problem started yesterday I thought maybe I didn’t have it on the charger correctly when it died mid morning. Turns out it dies only a few hour after a full charge.

[Dobbinsj]

Call and speak to a customer representative.

[JMikeFoto]

Yep. Dissatisfied with Fitbit reliability. Just canceled my Premium subscription. Not paying for info a faulty device won’t provide.

Customer support got back to me with a 35% discount for a new device as my old one is out of warranty. Frankly, the Garmin Forerunner I have been using for the last two months is more versatile and gives me more information. I’m sticking with it.

[ChrisTowns5401]

Had the same problem. Drains completely in just a few hours. Went through the usual steps. Didn't help. Customer service offered me the 35% coupon toward a new watch since it fell out of the warranty period. Not interested. I only had this watch for 14 months! Been a loyal Fitibit guy for seven years but I'm going to move on. You can't sell shoddy products and expect people to stick with your brand.

[ian.pennington3]

Dead right when are they going to wake up about this faulty charge 5 and discontinue the brand and refund everyone since they were at fault

[keibri28]

Kinda seems like they think if they ignore it it’ll just go away.

[rhyno013]

I have the same issue and it just seemed to start one night after me doing nothing different than any other day.

It's very annoying and has made my Fitbit unusable since a 100% charge will not even last 1 hour.

I have read many of the supposed solutions from Fitbit forums and none do anything, GPS, restart, turn off notifications, etc....

Be nice to find out what is casing the drain and what the solution is.

[Chancellor]

None of the standard troubleshooting steps work if Fit Bit ruins the devices with software updates.  I've just done and reviewed this product on a bunch of different large stores so that hopefully, others will be aware of this big problem.  And I am sure this post will also be removed.

[ReadOnly]

I have the Charge 5 for more than a year now and never had any issues with it in terms of battery. It lasted at least 5 days after a single charge. However, a week ago it started acting strange, turned off in the middle of the exercise and I could only wake it up if I put it on the charger. It is at the point that it cannot even track my sleep as it turns off midnight even though I put it on after charging 100%. Today I charged it to 100% again and just put it on 30 minutes ago and it is now around 50% and I feel it is getting warm. I checked it with a thermal camera, and my skin is 35°C while the back of the watch is above 37°C...
As seeing many people have the same issues even though some people has it only for a few months, it is pretty obvious that this issue is not caused by the battery aging. It is most likely a programming error, probably something stuck in the background draining the battery which weirdly cannot be resolved by just restarting the device, disconnecting from the phone.

I don't remember updating the watch recently, but I think I updated the iOS app, which probably introduced the bug in the watch as well...