My experience with Charge 5 and Customer Service

[C5sadface]

Before I tell my sad story, I want to emphasize that I love(d) my Charge 5. I've been using FitBit products for 8 years, and they have been my friends on my quest to be healthy and lose weight. But now I've reached my limit and I'm looking at alternative trackers/smart watches.

I purchased a Fitbit Charge 5 on 9/23/2021. 9 months later it stopped working. It was bricked. Blank screen, would not reset when the charge cable button was pressed three times. No longer connected to the app on my Samsung Galaxy S22 smart phone via Bluetooth.

I Called Fitbit and they sent me a replacement. Yay! 6 months later, within a couple days of the last firmware update, it stopped working. Same problem. The replacement Charge 5 was bricked.

I Called Fitbit once more and they said that they would send me an E-mail with their decision on what, if anything that they would do to remedy the situation. I never heard back from them. Only an automated survey to ask how well they helped me.

I still had the original charge 5 that had died in 2022 so I tried plugging it in to the charger just to see what would happen. It was at 0% but it started to charge. It still showed the date and time when it died but seemed to be working again. After it was fully charged, I paired it to the phone. The date and time updated and it was working OK. Yay, my friend was back. 🙂

5 days later the screen stopped responding to my touch (it was stuck on the watch face screen) but the rest of the device seemed to be working. I tried using the charge cable button to reset it but it did not reset. The app was still communicating with it and the App was bugging me to do a firmware update. So I took a chance and let it do the update. That got it working again.

I used it for another day and overnight it stopped working again. It was bricked. Blank screen, would not reset when the charge cable button was pressed three times. No longer connected via Bluetooth.

So I called Fitbit again and this time they told me that they would not replace it, or give me a credit towards a new one, because they had already replaced it once.

My take on the situation is that there is a firmware problem with the Charge 5 that causes it to stop responding. Letting it sit for a few weeks until the battery is completely dead will do a hard reset on the CPU inside the Fitbit. At that point it will take a charge and start working again. Since there is no other way to perform a hard reset, a firmware bug can brick the device until the battery is completely discharged. Since the device is not being used, it takes a very long time for the battery to fully discharge.

If you have a bricked Charge 5 that has been sitting in a drawer for a month or more, try charging it again and see if it recovers. Post your results and lets see if this recovery method is repeatable...

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[baclava]

Mine died too after a year.  After a less-than-great (mostly waste of time for both of us) experience trying to troubleshoot with a chat rep (which basically meant going through all the stuff I'd already tried all over again), they finally agreed with me that it was dead.  I know I mentioned I had bought the extended warranty to the rep, and they forwarded it on to whatever box replacement requests go.  Got this email: 

---

Thank you for chatting with us today about your Charge 5 that was showing red x on the screen.

Upon checking, we noticed that you have already past {sic} the 1 year warranty and your product doesn’t meet the replacement requirements of our warranty policy. For details about our warranty policy, see fitbit.com/returns.

You can learn more about the latest options in the Fitbit family of products at www.fitbit.com/compare and fitbit.com/store.
 
If you have additional questions about your Fitbit device or services, visit help.fitbit.com.

Sincerely,

---

Which...ok...not at all suspicious that the device dies 1 month after the standard US warranty.  But, I did get a response, after replying that I bought the extended 2 year warranty, directing me to the actual people I ultimately needed to talk to: squareTrade/Allstate.  Waiting to see how that goes and like you, I'll let my old device slowly bleed out and see if it possibly, maybe recovers (again, I tried all the reset, re-sync, etc steps on troubleshooting). 

Overall though, not a great experience and definitely does not make me feel confident about ever buying a fitbit again, which is a bummer because I really love the device when it works :[   

[SunsetRunner]

Owned the Charge 5 for more than a year and never really had a problem with it. However, since last week, everytime I unplug it from the charger, it will always die and battery will go back to 1% when I connect it back to the charger.

It's useless for a couple of days now. And all troubleshooting given by customer support were tried to no avail. So Fitbit just offered 35% discount without telling me exactly what's wrong and the solution. 

To me that is unacceptable. It seems that Fitbit knows about this glitch in their products and just crossing fingers that consumers will let it go and buy again with a discount with them for more revenue.

Hell no. I will never buy Fitbit again as they never gave any assurance that this problem won't ever happen again in any of their products.

[Onedayofpeace]

Similar story here. 2 months outside of a 1 year warranty and out of nowhere my Charge 5 bricks. Will not turn the screen on, all reset attempts failed. 

Called support and they won't do anything besides 35% off a new product. There's no way I'm buying another Fitbit product after seeing how immovable customer support is and how many other people have a very similar experience. Also wild how Europe gets a 2 year warranty. 

[manutudescends]

I leave in France and I changed 5 Times my charge 5. I love it but it's a shame what Fitbit is doing. "Boulanger", a french  reseller tell me they will stop selling Fitbit product because Fitbit refuse to reimburse them for products with software issues. So now I m not able to find a charge 5 to replace my defective one.

[SunsetRunner]

 my experience almost exactly. Spent several days researching and trouble shooting and finally about a half hour on Fitbit support chat. Unable to help, Said my warranty no longer applies. Even though a mostly blank screen I was able to download and install new firmware. Now that battery discharged from 100% to 30% in just a couple hours. This tracker is rife with problems, but the tech people never acknowledged this. It really had soured me on Fitbit although I loved the tracker while it worked for about a year. Sadly, i bought another last night before i found out that updating the firmware is when most of these problems begin. And I understand you CAN'T prevent new firmware from installing. I'm really torqued.