Stopped displaying exercise HR in app

[Welzy]

I’ve noticed the last two times I’ve been for a run that there is no Heart Rate data logged against the exercise despite the HR working on the Charge 5 itself. 

I’ve restarted the device a number of times and checked I’ve got the latest firmware but still nothing!

Has anybody else had this issue?

[DavideFitbit]

Hi, welcome to the Fitbit Community forums, @Welzy. 

Thank you for sharing all these details about the inconvenience you've been having with your Charge 5 and for confirming that you already tried a few troubleshooting steps. 

I've been informed that you already contacted the Customer Support team for further assistance with this. In this case, they will let you know how to proceed. 

Have a good day. 

[Opie53]

…..your answer may have helped others?

[Welzy]

Well after an hour back and forth with Fitbit chat support I got absolutely nowhere. I was made to feel like I was telling lies! Here’s the story so far…..

For a long while now (well over 2 years) I have started and finished my run via the Fitbit exercise app on my iPhone (the support agent referred to this as MobileRun??). In this time I have had an Alta HR and most recently a Charge 5. By starting and stopping my run this way I get the announcement of distance, pace and time duration at each Km plus the accuracy of the phones GPS. Additionally the app has ALWAYS pulled my Heart Rate data from the tracker and displayed and logged it with the exercise….

That was until somewhere between 12th and 22nd February 2022 where I no longer get the HR data with my run when using this method. The agent refused to believe HR could ever have been logged this way and insisted the only way to have it logged with the exercise was by instigating the run on the Charge 5 itself or by the Charge 5 auto-recognising the exercise (they referred to this as SmartTrack??).

On my run today I instigated the run on the Charge 5 and it worked as it should but I didn’t obviously get the announcements and can’t easily see the distance data (as I don’t wear my glasses when running) plus there was a 250m discrepancy in distance from my usual finish point??? I find this unusual as the Charge 5 was set up to use iPhone GPS so I would expect the distance to correlate to that of my usual way of logging the exercise - through the Fitbit app…

Any help from the community would be greatly appreciated because quite honestly I found Fitbit support very frustrating and that they were reading from an irrelevant script rather that understanding the actual information I was explaining to them!

[brandon05w]

You summed it all up in your last sentence. It does feel that they read from a script and dismiss the information we provide. I have been back/forth with them regarding GPS issues and it's the same thing every time. Wear your watch loose and don't exercise under trees or near tall buildings. Maybe, just maybe it's the actual product Fitbit!!!