Charge 6 Stopped Syncing

[Ghost78]

My Charge 6 stopped syncing this morning.  It has always synced just fine and I had no problems until this morning.  (As a note, I do not keep my Bluetooth on all the time.  I usually turn it on and sync about three times a day.)  I always sync first thing in the morning, and it just would not sync this morning.  I went through all the troubleshooting steps multiple times, and still it would not sync.  Finally decided to uninstall and reinstall the Fitbit app (which I really didn't want to do, knowing it would require re-pairing).  To no great surprise, after reinstalling, it now won't pair either.  When trying to get it to pair after the reinstall, it continues to give the same message: "There was an error while trying to bluetooth pair your device.  Would you like to try again?"   
I contacted support via chat, and the rep said that it's a known issue that the app is having difficulties with syncing data, etc. right now, and that they are working on it.  But I feel like if it was really a widespread issue and no one could sync/pair today, then this forum would already have a lot more people complaining that they can't sync and the Fitbit Reddit sub would be blowing up as well.  So I don't know what to think.  Is anyone else having issues syncing today?
For reference, I have an Android phone... not sure if that matters. 

[stellow]

How did you do that?

Sent from Outlook for Android<>

[JimC_99]

Not a recommended method - your phone needs to allow side loading of files.  It bypasses the standard download mechanism through the store.  You also need to turn off auto update or the Play Store will just update to their version. 

[JJOL123]

I am also having trouble, I unpaired and removed and reinstalled on my android. Now my charge 6 will not pair. How long will this issue take to resolve. Please respond, thanks.

[Ghost78]

Unfortunately, judging by other posts, Fitbit Support does not seem to monitor these community threads and it's doubtful they will respond. There are many people having issues syncing/pairing at this point, and it's clearly a problem with the most recent update (4.28). The only current fix is to sideload an older version (like 4.26) from a third party website. I really don't want to have to do that, and none of us should have to do that just to have a functional device. They need to just release a new update to fix the syncing/pairing issue that *they created* with the most recent update.
Everyone who is having issues syncing/pairing after the update needs to keep contacting Support so that they know that there's absolutely an issue with the app, and it's causing problems for a lot of people, not just a random few they can ignore.

[JJOL123]

Thanks, I have had an online conversation with them, they said they are aware of the problem and told me to wait a few days, appalling customer service, if it persists I shall contact a consumer program we have in the UK.

[AndyKB]

I contacted support too who advised it was an emerging issue. Have
installed old version of app and all now working again but that shouldn't
be necessary.

[Ghost78]

I ended up doing the same (installing an older version), but yes, it shouldn't be necessary.  I will not update again via Google Play until I'm sure they've released a new version that isn't borked. 

[SoSusan]

Thanks for your post, I thought it was me.  Sync problem for last 4 days.

[RobinHoodRiver]

Thanks, Ghost78, for this success story!  How do you install an older version of fitbit app on an android, asking for a friend?  ... Robin

[RiekoC]

Thank you for letting us know that rolling back to an earlier version of the app resolved the syncing issue. I've shared this information on my inquiry.

[Bit10]

With what they charge for Premium, & all of the past experiences I've had with their customer support over the years across so many bugs they never fixed, I have pretty much zero interest in contacting them further. Given that this issue essentially locks me out of using my Charge even just for keeping time & is now a true "pebble" (in the sense of being an overpriced paperweight) until they fix it (or I continue playing the game of uninstalling, reinstalling, sourcing old datafiles, etc.), I don't see much reason to stay within the ecosystem & will probably be looking at other heartrate monitor solutions.

I don't think this is acceptable service from a company as large as Google, either on their development end (which seems to have not only failed to test before deploying, but also in realizing & repairing their mistake) or their customer support (which largely just ignores customers & points at outdated FAQs that put the onus on the customer to spend 30+ min on troubleshooting steps like power cycling). I don't believe they're concerned about satisfaction & am still sore that they're more focused on trying to sell YouTube Premium with their latest hardware "upgrades" while their software (incl. firmware) continually goes downhill. If it's still broken in a week, I'm just going to put in a request for a refund on my Fitbit Premium subscription & never look back.

[stellow]

We shouldn't have to roll back to an old update, the new updates should
work straight away.

[JeffreyGriff]

How do download an earlier version of the app?

I have tried to download from a site and Google would not allow the
download.

Thanks

[JimC_99]

I use APeeKayMirror (the fitbit website has a block on the extention).  Your phone needs to be setup to allow sideloading.

[johneightball]

I am having the same issue, but yesterday it seemed to work just fine as far as showing data, just didn't sync with App. Now today my Charge 6 has all the data just not syncing. Have tried numerous times to reset???

[Bit10]

The reason the extension is wordfiltered is because people who don't know what they're doing can easily sideload malware onto their device. That's very much not trivial as many people are also logging into the app with their Google account, so it can be a huge security opening.

This is what support sent to me after a very long wait:

    "Please update your Fitbit app to the latest version (4.28.1) since there is a new release that is slowly rolling out to all our Fitbit customers."

Unfortunately, I am still on 4.28 and Google Play will not detect that there are any newer updates available, so perhaps this "slow roll out" will be available to me tomorrow. Here's hoping they not only properly fix this, but apologize (though I doubt the latter).

[Coucharmer]

I also have the same problem as everyone else, I also rely on my fitbit for monitoring my health issues and it is very scary for me not to have this information when it is not able to sync with the app. 

I noticed playstore for me says fitbit 4.28 is only available atm so I guess we just have to keep checking for the update!

[Ghost78]

@Bit10  Yes, they told me the exact same thing... that there's a new release that's slowly rolling out to customers.  The problem is that I worry the "new" release they're talking about is actually the recently-released 4.28 version that's problematic for many of us.  I could tell the people I chatted with weren't really knowledgeable and were just using the scripts they'd been given.  We'll see in the coming days if an actual newer version gets released. 

And yes, there are risks involved with sideloading apps from third parties, which is why I won't give instructions how to do it. If people already know or figure it out, that's up to them.  I'm not a fan of doing it myself, but I'm also an extremely impatient person... I'm just not patient enough to have a non-working app while Google fiddles around for a fix. 

[Bit10]

I think they are actually rolling out a patch, as they kept trying to ask me for more info before I checked-out of wanting to do any more troubleshooting for them & they signed-off with:

    "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. I have raised your case with our designated team and will continue to coordinate with you via email once the update is available."

I'm less upset about this individual issue & more that it's part of a longer chain that doesn't seem to have a lot of accountability. I suspect that individual employees are probably trying their best & that it's bad process + management that's screwing things up, which I hope they actually do some kind of a post-mortem on. I'm willing to put up with a few days of outage if there's clear communication & a desire to improve whatever led to it happening so it doesn't recur. I don't think we'll hear much about whatever got done on their end other than a new update on the Play Store.

[Bit10]

Still no update so I asked the rep if there was any estimate on the timing of the rollout, mentioning that I didn't feel great about paying for a service that I couldn't access, and they stopped responding. I then attempted to talk to another rep who refused to speak with me, instead rudely closing the conversation. I've yet to review their refund policy for Premium so I don't know what kind of outcome to expect if it comes to that, but something to think about for others who may be considering signing up or renewing.

I can make do without Premium but I'm salty that I'm:

• missing calls because I'm used to feeling my wrist vibrate
• unable to check my heartrate so I'm holding off on working out
• unable to track my sleep (I have some serious health issues that radically alter my schedule & this is very important for)
• have to wear a different watch altogether just to be able to use any timekeeping features

It seems a pretty serious design flaw that the device can't at least be used in a watch mode while it's unpaired, and instead gets effectively bricked (even if temporarily) whenever Google screws up & doesn't immediately rollback to fix it. imo they should either change that limitation for future instances or adopt a policy of rolling back their own update when this happens, rather than forcing people to wait for days while they code a non-broken patch. I also have a Charge 5 that's also effectively been a paperweight for the past year because they don't allow you to have more than one tracker at a time paired. I think it's really egregiously problematic if they think that's an okay business practice.

It's bad enough to lose out on the cost of the watches. I got a Charge 5 (~$200 CAD) that I was very satisfied with but only had for a few months before Google acquired the company then revamped the ecosystem. The 5 then got a lot of bugs, bad ones breaking a lot of features I was using. I thought if I got the Charge 6 (~$157 CAD, while it was on sale) when it newly released that that might fix some of the issues, but it did not. I also got their sports wristband (~$37 CAD) because I think the stock band is uncomfortable, also a Premium subscription (~$110 CAD) that I had previously cancelled, but was auto-billed for because of the new Charge 6 renewing me on a 'free trial.' These are not trivial costs for me, as I cannot work due to disability and have a very low income. Their parent company has a market cap of nearly $3 trillion CAD. That their support reps now won't even respond is pretty tough for me to forgive. Their customer service has not tried to make any of this right & I don't feel I can trust the company any further.