Fitbit Coach will become part of Fitbit Premium

[FitbitCommunity]

To the Fitbit Coach community,

Fitbit Coach is now becoming part of Fitbit Premium. Fitbit remains committed to providing all the tools you need to live a healthier, more active lifestyle. To give you more choices for working out as well as the range of additional features check out Fitbit Premium. With the Fitbit Coach workout content now in the Fitbit app, and to allow you to use one app going forward, we’ll shut down the Coach mobile app, Coach website and Coach app on Fitbit smartwatches on July 30, 2021. 

If you’re currently paying for a Coach membership, here’s what you can expect:

• Annual members— you’ll soon receive a prorated refund of the remainder of your Coach membership

• Monthly members— you won’t incur any further monthly membership charges

As an exclusive offer to support Coach members through this transition, if you’re not already a Fitbit Premium member, you can try Fitbit Premium for a full year at no additional cost if you sign up by July 30, 2021. 

To start your Premium trial, make sure you download the Fitbit app and log into your account before you get started (you must use the same email address for Fitbit Coach and the Fitbit app to take advantage of this offer). Then, open the Coach app on your phone and tap the message at the top of the screen to start your Premium trial.

Have questions? Click here for more information.

Thank you for being a loyal Coach member, and we look forward to continuing to support your health and fitness goals. 

[Giampi71]

Hello @amichetti,

Following the disband of Fitbit Coach (that to me was the ONLY selling point of Fitbit Premium at the point that neither myself and my family are going to renew it at the end of the trial period) I've tried numerous solutions:

- Freeletics: way to difficult to me

- Fiton: quite nice, can be used nearly free of charge but it doesn't look much adaptive

- Gymondo: I think it's the one that gives more the feeling to be in a class

- Adidas Training: my 18 years old son used it and got incredible results, I've started recently to use it as well. It's not much fun however, very similar to Freeletics but more progressive.

Other possible options are Sweat (for femaonle only), Pumatrac, Nike Club, Keep Trainer and, let's not forget, if you're an iPhone and Apple Watch user, Apple Fitness Plus.

My dream: Fitbit Coach to become again Fitstar and come back as an independent product. Fitbit, you ruined an excellent application!

[Drrck11]

I cancelled my free trial period as well. 

[Manymangos]

I have been using the exercises in "coach" for 3 years now. I bought the fitbit ionic because of the advertised feature of having a set of simple exercises on my wrist. I bought it at a time when there was no subscription service, just a feature of some simple exercises on the watch with the "coach" feature/app.

With no email to inform me, fitbit have removed the existing fitbit coach application from my watch. They have also I call customer service, who are unable to help beyond the script they have, and apparently fitbit have no escalation process or complaints process I can take.

I fully understand that fitbit may want to evolve their model of premium services for future products, but to take away features from products already sold to their customers is not an experience I am enjoying. I'm not sure of the legal position of what they have done (in the UK) , but does anyone have any ideas if there is any legal recourse that can be taken?

[eilisquinlan]

You don't seem to understand in Fitbit Premium - soe of us still can't ACCESS the workouts such as Full Body!!!

Does anybody in there care?

Will you be brining back the personalised workouts? or do we just cancel and switch providers?

Looking forward to your response,

thanks

E

[DrFrankencopter]

I just switched to Freethletics…it’s more $ than my FitStar rate was, but still a hell of a lot cheaper than a personal trainer.

Some nice things with Freethletics are the ability to add weights to your routine. But the video coaching isn’t as well done as FitStar/Bit coach was. You have to count your own reps and you don’t get audio coaching pointers. I always used to get a laugh when my Fitbit coach would say “If you don’t squeeze your glutes no one else will”. But I can say the workouts are challenging, and I wasn’t seeing that with the FitBit premium app.

[Frinnie]

can you use Freeletics on your computer or only on a phone?

[SSNomad]

I cannot address your issue, but to the question "Does anybody in there care?" I can say that, even if you scroll through all of these pages of complaints, you won't find more than two replies from FitBit, and those are with instructions where a couple people couldn't find something in a menu. 

 So, no. Nobody in there cares. It is the most amazing customer service failure I've ever seen. 

[DrFrankencopter]

I’ve got a theory that they actually want people to drop the service, because it was priced too low.

I bet in a year’s time they re-offer it with some upgraded features and new content, but for a much higher price. I’d bet at around $100-$150/yr. They just need to get rid of us long haulers who’ve been getting all that for $40/yr.

Just a crazy and entirely unsubstantiated theory…but it kinda makes sense. They have all the code/tools, but want to extract the most profit from it.

Or, alternatively, maybe they’ll just keep the base video content, and get their profit by getting rid of the developers/support staff. 

At any rate, it’s pretty clear that their motives don’t have their existing user base as their #1 priority.

[Yige]

You can say that you don't like this step but this is the root of
capitalism. Fitbit didn't promise you to stay "until death do us apart".
Moreover Fitbit belongs to Google. 20 people amongst thousands of
subscribers is not even 1 percent. Just find another service. I have
switched to Fiit.tv. But still use some fitbit premium videos as extra
helpers such as stretching.

And by the way I also used to workout with fitbit coach but what to do.

[CollinM]

---

@Yige wrote:
You can say that you don't like this step but this is the root of
capitalism. Fitbit didn't promise you to stay "until death do us apart".
Moreover Fitbit belongs to Google. 20 people amongst thousands of
subscribers is not even 1 percent. Just find another service. I have
switched to Fiit.tv. But still use some fitbit premium videos as extra
helpers such as stretching.

And by the way I also used to workout with fitbit coach but what to do.

---

Actually they did:

Q: Will current Coach users be required to pay more for access to Premium?

A: No. Current Fitbit Coach subscribers will automatically get access to Fitbit Premium features as soon as Premium is available in their country or language. Their subscription price will remain the same as it is today, and for as long as they choose to keep their subscription active.

---

That is still up in their Fitbit Premium guide.

[SSNomad]

Yes! It is definitely the mismatch between what they led us to expect and what actually happened. They indicated that FitBit Coach features would be available with Premium. A large part of the market for a device/service like FitBit are people like me: not at all into fitness and will take the simplest way to staying fit. This means not having to spend a lot of time doing our own research on fitness plans. Part of the disappointment was not realizing we had to research a whole new way of approaching our fitness. It was an unpleasant surprise with no support from their end. Even if they had made the same shift in service with a more honest approach, it would have been better. It was the surprising disparity between what was expected and what was received plus the total lack of support after that is making most people in this thread angry. 

[Bread_Pitt]

Fitbit really dropped the ball on this one. The person in charge should definitely be without a job for this mess. Apparently I'm not the only one that likes the Fitbit coach app and really feel cheated by replacing it with a collection of YouTube videos. What we have now is something any teenager could throw together with some YouTube links. Bring back the features that were in the Fitbit coach app.

[Manymangos]

I'm not so bothered about it from a capitalism perspective. If google/fitbit want to launch a premium service and charge for it, good for them. What I don't like is them removing the function I had on my fitbit and the scripted call centre responses. Maybe they think this is a way to "encourage" me to join their premium service. Why not wait until the watch I bought needs replacing? You are right I guess, may as well just find another service - but I still bought the watch thinking it had exercises on my wrist - and now I don't!

[Bread_Pitt]

Okay, so Fitbit doesn't care about the coach app and the people that loved to use it. Anyone found another app/platform that is comparable to the Fitbit Coach App? 

[Manymangos]

Well where is the business genius who decided this would be a way to get more revenue? Who is responsible to lose their job? No one knows - no complaint's procedure - only a fitbit community to complain to.

They could have left the basics on but no -

What  I would really want is for some bright hacker to create a dual bootable fitbit where third parties can add their own version  of something like "Fitbit Coach" onto my fitbit. I don't know if this exists but I'd be happy to pay for a one off download like that.

[Manymangos]

Especially a user base of early adopters who helped make google buy them in the first place!

They just don't care!

I hope a third party offers something that can be added onto the fitbit hardware - If anyone knows of such a thing -please share

[Manymangos]

Maybe fitbit/google will decide that the watch feature is no longer needed - and that you have to pay a subscription for "premium plus " to tell the time?

[Manymangos]

Thanks for some other options -

Can any of these be put onto my existing fibit watch or is it all on phone?

[ssangani]

I reached out to Fitbit customer support multiple times about refund for my premium subscription. Each time I got a generic message saying since the payment was through app store they can't really help me and have to reach out to Google. The Google customer rep was very kind and processed my refund. Google rep explained to me that they only manage the payments I'm the sense they charge my account and forward the payment to the developers soon after it's processed. Basically Google reimbursed me out to their own pocket to keep me happy, and that says a lot about Google and Fitbit. I really hope Google is able to teach Fitbit a thing or two about handling such customer support issues, especially when you're deprecating features people have already paid for.

@MatthewFitbit Can your team help clarify the unanswered questions and provide some support on this topic?

[Giampi71]

@Manymangos Sorry, I missed your post.

No, they are all on phone. Reason is that the SDK provided for Fitbit OS is very limited and no developers can achieve what you are asking because technically not possible.