Fitbit Products' Longevity

[Scott69]

When my Fitbit Blaze died I waited a while to replace it because I wanted a better value than I experienced.  13 months ago I gave Fitbit another shot and added the Ionic to my daily routine.  I paired it with my iPhone and checked my resting heart rate and sleep every day.  My wife and I also share an Aria scale which, combined with the Ionic's data, made the Fitbit dashboard a pretty good indicator of my general health.  

I liked having steps, heart rate, bluetooth music and GPS on a single device, the Ionic, for running outside.  The lap counter for swimming workouts was even better because I can't swim and count!  Thankfully it doesn't count whiskey but I used the Starbucks app to pay for coffee.

All things considered I was feeling pretty good about Fitbit despite my Blaze lasting only a year and a half.  ...until my Ionic died yesterday.  I worked with tech support, cleaned the charging contacts, tried the 2-button reset, and plugged into a PC and couldn't get it to spark back to life.  That's my second top-of-the-line Fitbit that died on me after less than 2 years.  Amortized, this makes Fitbit a very expensive per-day/week/month cost vs. its competitors.  

Before my Blaze I had a Garmin.  I gave it to a friend and know it's still kicking.  I've given my old Apple devices to friends and family for many years and they're all still ticking.  I handed my 5-year old iPhone 6 to my kid and it still works great. Going way back... my Motorola phones seemed to last about 2 years but never 2.5 years.  I hung onto a Blackberry for occasional international travel and it still fires up... it might be over ten years old.  I can't explain it in engineering terms, but I think Fitbit has a longevity issue.  A 40% discount on a New Ionic helps the math but that still comes out to around $15/mo if it only lasts a little over a year. If another brand's watch costs $300 and lasts 3 years, I come out way ahead.  Anyone else?

[jess1971]

You're right on the money. Fitbit is selling us junk at the moment and that is the facts of the matter. I have a friend who has been using the same top of the line Garmin for nearly 4 years now. It's still performing as the day they bought it. Fitbit really doesn't care about their customers it's very obvious and sad.

Hopefully and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I will be reading about how they're going to make this Ionic fiasco right for the people such as myself who went through 2 watches in less than 13 months. It's a total insult to be expected to purchase a new one at a discounted rate. They must be falling on some serious hard times this is all that makes sense.

[SunsetRunner]

Obviously, it's cheaper for Fitbit to give away replacement freebies to the users than get the product quality better, hence more expensive to manufacture. As long as customers tolerate that there is no reason for Fitbit to change anything. If people are willing to stay with the company after 2+ replacements and end up with a discount voucher ( and probably take it and spend it on another Fitbit device ) then the strategy seems to be working quite well. This is my first device that starts malfunctioning before one year of usage. It still runs but due to problems with the display, GPS, HR and syncing I use it less and less. The older it gets, the issues become more severe. I'm only curious whether it's gonna die on its 1st "buyday".

[zeweis]

Same thing is happening to me: my Ionic dead and all they would do is a 25% off coupon.

Seems this is a well established pattern and we as consumers should build some pressure outside Fitbit so they would treat us and their products' quality issues more seriously.