Voluntary Safety Recall of Fitbit Ionic Smartwatches

[FitbitCommunity]

Fitbit, in conjunction with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), announced a voluntary recall of Fitbit Ionic smartwatches, which the company introduced in 2017 and stopped producing in 2020. The battery in the Ionic smartwatch can overheat, posing a burn hazard.

The health and safety of Fitbit users is our highest priority. We are taking this action out of an abundance of caution for our users. We will offer a refund to Fitbit Ionic customers.

This voluntary recall is specific to Fitbit Ionic devices. It does not impact any other Fitbit smartwatches or trackers.

If you have an impacted Fitbit Ionic device, please stop using it and visit our webpage where you’ll find:

• Answers to common questions
• Information on how to receive a refund 
• Access to a special discount on select Fitbit devices, bands, and services, if available in your region, for a limited time.

[3Heps]

Same here 

no discount code 

and they have my ionic already.  Now I just want money 

[bignorm64]

Yes I get this error too and as you say looking in the browser dev tools it shows a 500 server error in the request made when pressing the submit button.

[b-mike]

@HackneyCat 

The process should be as follows:

1) start at https://www.fitbitionic.expertinquiry.com/

2) That directs you to sedgwick.com where you're basically registering for a refund.

3) After you've completed the process with sedgwick they give you a reference number (16 digits starting with the current date: eg 20220310xxxxxxxx) and then they redirect to Fitbit's site to go through the process to actually disable your Ionic.

4) You should also get an email from sedgwick with the link and your reference number (subject: Fitbit Ionic Recall - Step 1 Complete – Reference 202203....)

5) You then go to: https://myhelp.fitbit.com/s/devicedisable which tells you to wait 30 minutes before entering your ref code (it was 4 hours before they accepted my code). You agree to their t&c about stopping using you Ionic, and then sometime after you complete this stage they disable/unpair you Ionic. Fitbit must also confirm back to sedgwick at this stage that your Ionic has been disabled.

6) sedgwick then send you another email confirming they've verified your account, that your Ionic has been disabled and that your refund will take 3-6 weeks.

That's the end of the refund process, but then optionally, you can go through the process to claim a discount code to buy a new fitbit:

7) Sign into your fitbit account on your web browser, then go to:

😎  https://myhelp.fitbit.com/s/devicediscount

9) You then need to submit your reference code again

10) After this they should send you another email (subject: Fitbit Discount), and that has a link to their discount store and two codes

11) Go to: https://help.fitbit.com/offer (or whatever link they give you), and use the first code to login to the store, and the second code to check out.

For me, I'm stuck on step 8 - when I hit submit, the page just seems to hang with the animated fitbit logo 'pulsing'.

[Kevmeister]

Like tons of you out there my second ionic recently slipped into a coma and isn't responding to ANY of the sugested fixes out there. Same problem as with my first ionic that got replaced. Good to see these things are recalled but how to with a dead unit? 

[Delilynow]

My screen kept falling off, and I called Fitbit and they gave me a credit toward the new charger 5 and told me to discard the ionic…now the ionic has been recalled and Fitbit is telling me because I don’t have the ionic in my possession I can’t get a refund.  This is not fair since the have a record of my purchase and the told me to discard it rather than sending it back.  What can be done about this?  I still entitled to a refund.

[Ronk82]

mine ended at step 5.

am lacking of this step

6) sedgwick then send you another email confirming they've verified your account, that your Ionic has been disabled and that your refund will take 3-6 weeks.

But when I check with fitbit support they say this:

Thanks for waiting. We are able to see
that both registrations are complete
and the codes are in our system.
You just need to contact our recall and
refund center at
https://www.fitbitionic.expertinquiry.co
m/contact-us so that they may provide
you the status of the refunds and how
to claim it on each device.

[bignorm64]

@b-mike - "For me, I'm stuck on step 8 - when I hit submit, the page just seems to hang with the animated fitbit logo 'pulsing'."

As I replied on your earlier post that's exactly what I get too so I can't get the discount codes.

[fnavarrete]

I have the same issue, my country is not listed either.  I tried selecting a nearby country, and then change it on the form, but I get an error message saying that I need to enter the original country before continuing, so the process gets into a loop, with no luck.  

I chat with Fitbit agents twice, but they say they will escalate the issue and get back to me by mail.  It's already 3 days and no response yet.

Anyone else that had the same issue and has got a positive response?

[funkysax]

You're right - there was no prompt whatsoever for you as a user to enter which model you have.

The identification of the "normal" vs. "Adidas" edition seems to be taking place when you are prompted to login to your account during account verification with Fitbit then automatically determining the registered model in the account.

After account verification it came back in the confirmation telling me about a refund value of USD 329 for the Adidas edition.

I'm not located in the US, but I guess they don't make a difference between countries here in the refund value.

Not sure though, if they maybe do. Would be really strange and cause a lot of complaints if they did, I think.

[KoentjeB1980]

When I sent my reference code, I get this number at the mail.
They said the code is already used....:(

[funkysax]

It's not really predictable how long the emails take.

Some lucky ones have it within less than 2 hours (I had my discount email on Monday after account verification within 5 Minutes !), but since then it seems to have gotten much worse in terms of response times...

But it's really the same everywhere regardless of the country and the type of email - the whole system just seems to be heavily overloaded.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the requests/email confirmations never get sent out/ended up in the trash bin due to the system overload situation and need to be manually re-send after customers file a complaint with the technical service.

---

Maybe a silly question, but... You're trying to registering an IONIC for the refund, aren't you ?

If so, the only thing I can think of is that you're using different account credentials to log in, in which the IONIC is not registered...

Maybe check if your IONIC is really connected to that account which you are using to log in during the account verification process.

---

Not sure about Belgium (it says Discount available only for certain regions), but as the Discount definitely works for Germany I would imagine it does as well for Belgium.
So probably really the issue with the delayed mails not getting sent out in a timely manner...

---

Great to hear that, thanks for the confirmation.
In the German forum people were starting to question if the free extra bands are maybe a fake (as nobody seems to have received some up to now / watches were sent without the bands ordered at the same time).

Moderator edit: format

[FitToBeFried]

@funkysax , For the US process, you did not have to login to your account during the registration.  They send you an email saying that we, at one point, had an Ionic on our account and that we can submit for a refund.  During the refund form you have to enter the email address for your account, but it never logs you in or anything.  Maybe they will cross check when they receive our devices that have to me mailed in.  Interestingly my daughters Ionic is not on her account anymore (we may have removed it, don't recall) but she received the e-mail and we still have it so we are sending it in.  Seems like very different processes across the different countries.

[Sivasasi]

I am having problem registering for refund . I wasn’t able to access the webpage ( account verification page ) . I tried various computers , browsers and iPhone . But that particular account verification web page is not active . I tried to call customer service but not much help . I have been trying over the last one week with no success. Can someone be able to help pls ?

[funkysax]

@FitToBeFriedOk, yes I have to admit parts of the process may be different, so e.g. there's no sending back of the IONIC in Germany - instead they ask you to return it to your local company for waste disposal/recycling.

However I noticed one thing during my own trials to go through the account verification process (I repeated the registration several times, due to the issue "Reference code not found" and was partially also using the English pages, because the German ones were buggy or not available)...

In case you are already logged in on the fitbit website it doesn't prompt you to (again) log in to your account in the account verification step.

However, if you log out before you start the process of the account verification it does prompt you to log in to your account during the "account verification" step.

So in case there's some kind of "automatic logon" or "keep logged-in" set, it might be that in the background it is actually using a wrong account for checking which device is stored in it...

It's just an idea maybe worth trying to explicitly log off / check which account you're actually logged on to before starting the account verification process.

To tell for sure, somebody who programmed the process would need to answer...

[Suziefloozie]

Thank you TomDuke. I’m actually in U.K. but I suppose the same applies. Thanks again.

[funkysax]

This is the screen I mean which you get when being logged out and calling up https://myhelp.fitbit.com/s/devicedisable?language=en_US

[funkysax]

@SivasasiWhich link are you using for the account verification step ?

https://myhelp.fitbit.com/s/devicedisable?language=en_US is available at presence and looks o.k., I just tried it...

[baboba]

I have the same problem in China, contact fitbit ice no response

[JayKeo]

I had a relatively good experience with this process.

Took almost a day for the discount code to come through after processing the refund and desync of my ionic (probably due to site congestion). Note, the email to process the discount code was delivered to my junk mail folder. After receiving the discount code I proceeded to place an order for the Sense(40% off), free band(s) and 1 year of premium.  Still waiting for the $299USD refund payment to be made to my PayPal however, as they mentioned on the FAQs, the ETA for this is 3-6 weeks.

I've received my Sense in the mail in less than 1 week after receiving the initial recall news, the band(s) were sent separately.  Seems like a very good upgrade on the appearance and interface from the ionic.

Massive thanks to FitBit for handling this recall so well, providing not only a full refund that is more than I paid for this device initially ($180AUD, approx $130USD), but also a greatly discounted price on upgrading to a newer model which included free accessories and services. 👍

[KiwiDes]

the refund amount is US$299 and for me in New Zealand I can choose JBhifi credit voucher or a PayPal credit.  If you have a choice like I did choose wisely because it is next to impossible to change it.  I'm in the 3 to 6 week waiting period.  Note if you try to call their refunds help desk, the 'local times' are the country your call is going to.  I waited this morning to 9 am NZ time, but they were actually specifying GMT because I had to call the UK, so I was 12 hours to early or to late.....hmmm.  Still was very happy with my ionic although it didn't do voice cues. go well all, regards Des

extra extra, the discount worked immediately for me and it is in addition to the refund amount..Im pretty sure.  only problem is that you are spending your current money to get new 40% discounted items and while the cost is very good, its new money.  Oh and once you have bought the invoice pops up as 'on backorder". which means it will be sourced, for me anyway from mainland China and takes about 3weeks to get to your letterbox......hopefully...I don't think they are sourcing your new replacement items from local stores as the former Ionic owners will severely dent the regular sales.  Just my thoughts, happy with Fitbit over all.RegardsDes

Moderator Edit: Merged posts