Fitbit luxe battery AND activity issues

[Patrick_B]

Bought a Fitbit luxe for a friend in February 2023 but already now it lets her down very regularly. Symptoms are:
- battery charge goes nuts. It drops from some 70% to 10% in a matter of minutes. A soft restart then puts it at 40. Connecting it to the charger may send it any direction at first.
- the readings of the luxe are off. The step count (the most used feature on hers) does not make sense anymore. It used to work (meaning: it gave perfectly reasonable results) but now it gives rubbish. I actually gave her my Charge5 to check and when she uses mine, the readings are in line with what hers used to give.
- the screen is often unresponsive.

I have taken quite a number of steps before asking for help here and note that:
- she only used basic features so there is NO battery drain due to e.g., use of GPS etc. That is all switched of or very, very occasionally done via the mobile phone
- readings I classify as crazy are tested against her doing the same exercises with my Charge5. The latter gives normal readings.
- By now I tried at least a dozen soft resets but no help there. Same with the hard resets.
- I switched her charger with mine, no help there.
- Upgrading does not help.

Note that the Fitbit luxe still looks perfectly fine. No scratches, and it is not used as much as mine by far. Unlike me, she has no longer running sessions, does not swim with it or cycle on a daily basis. Mine still works fine, hers is basically useless. I tried all steps on how to extend battery life on this site but to no avail.

Can somebody give me the golden advice or how do I activate a warranty issue? It would be rather frustrating to see that a Fitbit has a life span of only some 18 months.

Thanks,

Patrick

[Christine95]

Hi Patrick, You are not only one. Myself and two other family members who also have luxe Fitbit in varying months, mine is 17 months, my daughter 1 has had her's for 18 months and daughter 2 for 2 years. All of us have had issues with battery, with random%…black screen from an alarm that you have to put onto charger to wake it up always has over 50% on battery so it isn't flat, not recording exercise correctly. We have done everything you have done to try to fix it but I am starting to feel it has been engineered to fail especially since our problems happened since 10 September 2024. Too coincential that 3 luxes in the same household failed at about the same time! I'm reluctant to rush out and get another especially if they have a life span of 18months! Would have thought we would have got 3 years.

[Patrick_B]

Let us hope that somebody from Fitbit/Google will step in here. At least in the European Union they are bound to 2-year warranty but finding out how to exercise this warranty is a pain (to put it mildly). You always seem to get redirected to the FAQ until you reach the warranty, which then gives a link that sends you to... right, the FAQ.

[Patrick_B]

I contacted fitbit and explained the issues. They picked it up quite efficiently and replaced the faulty fitbit. I had to send my friend's luxe fitbit in and more or less next day, a replacement was transmitted.

Very happy about their actions.