Charge 2 - Warranty Replacement Defective Out of Box and Fitbit doesn't care..

[mattbrown80]

My mother had a Charge 2, which she loved.  Last year - the screen started to crack (seemingly on it's own) and she opened a ticket with Fitbit support.  She was delighted that they sent her a new one.  Which arrived last summer and has sat in a box for a year (my mother is afraid of technology) - she figured she'd replace the cracked one when the crack got so bad she couldn't use it.

This day arrived earlier this week.  I went over to help her set up the new device.  I figured this would take about a half an hour (since I had helped her with the initial purchase of the Charge 2)

I was wrong!  We had trouble getting it to pair initially - this was resolved through a series of device resets, bluetooth fiddling, etc. and then we had it connected.

It wanted a firmware update before doing anything else - this is where we get stuck.  It never finishes just shows an exclamation mark.  I must have tried this 10 times at her place using her tablet and her phone, to no avail.  

I took the device home with me and tried to sync it to a fresh account (that I created under my email) and had the exact same issues with my Android phone.  So i then tried my Windows 10 PC and had the same problem there.  Thinking something is up I opened a case w/ Fitbit support via chat.

Support told me that the warranty replacement has a physical problem, but is not entitled to another replacement.  I found this odd considering it was just removed from it's box yesterday.

So this is the end of the line for Fitbit - which is sad, because as I mentioned - my mother WAS A LOYAL CUSTOMER.  It's disappointing a company as popular (and profitable) as Fitbit does not stand behind their product or care about customer retention.  If anyone has ideas on how to fix this unit - I'm open to hearing them.  In the meantime, I'll be researching other brands.

[Odyssey13]

Hi @mattbrown80  it's nice of you to try to get your mom set up. Unfortunately, when something has been in a box for a year, it's hard to know what happened to it. It had a partial charge (pretty sure as most have some charge when I get them) and the battery died. It sat in the box with a dead battery and you expected it to come alive, but not everything revives. you try a restart of the Fitbit? Which phone do you have and is it on the list of compatible devices? click to see