So, after reading everyone else's issue with their heart rate monitor not working, I guess I should count myself lucky that my fitbit Charge 2 worked perfectly for at least 3 years and a couple of months, though my husband has had his Alta 6 months longer than that and IT is still working.
Like everyone else's, in April of this year my Charge 2 started acting up. Its performance went downhill quickly as most of you described. One day I noticed it wasn't tracking my heart rate. That night it went frantic saying my heart rate was 142 and then seconds later 56 and then 76. After that the green lights on the back went bananas like they were blinking sos. I had to put it under a pot that night and every night after so it wouldn't light up the whole house. After a few days the lights wouldn't go off at all and so the fitbit had to be plugged in and charging up more often than it was on my wrist. My husband tried all of the suggestions a tech person offered and then some. It worked one glorious day since then, the week before Mother's day. The next day it lost all of its charge after 45 minutes and that's how it has been ever since. I was surprised it was still able to be recharged after a 6.5 car trip this week. We've been using a pc to set up and sync our fitbits. All of the talk of installing and uninstalling Bluetooth, ios, etc. is beyond our capacities. We tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the fitbit installation program on our pc and then rebooting, etc. and that didn't do anything.
There are so many new fitness trackers out there now that are a LOT less expensive than the Fitbit products, but none of them are pc compatible but require a smartphone for set up. Those companies are losing out on a large market, as there are plenty of us out there who don't want our devices connected to a cell phone at all, especially not in order to be able to "pay" or "get notices" or get phone calls, but we simple want to keep track of our activity, steps and heart rate as well as the time and date with one convenient device. (Those people I know who have smartphones use apps on their smartphones to track their activities and steps and don't need/use a wrist unit at all.)
After trying to reboot everything today that has to do with my Charge yet again, there has been no change in its shenanigans. Fitbit offered me a discount off a new unit, but the product choices this offer covered are limited and not what I needed and apply to only purchases from their website. Even with the discount their prices are still more expensive than Walmart's. I ended up buying a pedometer/miles tracker for $6 and a new watch battery for my wristwatch. Not the same and not as much fun, and I REALLY miss the date feature, but at least my watch is a day-glo so I can see the time at night when I want to. Good luck everybody!
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