Unable to setup a Charge 2

[mossywell]

It stopped synching about 3 weeks ago but I only just noticed, so I have 3 weeks of unsynched data which I don;t want to lose. Here's what I have tried - none of which have worked.

1. Rebooting the phone and charge 2.

2. Remove the device from the account, reboot both and try again.

3. As per 2 but also initially log out of the account, then reboot, then the steps in 2 above.

4. Phone is android, so I have removed all bluetooth devices, then cleared data from all 3 bluetooth* apps in the phone then uninstall and reinstall the fitbit app, then reboot both devices then try to reconnecting.

5. Done a rain dance.

6. Tried a phone that never had fitbit installed on it before along with rebooting the TV, hifi, coffee maker and anything else I could find that has electrons in it. 

No, I am not willing to do a factory reset on the charge 2. Telling a customer to lose 3 weeks of data is not acceptable.

What gets me is that the app finds the phone to start the connection but then loses it. I have (or had until this bit of kit stopped working) many devices that connect over BT without problem. But it's always fitbit that struggles. And if you look at these forums, they're awash with people with the same problem. There's clearly an "institutional" problem with the bluetooth code on fitbit watches that fitbit have not done anything about for year. Years? Yes, I'm on my 7th fitbit that has just suddenly stopped synching and I've consequently lost data. Goodness knows how much data I've lost over the years. 

Your support is polite, but we have a phrase in the UK: you can't polish a turd!

Anyway, my question is: instead of wasting time programming pointless things like "phew I needed that" into the phone, can you please employ developers that actually know how to code Bluetooth properly?

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[AlvaroFitbit]

@mossywell Welcome to the Fitbit Community! I hope you're doing well!

Let me help you with setting up  your Charge 2 and thank you for troubleshooting this. It seems that you tried most of the suggested troubleshoots for this issue so I created a ticket for you. This way the Support team will assist you via email.

Let me know how it goes.

[mossywell]

Hi Alvaro, I appreciate the you attempting to move this forwards. But...

Having been in this situation many times, I actually know how to fix it: it involves factory resetting the Charge 2 thereby losing 3 weeks of data. I'm beyond the "how do I fix this?" tactical stage now - my question was actually a strategic one. I would estimate that over the past few years, I've probably lost 6 weeks of data in total with various problems that can only be fixed by a factory reset (on my original Charge 1 and my Charge 2). I'm going to estimate that this is over the past 4 years. (Numbers are approximate, but they suffice.) So, we're looking at, on average, 1.5 weeks of data loss a year. Now, I admit that this is not "business critical" data or "life critical" data. But, it is darned annoying, nevertheless. If I lost 1.5 weeks' of my company's data per year, I'd probably be unemployed by now!

So, my rhetorical strategic question is why Fitbit's strategy is to treat design problems as support problems?