2 Factor Authentication-Poor Customer Service

[mikeandgayle]

Hello, I am currently using my husband's account since I have been logged out of my account due to a support tech's error.

I have been a member of the Fitbit community since 2016.  I am also a Fitbit field tester member.  Yesterday I lost my cell phone number due to an ATT issue.  I was assigned a new phone number.  Today I was attempting to connect my fitbit device to one of my health apps and unfortunately was sent a authentication code to my old phone number.  Since I no longer have that phone number, I contacted fitbit support hoping they could help get around this.

Fitbit’s answer was to walk me through turning off 2FA.  I was sent an email which explained that I was to click a link to deactivate the 2FA.  I did as instructed by the technician, which resulted in my account being deactivated)locked out for 72 hours with no access to my health and fitness data.  This also resulted in all of my health related apps including my continuous glucose monitor being unable to be used because of this flaw in fitbit’s app.

The tech support person I spoke to on the phone told me “too bad” you are out for 72 hours.  There was no warning, nothing to advise me that if I logged out, and shut off authentication I would not be able to use the app for 72 hours.

He then suggested I uninstall and reinstall the app and continue to try to login.  After doing so, the Fitbit app blocked me from my account for 24 additional hours

I called a second representative who also was unable to help and told me there was nothing I could do.

After 2 representatives all of my health apps that are connected to fitbit are useless with absolutely zero support from fitbit staff.

Is there anyone in the Fitbit community that can help?  All apps out there today offer more than one way to authenticate, except Fitbit who's solution seems to be to lock you out for 72 hours.  Poor!

I am reaching out to you as one last effort to find a way to resolve this.  I appreciate any assistance you can offer.

Gayle Pagano

[DramaQueenDiva]

Hi @mikeandgayle ,

I actually volunteer for Google, who owns Fitbit.  Unfortunately, Google will not recognize any other way to prove ownership of the account, other than 2 Step Authentication.  For this to work, you would need access to both your recovery email and the phone number that was originally tied to the account.  Without those two things, your account could be lost.

I have been a Fitbit member for years and have never had 2 Step Authentication tied to it.  What's the email server of the email that's tied to your account (Gmail, AOL, etc)?

[mikeandgayle]

Hi, thanks so much!  The email is a pop3 account that I have had with Fitbit since 2016.  The account is hosted by bluehost.

I still have access to the email, so that's not an issue.  They would not allow me to authenticate using email, only a cell phone.  

I received their email asking to turn off 2FA, and was now told I had to wait 72 hours before I could log back in, update the phone #and log back in.  Really stupid, that they don't offer more than one option for 2FA.

Any other thoughts?

Gayle

[Rufous44]

Not sure what Google has anything to do with this mess originated exclusively by Fitbit.

In fact the implementation of 2FA by Fitbit is not the same offered by Google that includes phone number but many other methods such as

I know this post doesn't help you @mikeandgayle but I'm sympathizing for you. I never bothered to secure this account of mine that I use exclusively for posting in the community forum but I use 2FA for my real Fitbit account and I'm going to deactivate the 2FA because I tend to change phone number often (because of my job I'm often moving from country to country) and last thing I want is to get locked out.

[DramaQueenDiva]

@Rufous44 Fitbit is owned by Google, which is why I asked for the type of email.

[Hendawg]

This same thing just happened to me, and yeah, fitbit support is a joke. There is no way for me to access my account, and after waiting the full 72 hours, I still had issues logging in. Called support again, they told me to repeat the steps and wait an additional 72 hours "and then wait a little bit longer than 72 hours". Why do I pay for premium if I can't use the service anymore? 

[mikeandgayle]

Hi Hendawg,

Very sad as the customer support has gone DOWN SIGNIFICANTLY since the google purchase.  I can give a brief update on this.  I gave up on the phone support (kinda).  I waited the first 24 hours and then sent a ticket through their website as a REPLY when they were dumb enough to send me a survey on their service.  I used the ticket number they gave me to generate an email and pushed it every couple of hours.  Then I called the next day and did a follow up on the ticket number which forced them to escalate the ticket.  They then unlocked the account.  At the same time I got ATT to provide me with a second sim card (I was fortunate enough to have a phone that supported two sims).  I was able to authenticate at that point and sign in and restore the account.  Fitbit NEEDS TO ADDRESS this in the long term.  They need to allow us the opportunity to to authenticate with something other than JUST a cell number.  Really stupid oversight on their part.  Fingers crossed that they address this for you as well.  Chin Up!

Gayle

[ggguideX]

Fitbit has lost me as a customer over this, I get the same crap, “wait 72 hours if it doesn’t work too bad” I called like 30 times and tried everything, wasted like a month playing with it until I fully got it through my head Fitbit doesn’t want me as a customer so I bought an android watch for now and I’m able to track my workouts again at least, it’s sad Fitbit leaves me like that though and sad my data is not accessible 

[KB9WNS]

FitBit does offer a way to fully download an achieve of your data.

Got to settings > data export.  Follow the instructions and you can get a complete achieve.

[ggguideX]

For users that can login, maybe that is useful, but for people who cannot disable mfa we’re in a situation of data loss