Withings not syncing with Fitbit

[KateFitbit]

Update 5/3/2019: The connection should now be working for everyone. Please reconnect your scale again. Thanks again for for your patience.  

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Update 4/29/2019: Hi Everyone, our team is still looking into this issue. I've passed all your feedback and concerns on to the team and hope to have an update soon. Thanks again for your patience. 

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Update 4/23/2019:  We are still working on this, but I hope to have an update soon. Thanks again for your reports and patience. 

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Update 4/17/2019: We are aware that some people may not be able to set up and are working to fix the issue soon. Thanks to those who posted this error message. I'll update this thread when I hear the issue is resolved. 

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We recently made some updates to the Withings scale integration that require reauthorization between Withings and Fitbit. If you are unable to sync your Withings scale with Fitbit, please unlink your account and set up again. 

For information on how to manage your apps see this article. 

[AaronE]

Ok. I have my Apple Watch 5 series ready to buy in a shopping cart. If this is not fixed by about Tuesday of next week, I am clicking the buy button.

I want to be a customer. I really do. But this is just about the last straw. You don't take features and integrations away from people and hold their health hostage.

Sorry people don't want to buy your scale. You want people to buy your stuff? Build a better product. Offer something the competition doesn't. Give us real insights. Support your products. Actually act as though you care about your customers.

If you intend to support these integrations, say so, and tell us when this is going to be fixed.

If you do not, also, say so. Be honest. Don't BS us. End the happy talk vetted by legal or whatnot, and just be real with your customers. If your strategy is creating a walled garden of devices so that the only scale that can log weight is a Fitbit scale, say that's your strategy, and let your customers make decisions based on that.

You're losing trust by the minute. Literally every day this is not solved, more customers will leave.

Please fix this. #SolutionNeeded

[RChobby]

I had the Apple Watch version4, but returned it since it does not have live step feedback. Steps refresh only so often. So, Fitbit is superior to me. 

Instead of all this fussing, everyone should open a case with Withings support and Fitbit support, until the sync problem is addressed. 

[g0rsq]

Already done that.

Not heard anything back on when they expect this issue to be resolved.

Only told it was a bug on their system, and they would add a prioroty code on my case (whatever that means when it is a complete outage!)

Zero customer support is a reason to migrate away from FitBit.

Sorry but in these days of connected world, there is no excuse for not keeping your customers up to date with service outages.

[Ykii]

I’ve sent email to support. Not yet received any answer.

I’m new Fitbit user and surprised Fitbit is working like this. Ecosystem is too closed, I’ve used Garmin, Polar, Suunto, Withings watches and had never similar issues. 

[AaronE]

This is not a Withings problem - they didn't break the integration.

The 404 on the integration page on the Fitbit side means they either:

a.) somehow broke integration *and* deleted a page on their website at the same time, which is unlikely or...

b.) they don't intend to support this integration going forward, but just haven't communicated that

Occam's razor tells me B. Which means there is a very good chance this is an intentional break of integration because they see Withings as a competitor. Given they have a competing product line, this very well may be the case.

If that is, just say so. And we can then make decisions based on that. But no such clarification has been offered, other than a couple support people saying "they are looking into it". Which might just mean a decision to break integration was made on high, but they bungled the rollout of the decision, so much so that their own support people may be holding the bag.

[RChobby]

There is strength in numbers, so I encourage everyone to open support cases.  If only a few do the fix will have low priority. 

[jboogie]

I like my withings scale, works great! Bought it in January 2010, hopefully Fitbit can fix the integration

[GrumpyCyclist]

@AaronE I'm tempted to agree with everything you just said. Hoping it's just a stuff up, but no way does an entire webpage disappear the same time an API link breaks unless someone deliberately removes that webpage, so my suspicion is it was all deliberate unless we are categorically told otherwise.

I emailed Customer Support and have nothing back yet other than the auto response.

[RChobby]

If it is like where I work it is probably a combination of cost cutting, staff moving on to new jobs, and poor communication. An oversight. Someone probably forgot or never knew about Withings scales and Fitbit integration. 

[AaronE]

@RChobby in the past, when the integration broke, I would have likely agreed with you. These things happen, and while not ideal, it's a part of maintaining a part of a product that doesn't have an obvious revenue stream tied to it.

What concerns me and others is how the integration page is deleted. An API breaking (i.e. OAuth tokens expiring between two companies services, for example) is something that usually means renewing a certificate from one side or the other between the two companies, or something like that.

This is different. They deleted the page that talks about integration, and deleted Withings from the list of apps they integrate with.

Note, Withings now makes SteelHR, which is a competitive product. Also note that Fitbit admits to not integrating with Apple Healthkit because it is, in their words, "a competing platform". Given these facts, it does not seem too crazy that they are just deciding to not support this, and to hope that it blows over. Given the struggles and the recent stories in the press of Fitbit looking for a larger company to buy them out, it would not surprise me if they are locking out integrations in advance of an acquisition they'd like to do.

Obviously, we don't really know what is going on. We are all being mushroomed (i.e. kept in the dark). But the best way for a Fitbit exec to clear this up is to come out here and say that, in fact, they commit to supporting the integration with Withings and that this is a mere technical oversight.

One outcome from this, for me personally, is that I am moving to use Apple's health app as my primary UI for monitoring health. Even though my fitbit steps don't flow through to it... because "we don't want competitive platform integration", the step count from the phone itself is close enough for me, and all my other apps do integrate fine.

What say you, Fitbit? Is this thing supported or not. The longer you are silent on this, the more we are going to assume the worst and assume you no longer reliably support an open platform. 

[janedoe999]

I tried WeightNet as an alternative but because it rounds to the nearest pound instead of 10th of a pound it won’t work for me.  I am still stuck with manual entry.

[RChobby]

I notice there are problems with syncing Fitbit to MyFitnessPal and IFTTT, as well. Somebody “upgraded” software at Fitbit which broke several things at the same time?

[Georgia0802]

My withings scale and fitbit are still not syncing and this seems to be a genea problem for a lot of people is there any info on this or should it now be sorted? Havent been here long sorry still trying to find my way around!

[GrumpyCyclist]

Definitely agree with everything you said there @AaronE  I definitely feel this is a deliberate move to slowly end cross platform syncing. Seems strange it happened just after the Premium went live and the CEO said they want to get more revenue from services rather than hardware. Maybe they'll start having syncing from other services be a Premium feature?

I just had a reply from Fitbit Support and apparently they say there is no Withings account linked to my Fitbit account. Funny that, since it was working just fine before the middle of last week.

[Georgia0802]

@KateFitbit are we going to get a solution any time soon?! Or at least some form of response from you would be nice. This IS getting beyond a joke.

[Mark81]

Withings was acquired by Nokia, then it returned to be Withings. But is a new company and I think that previous agreements aren't anymore valid. On the current Withings scales box, isn't anymore mentioned that are Fitbit compatible. Therefore the Fitbit integration isn't anymore a must. For that reason, accept the alternatives.

Personally I like Fitbit trackers & watches and I like Withings & Beurer scales.

Fitbit API are the best and the most complete, and I hope that this continue. Thanks!

[GrumpyCyclist]

Fitbit is still listed on the Withings site as a partner app, and there's even a banner at the top of their support section that says the connectivity issue with Withings and Fitbit has been resolved. Which it clearly hasn't at this end. So if Fitbit are no longer supported by Withings then I guess no one has told their web team yet.

I tried that weightnet thing for today's weight and it worked flawlessly. Shouldn't have to rely on 3rd parties to get these accounts to sync though. If a smaller developer can get it to work I'm sure these two powerhouses can fix it in a minute if they cared.

[tozh]

I can not believe we have not had an official update from Fitbit. This is at least the second time this has happened this year and the manual entry I had to do the last time was painful. I use Noom for health tracking and have always liked Fitbit step tracking for it's consistency. I found the Withings scale much more accurate and consistent than the Aria scale (I have a doctor's office old tine scale to compare readings to.) I too have a Withings tracker in wish list on Amazon waiting to be ordered if this is not resolved soon but Fitbit corporate news this last week doesn't look good. Google buyout rumors? Good grief. Look how well Nest acquisition worked out...

[Mark81]

@GrumpyCyclist the banner is related to the previous outage. I think that they will update their website soon, during working days. But I can confirm, on their current scales box, Fitbit isn't mentioned. Thanks about WeightNet, was developed to help.

[Georgia0802]

I have tagged @KateFitbit in this so hopefully we will get some sort of answers soon! 🙂