Feedback about Ads on the Fitbit App

[ParkPark]

This, sadly, is a second thread on a subject I raised here a few hours ago, because it turns out that the moderation here is more about trying to hide problems than it is about listening to users.

What I posted earlier about a new problem with advertising in the app was moved into an old thread, which now seems to be locked. I really can't find anyway to regard YojanaFitbit's response as anything but a disgrace, and since I can't respond in the thread where my post was moved to, there's no option but to start again.

What follows is the reply I couldn't post in the thread my complaint has been hidden in.

*****

Yojana, your response isn't even remotely satisfactory, and rolling it into an previous conversation – completely inappropriately – is even worse.

The situation right now, as of Tuesday morning, is that every single time I use your app, I’m faced with the same ad, right at the top of the screen, getting in my way, and there's nothing I can do about it.

The underlying truth here is that with a forced upgrade you’ve taken minimally intrusive advertising and made it far, far worse.

Because it wasn’t like that yesterday, this is a current issue, not an old one.

And that means that what you’re doing to do, in your personal role as a moderator here, is to try to hide a new problem in an old thread. [And to add insult to injury, that thread is locked.] As I said earlier, refusing to listen to your users will not serve Fitbit well. Trying to stop us complaining is unlikely to work, either.

As a moderator at a community forum, instead of siding with users, you’re siding with a company that already makes direct communication almost impossible. Your role as a community moderator should be about serving us, not Fitbit, and you’re failing in that role. Miserably.

But of course, your behaviour only exacerbates and emphasises the underlying problem, which is a fundamental lack of respect from Fitbit to its users.

Let me reiterate: this is a product that customers pay hundreds of dollars for, and yet you think it’s okay to put your need to advertise ahead of our desire to get to the information we want.

If you’d made it even remotely clear that Fitbit, as a company, really didn’t care about user convenience, how many users do you think you would have?

Many, many fewer than you do at the moment.

Your new insistence on putting your ad right at the top of the screen, ahead of user's information, is a move that you need to reconsider, and very quickly indeed.

Moderator edit: Subject for clarity

[ParkPark]

Earlier post, now buried:

*****

Though I haven't posted here before, I'm writing this as someone who has purchased both a Charge 2 and a Charge 3, and who has been instrumental in influencing at least three other purchases by friends and family members.

And yet you've just brought me to the point of absolutely loathing your company for the abject lack of respect that you so obviously have for me and your other customers.

Your products provide information that I have a use for. I accept that from time to time you might have new products with better information, and I'll allow you to communicate that, so long as you show a degree of common sense in how you approach that.

But I will not accept you putting advertising into the heart of the user experience, just so that you can try to get me to use Fitbit Premium. I've already given you hundreds of dollars, and yet you think it's okay to put your advertising ahead of my access to the information I want. I've already given you hundreds of dollars, and all you can think about is how to get more money from me. I've already given you hundreds of dollars, and you obviously don't care in the slightest that you're inconveniencing me, or all of your other users.

That tells me that you're a company with arrogant, short-sighted fools at the highest levels, who think that there's something to be gained from treating customers with contempt.

So get your advertising out of my face, and do it now. Take this complaint to someone higher up and realise that this single message will be representative of many, many more customers who share my disgust for the way Fitbit is currently behaving.

While you're at it, you might want to consider whether doing everything you can to prevent us from contacting you more directly is a genuinely sensible policy. Insulating yourselves from customer disgust might serve you reasonably well in the short term, but it won't do anything for you in the long term.

[STiS]

Hello, 

I world like to request as many users already did to increase the size of the font that shows the steps and all other functions.

Too many users asked to fii this problem. Who si not possibile to do it quikly? Is so hard to increase it? I’m sure is not so difficult! Please fix it sooner! 

This shows the interest of Fitbit to maintain the users closer and not let them go away ....

I world like to receive an answer from you!

[YojanaFitbit]

Nice to see your around @ParkPark thanks for posting your feedback about this feature. Welcome to the Community Forums @STiS.

Thanks for reaching out the Forums! Your feedback is greatly appreciated. I'd like to mention that all members of the Community can comment and vote for different feature requests so they can be implemented in a future update. Your suggestion was a duplicate from a existing one. It was categorized as "Not Currently Plan". You can see it here: Removing Ads from App.

And @STiS you will find your suggestion here: Increase Font Size for Charge 3.

When a Feature Suggestion status is changed to ‘Not currently planned’, that doesn’t mean the votes and discussions aren’t important, especially when those few hundred users are very passionate about a feature and propose a compelling argument that would benefit our global community. The cost of developing that suggestion may not be impactful enough to justify investment, especially weighing that against all the other thousands of Feature Suggestions. You can also check this: How does Feature Suggestions work?

We aim to integrate community feedback into next generation devices when it's not plausible to release said feature on a currently released device. For example, we may have changed the status of a Feature Suggestion for Flex to ‘not currently planned,’ but it might have been released on Flex 2. 

Our engineers are constantly coming up with new and exciting features for current and future devices, and these features may be similar to various Feature Suggestions subsequently received from our users.You can learn more about how Fitbit decides what suggestions get released in our FAQs.  

Thanks again for your feedback and patience while we work on better options for our users.