51–60 of 108 posts
I used to be a Fitbit fan, but now I switched to Garmin Vivofit (and later Vivofit 2) and never looked back. My data is open, I have a battery that lasts a year+(!), a watch and an HR monitor (with a strap) in one device.
I found a bug triggered by hitting the "Pause" button during a run. Effectively the device paused on the display, but the underlying data they use to build maps, calculate pace, etc keeps calculating. So if you run for 10 minutes, pause for 10 when you unexpectedly meet a friend, then run for 10 minutes all of your stats are based on a 30-minute run which isn't what most runners are interested in.
I documented this in excruciating detail (including showing errors in their .TCX file exports) and sent it off to their helpdesk.
First response: "That is a carrier issue, but don't worry we are still counting your steps.". There was no acknowledgement of the content I'd sent or the attachments I'd included.
Second response: Insisted it was a carrier or GPS issue, and not a software bug.
Third response: They asked me to call their 800-number. After I declined due to being in Australia, they replied and insisted that the call would be free, because it's to an 800-number.
Fourth response: THey are "Blessed" I contacted them. No acknowledgement of understanding of my issue.
It seems clear that their customer service team are not familiar with day to day use cases of their products, particularly the high-end running watch. The free phone call stuff is amusing but hints at a team that aren't aware of who their customers are.
Again, I like my Surge watch and their software is pretty good. Integration to Strava is great. But there's a pretty good chance they'll be overtaken by a future Apple watch with GPS in it.
[Edited to be less snarky]
I used to be pretty on the FitBit train, but I don't think that I'm in their camp any more. Refusing to integrate with Healthkit, purposefully building their challenges feature to reject data input through their APIs, and charging for access to raw data are enough to ensure that I'll never buy one of their products again. Kind of a shame, their hardware, dashboard, and app are all pretty great :(
It's really easy as an engineer to feel bearish about FitBit because of how shitty their acting from our viewpoint, but to people outside our community FitBit makes a statement "I care about my fitness and well-being", works on Android and iOS, has an app that's more actionable than Apple's Health app ("get off your butt and get 2000 more steps in" vs "you have 8000 steps today"), and has several price points below t…
There's a market for fitness devices, sure, but the ceiling on it is now $349 (and likely dropping). Fitbit et al. won't capture high margins below that point long-term, and it's much more likely (IMO) they offer a commoditized hardware product with complimentary "insight" services (which is, itself, a perilous market). There isn't a lot of room for profit in such a market.
I used to be pretty on the FitBit train, but I don't think that I'm in their camp any more. Refusing to integrate with Healthkit, purposefully building their challenges feature to reject data input through their APIs, and charging for access to raw data are enough to ensure that I'll never buy one of their products again. Kind of a shame, their hardware, dashboard, and app are all pretty great :(
Their customer service is pretty horrible, too. My Aria scale just would not connect to wifi. CS sent me the same troubleshooting info as listed on their site 3 times and then offered a replacement but refused to pay for shipping. In comparison, I had a MIO Fuse, which broke, and their CS not only mailed me a pre-paid label but even got me in direct email contact with one of their PMs to try to troubleshoot the issue…
Edit: to clarify when you go to fitbit's website and you go to the device's settings it shows you all of the measurements and lets you delete some. If it has been extracted to a fitbit account then it is "saved" (testing exporting my fitbit account it does have my old weights), but for example all of the measurements of our cat+me which did not have a fitbit account were auto deleted after some time period. I wonder if you don't log into your fitbit account in less than 90 days if you would also start losing your weight history or something similar :\ Either way deleting weight data on a product whos sole purpose is keeping track of data for you is sad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their customer service is pretty horrible, too. My Aria scale just would not connect to wifi. CS sent me the same troubleshooting info as listed on their site 3 times and then offered a replacement but refused to pay for shipping. In comparison, I had a MIO Fuse, which broke, and their CS not only mailed me a pre-paid label but even got me in direct email contact with one of their PMs to try to troubleshoot the issue…
I also have an Aria scale and the whole reason I bought it is the fact that I don't want to have to bother writing down the date+weight on a piece of paper in the morning (trust me I seem to fail at this basic task at 6am having tried for years). To my horror I discovered that they only save a few months (three?). Given the amount of data the device is reporting I was expecting them to effectively store all data fore…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their customer service is pretty horrible, too. My Aria scale just would not connect to wifi. CS sent me the same troubleshooting info as listed on their site 3 times and then offered a replacement but refused to pay for shipping. In comparison, I had a MIO Fuse, which broke, and their CS not only mailed me a pre-paid label but even got me in direct email contact with one of their PMs to try to troubleshoot the issue…
I also have an Aria scale and the whole reason I bought it is the fact that I don't want to have to bother writing down the date+weight on a piece of paper in the morning (trust me I seem to fail at this basic task at 6am having tried for years). To my horror I discovered that they only save a few months (three?). Given the amount of data the device is reporting I was expecting them to effectively store all data fore…
I see a similar pattern with FitBit. It's a 3-axis accelerometer with some firmware and software. Someone smarter than me could probably get something working in a weekend (though weekend prototype to production is admittedly a long road). Worse, plenty of things have accelerometers in them. My iPhone. Your Samsung phone. My Pebble watch, which uses the Misfit app to count steps and track sleep without requiring that I actually buy a Misfit device. Some garage outfit may not put Fitbit out of business, but larger device manufacturers might be just one software update away from doing so.
Fitbit will have to have some serious value-add to stave off competitors, I think. Maybe I'm wrong, probably am. But I won't be buying their stock.
[0] http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/the-tragic-death-o...
I dunno, this kind of reminds me of the Flip video camera. Great little device, inexpensive. I bought one. Shortly after, cell phones became just as capable of being fits-in-a-pocket video recorders. Maybe not HD, but good enough. (Though some would argue cell phones had nothing to do with the demise of Flip. [0]) I see a similar pattern with FitBit. It's a 3-axis accelerometer with some firmware and software. Someon…
I don't understand what their next device or app is because I can't see them staying and competing for the exact reasons you said. Yet I even use their devices right now.
Curious what the future holds for them. I feel like they have to pivot or innovate and I haven't seen any hints of that yet. Then again I could be horribly wrong.
I dunno, this kind of reminds me of the Flip video camera. Great little device, inexpensive. I bought one. Shortly after, cell phones became just as capable of being fits-in-a-pocket video recorders. Maybe not HD, but good enough. (Though some would argue cell phones had nothing to do with the demise of Flip. [0]) I see a similar pattern with FitBit. It's a 3-axis accelerometer with some firmware and software. Someon…
In fact, you don't need to build one at all. AliBaba returns over 14k results for "fitness tracker", and I imagine many of them are exact FitBit clones.
However, consumer product businesses are about way more than just the product itself. Marketing matters. Distribution matters. Apple bought Beats not because they couldn't create headphones, but because they wanted the brand. FitBit is Beats for "3-axis accelerometers with some firmware and software that you wear around your wrist".