If you’re the owner of a Fitbit, you might want to take note of this story from the CBC where apparently the company put out a software update that effectively bricked devices. Then either ignored customers who complained about that, or offered them a discount of 25% on a new device. And only when the CBC started asking Fitbit questions, did they acknowledge “a very small subset” of devices had issues. Which from what I see is spin at best.
Here’s the thing. It should never, ever take bad press to make any company do the right thing. Companies screw up and flaky software updates get out that are customer impacting. But how a company handles that will define if the company continues to have customers and if that bad press continues. A case that illustrates this is Apple. They have twice have had software updates that have bricked Apple Watches. But both times they pulled the update pretty quickly and anyone who had a bricked Apple Watch got it replaced within hours or days. Was it embarrassing for Apple both times that this happened? Yes. But they dealt with it and the negative press went away very quickly.
Now contrast this with Fitbit. It appears that didn’t do any of that. No wonder they’re getting this blowback on Twitter among other places:
And this bad press could not have come at a worse time for Fitbit as they just released a new device called the Versa 2. But I suspect that sales of that device are going to take a hit because of this. After all, if Fitbit behaves like this when they put out a flaky software update, does that inspire confidence that they will take care of you if you run into a problem?
The bottom line is that this is an #EpicFail by a company who at present, is getting its posterior handed to it by Apple via the Apple Watch. Not only that, they are bleeding cash at the moment according to their most recent financials. Situations like this don’t help the company, and I would not be surprised that as a result of all of this bad press that they themselves created that Fitbit’s problems worsen.
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This entry was posted on August 30, 2019 at 9:09 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Fitbit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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#EpicFail: Fitbit Ignored Customers Who Had Their Fitness Trackers Bricked By Faulty Software Update Until The Media Knocked On Their Door
If you’re the owner of a Fitbit, you might want to take note of this story from the CBC where apparently the company put out a software update that effectively bricked devices. Then either ignored customers who complained about that, or offered them a discount of 25% on a new device. And only when the CBC started asking Fitbit questions, did they acknowledge “a very small subset” of devices had issues. Which from what I see is spin at best.
Here’s the thing. It should never, ever take bad press to make any company do the right thing. Companies screw up and flaky software updates get out that are customer impacting. But how a company handles that will define if the company continues to have customers and if that bad press continues. A case that illustrates this is Apple. They have twice have had software updates that have bricked Apple Watches. But both times they pulled the update pretty quickly and anyone who had a bricked Apple Watch got it replaced within hours or days. Was it embarrassing for Apple both times that this happened? Yes. But they dealt with it and the negative press went away very quickly.
Now contrast this with Fitbit. It appears that didn’t do any of that. No wonder they’re getting this blowback on Twitter among other places:
And this bad press could not have come at a worse time for Fitbit as they just released a new device called the Versa 2. But I suspect that sales of that device are going to take a hit because of this. After all, if Fitbit behaves like this when they put out a flaky software update, does that inspire confidence that they will take care of you if you run into a problem?
The bottom line is that this is an #EpicFail by a company who at present, is getting its posterior handed to it by Apple via the Apple Watch. Not only that, they are bleeding cash at the moment according to their most recent financials. Situations like this don’t help the company, and I would not be surprised that as a result of all of this bad press that they themselves created that Fitbit’s problems worsen.
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This entry was posted on August 30, 2019 at 9:09 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Fitbit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.