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Oh man. I'm definitely on both sides of the fence. After Fitbit bought Pebble, they made the ecosystem poorer. The Pebble tech team was stronger than the team

Oh man. I'm definitely on both sides of the fence. After Fitbit bought Pebble, they made the ecosystem poorer. The Pebble tech team was stronger than the team that absorbed them. Fitbit customer service is excellent, but their warranty is bad, and their build quality seems poor. My Fitbit Ionic (about $300) stopped working one month after the 12 month warranty ran out, and they offered me a 20% discount on my next purchase. They haven't lit up the SiO2 sensor on the Ionic after (3?) years. Google is great at a lot of things, but how invested are they in being a supplier of a niche, always connected device that collects personal data every second of the ... Wait a second! Things might be looking up for Fitbit devices! (But maybe not the users)

e40 7y ago
A friend, who got me interested in the devices, had the same issue. His died. Mine, I stopped using, when it detected I was asleep for 3 hours one night and I was definitely up and using my phone for the entire time. The only reason I got it was to monitor my sleep. It is apparently useless for that.
jjoonathan 7y ago
> My Fitbit Ionic (about $300) stopped working one month after the 12 month warranty ran out My Fitbit Ionic stopped working 6 months into the 12 month warranty and they flaked on the warranty anyway. Many Ionics were secretly sold without the manufacturer's warranty. The problem turned out to be a shorted capacitor. My secretly-warranty-less ionic was sold during the Great Capacitor Shortage. Coincidence? Maybe. I doubt we'll ever know. https://photos.app.goo.gl/tpQ8CmtaZjJGCEUo6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/tpQ8CmtaZjJGCEUo6
- wrkronmiller 7y ago
  How can a device be sold to an end-user without a warranty? Was the device sold by a third party or something?
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    Yep, I bought it new in a sealed box from an Amazon third party store with prime shipping a week or two after product launch. Fitbit said they "had" to refuse my warranty on account of having purchased the watch from an "unauthorized re-seller" because of clones, but their software already checks serial numbers for duplicates and rejects clones, so that sounds like an excuse. Incidentally, my next watch was a Garmin, and while I tried to buy it from the official Garmin store on Amazon I found a 3rd party store on the receipt, so I contacted Garmin and ask them if this would invalidate my warranty. They said it would not. They made good on that promise two weeks ago when a fatigue crack showed up in the plastic frame. tl;dr Fuck Fitbit, Go Garmin!
    - abawany 7y ago
      Another vote for Garmin warranty: my strap catch broke (the little loop that holds the long end of the strap down). I chatted online with them and they shipped me the 50c catch in what appeared to be a large box that must have cost at least $4 to ship. A bit overkill but that's how you retain customers I guess.
- mcnichol 7y ago
  That was a fantastic little run-through on your teardown and repair of the ionic. Do you make videos/streams of your work? Would love to watch.
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    No, but maybe that's something to think about :)

e40 7y ago

A friend, who got me interested in the devices, had the same issue. His died. Mine, I stopped using, when it detected I was asleep for 3 hours one night and I was definitely up and using my phone for the entire time. The only reason I got it was to monitor my sleep. It is apparently useless for that.

jjoonathan 7y ago

> My Fitbit Ionic (about $300) stopped working one month after the 12 month warranty ran out My Fitbit Ionic stopped working 6 months into the 12 month warranty and they flaked on the warranty anyway. Many Ionics were secretly sold without the manufacturer's warranty. The problem turned out to be a shorted capacitor. My secretly-warranty-less ionic was sold during the Great Capacitor Shortage. Coincidence? Maybe. I doubt we'll ever know. https://photos.app.goo.gl/tpQ8CmtaZjJGCEUo6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/tpQ8CmtaZjJGCEUo6

wrkronmiller 7y ago
How can a device be sold to an end-user without a warranty? Was the device sold by a third party or something?
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  Yep, I bought it new in a sealed box from an Amazon third party store with prime shipping a week or two after product launch. Fitbit said they "had" to refuse my warranty on account of having purchased the watch from an "unauthorized re-seller" because of clones, but their software already checks serial numbers for duplicates and rejects clones, so that sounds like an excuse. Incidentally, my next watch was a Garmin, and while I tried to buy it from the official Garmin store on Amazon I found a 3rd party store on the receipt, so I contacted Garmin and ask them if this would invalidate my warranty. They said it would not. They made good on that promise two weeks ago when a fatigue crack showed up in the plastic frame. tl;dr Fuck Fitbit, Go Garmin!
  - abawany 7y ago
    Another vote for Garmin warranty: my strap catch broke (the little loop that holds the long end of the strap down). I chatted online with them and they shipped me the 50c catch in what appeared to be a large box that must have cost at least $4 to ship. A bit overkill but that's how you retain customers I guess.
mcnichol 7y ago
That was a fantastic little run-through on your teardown and repair of the ionic. Do you make videos/streams of your work? Would love to watch.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  No, but maybe that's something to think about :)