Fitbit fined $11M for misleading consumers about their rights under consumer law | Hacker News Reader

Fitbit fined $11M for misleading consumers about their rights under consumer law

abc.net.au

88 pointsclouddrover44 comments

As usual US companies go to other countries with their legal and commercial way of work and without care trample the local law. To play FIFA or crash bandicoot in Poland I need to agree on a huge EULA in English before playing. Arbitration property rights etc. Are these people even for real? Crash and FIFA are games mostly played by children, and I admit adult me.

In the US, we like to train our children to blindly accept long legal texts without question. This makes them better workers and voters later on.

That’s always seemed hilarious to me. In most of the EU, long and complicated EULAs are completely void, and yet the top brass lawyers at EA insist on including them?

The simple reason is probably the central management just doesn't care. If it works it works, if not they can fire the regional leaders for "failing to implement the central orders" and try it again. And if there's a fine, it's just the cost of doing business.

Fun fact: under Australian Consumer Law you cannot specify a set period of time for warranty purposes. The device must be fit for purpose and be of acceptable quality. That's it.

Obviously, if you buy a $10 toaster, the reasonable timeframe is shorter, but there is nowhere in the law where you can specify a particular time frame.

HP, Apple and a bunch of other companies have found this out the hard way. Basically, if you are a multinational, then do not screw with Australian consumers!

Is this for warranty or for liability for defects. Which in EU are separate concepts. Warranty is something that company offers beyond their normal liability. But devices are still expected to be defect free for reasonable period, like 4 years for TV.

Warranty, at least in Australia, means that the product is reliable and is fit for purpose.

Does the title actually make sense given the content? It reads like Fitbit misled customers about their warranty coverage/consumer rights, not the devices themselves?

I agree. According to the article, Fitbit misled customers about their refund policy. That's it.

The title should be changed to reflect that, but I wouldn't put it off with a simple "That's it"

Misleading customers is misleading customers. If you're dishonest in the simple things, how dishonest are you with everything else?

Any suggestions for a fitness tracker (steps, sleep) which can be used without an Android/iOS app?

If it is possible to access the data from a Linux machine - that would be perfect.

Garmin watches can be used this way, but it’s not quite as easy; you can even mount the watch as a USB drive and access a lot of the data that way if you want.

I did hit one issue once with maps on my fénix 7 where I had to plug it in to a windows computer specifically.

Yeah Garmin is about the most open, and maybe even more specifically anything that uses their ANT protocol (like Polar HR monitors).

Spent ages and wasted lots of money on trying to make this work. Buy an iPhone and an Apple Watch or go without was the conclusion. Everything else is absolute fucking garbage. Even the Garmin stuff is problematic. I had a Garmin watch crap out entirely while up a mountain. The Apple watch that replaced has taken a complete beating and works reliably every time and doesn't feel like I'm wearing a prison tag.

Incidentally the only activity tracking stuff that works at all outside the ecosystem is stuff that dumps GPX files. I ended up without a smartwatch at all there and just chucked a Garmin eTrex 10 in my bag for tracking and used OrganicMaps on the phone for mapping.

I wouldn't recommend sleep tracking. At least in my case, it makes me sleep worse worrying about it.

I really want an Apple Watch, but without the watch, because I can't find another fitness tracker that does the same and integrates into Apples Health app. I just don't want it enough to start wearing a watch.

With all the custom faces it can be as little watch or as much watch as you want it to be, plus 4-6 other points of information(depending on the face you choose). Weather, temperature, air quality, wind speed/direction, messages, compass, exercise tracker, calendar, etc… it’s a mini display for many data points at a glance.

That's really my issue, I want to see NONE of those things. Just a much smaller device with a week or two of battery life that sync data to my phone or laptop when its near. I want unobtrusive fitness/sleep/health tracking, not live feedback.

You want a Garmin.

The Garmin product that's closet to what I want is the VivoSmart 5, but it still has a screen. I want to track fitness, but not have the time of day available. It's a pretty specific requirement I know, but I don't want to know the time if I can avoid it.

Might I suggest the Withings watch. I love mine. I also wanted something rather simple without all the bells and whistles of an Apple Watch. It’s a hybrid smart/dumb watch. It looks like a classic watch but tracks HR, sleep, fitness, etc and you can receive notifications on it if you want as well (you can’t respond however). If you don’t have your phone on you, you can sync the data later on, battery lasts a month or more and it’s waterproof.

I got the sapphire glass model so I don’t have to worry about the watch face getting scratched up.

Edit: Got my watch a few years ago so I have an older model . Don’t think they carry my model anymore (Sapphire Steel HR) but their newest models look pretty comparable and probably checks all the same boxes.

Edit 2: my bad, didn’t see you’re requirement about not wanting to know the time of day. The Withings watch looks like a classic analog watch, so might not actually be what you’re looking for after all. Maybe try the Oura ring.

My mistake. I had thought you just didn’t want the time/watch. You want no display at all. Seems like a simple enough request.

> I wouldn't recommend sleep tracking. At least in my case, it makes me sleep worse worrying about it.

It's the only thing I find useful about these trackers, I love knowing how long / 'well' I slept since I find it very hard to understand intuitively. I notice that when I get bad 'sleep scores' I'm more conscious about giving myself time to rest and sleep better the following days.

> Even the Garmin stuff is problematic. I had a Garmin watch crap out entirely while up a mountain.

I switched into the Garmin environment some years ago. Have my second watch now and spread it all over the family. Never had I one person having any kind of issues with it and we have both outdoor and everyday models.

Which model would you recommend for a desk jockey who either runs or lifts weights a few days a week and goes hiking and climbing on weekends?

Garmin's watches have differentiating features, but any Garmin sportswatch will be sufficient for what you're doing. The biggest differences between the watches are the screen.

Venu/Vivoactive is a perfectly fine starting point. Move upwards if you need specific sensors, on-device music playback, etc. Upgrade to the Fenix if you want the better battery life and you're not bothered by the dim screen. Upgrade to the Epix if you want the better battery life of the Fenix and you can't live without a bright screen.

When I got my Fenix I thought the screen would bother me, but I got used to it quickly. If you've got a traditional smartwatch and you're moving to a Garmin, the Fenix might be an adjustment. Readability in direct sun can be problematic, (especially trying to read it on a bike) only you know whether or not that matters for your use case.

The cheapest one with GPS. If you choose a model with a small watch face but you don't have dainty wrists, make sure you can find a longer after-market band first.

I had a Fenix (can't remember which one) that would crash with specific GPX files were used. Also wouldn't talk to anything other than windows occasionally. I think someone else reported the latter as well.

So I have an Oura ring, and I find it helpful and able to tell if I'm ill or beat down at a level I wouldn't notice myself. For me, this is useful; it gives me some feedback I previously ignored or wasn't aware of.

Ideally, I'll start being able to tell how well I'm doing at the same fidelity the ring can, in a biofeedback sense, and then I won't need it.

But one thing I always wonder about is the sleep data. To what extent do they fit what they see to some training data? It says I'm in deep sleep at certain times, but if I was incapable of entering deep sleep, would it tell me, or would it overfit to the average and say I was probably in deep sleep at the times I should have been?

( I've seen this with heart rate monitors before. If I get above 180 running, it will sometimes say my heart is at 60, presumably because its got some range it expects you in, and so it's assuming its getting the data wrong and correcting away the actual data. )

Or, more generally, how do we know these devices are reporting what they say they are? How do we tell random made-up data from genuine actionable insights?

Anecdote here, but the only place from which you'd get "data" is from FitBit, and that's what you're trying to calibrate.

My wife's got a bunch of sleep issues, and she finds her fitbit data correlates really tightly with her sleep experience. When she's had a sucky sleep night, the fitbit reports lots of awake time, and when she wakes feeling great, that's also reflected. Since her experience is volatile, it seems it'd be hard for fitbit to correlate over years if it was making stuff up.

More, the miscues she can observe while awake are all giggle-worthy "Well that makes sense" items. There have been some times she's been entranced in some video or something, sitting perfectly still for extended periods, and Fitbit thinks she's taken a nap.

I used to have a Zeo, still have it somewhere, but I think the company collapsed. It was an actual head strap measuring EKG stuff. I wonder if I can compare what it gets to my ring and if its still possible to use it or whether it had some web-service component and is now bricked.

Where is the fine for a firmware update causing devices to essentially become unusable, and Google not offering replacements or a fix.

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Charge-5/Display-and-battery...

That's right after the meaningful penalty, so never.

Australia has very strong consumer protection laws in this regard. It's lovely.

11M is just the cost of doing business. Fitbit makes 1.6 billion a year.

This was for 58 customers though, so it sends a solid message I think

Not in Australia (population ~25M), they don't.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1036011/apac-annual-reve...

This is about 10% of their total annual APAC revenue. Not insignificant.

Net income (profit) would be the correct number to compare an additional expense for figuring out how much it “hurts”. Of course, they are owned by Alphabet, so ultimately, $11M is pocket change.

Also, where do you see current Fitbit figures? Alphabet does not break them out in their annual or quarterly reports.

https://abc.xyz/assets/9a/bd/838c917c4b4ab21f94e84c3c2c65/go...

https://abc.xyz/assets/c2/3e/0d6d568e4f56a1d14ca6b70c3443/go...

$11 million loss for 58 Fitbits. That's a brilliant way of doing business.

Is Australia like Canada? Canada was involved in an ugly shake-down of Google on behalf of our telecom companies (Bill C-18) and Google was resisting.

So, amongst other threats, Canada got rid of the independence of their Consumer protection agency so the government could use it to go after unfriendly companies. So after they came to an agreement on Bill C-18.

$11M for a fine about a $200 device for 58 customers... Seems a bit much to me.

The whole legal process should have been done in a day or two, and the fine been $10,000, plus a full refund or new product for every affected customer.

Then the authorities should start to focus on the cases that actually affect lots of people.

$10,000 for deliberately lying to customers? That's a joke.

Other than small mom and pop stores, a $10k fine isn't going to make the business change direction at all. It's barely even noticeable. For a multibillion dollar company, it's the penny that dropped from their pocket that they can't even be bothered to pick up.

In Ontario Canada the dominant blood testing company lost (got hacked) the health records of millions of customers and almost nothing came of it. Even the civil suit on behalf of the people whose entire health records were lost was going to be about $30 per person.

And yet in this thread people complain that ~$200K per person is too little for telling people the wrong info about their fitbit warranty.

People are so focussed on big tech they miss the egregious stuff happening one or two levels down.

> Then the authorities should start to focus on the cases that actually affect lots of people.

They are. These cases carry a "don't fuck around with Australia's consumer protection rules" message to other companies thinking of doing so. If you're selling products like this in Australia, you're committing to a 24+ month warranty/return period. No 90 day fuckery.

I wouldn’t call Fitbit a “tech giant” unless they’re referring to google

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