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Comment by obviouslygreen | Hacker News Reader

This is why I skipped the high priced crap and went straight to a pedometer. It's not perfect, but it is engineered to serve its purpose and does so in a predictable way.

What is this high-price-point, high-maintenance appliance worth if it's broken for significant portions of its audience and requires constant updates that don't actually happen to run or keep running?

I have friends who use and love these. Frankly, for the headaches they deal with, my ~20USD pedometer sits in my pocket and reliably estimates both my distance traveled and calories burned. No fuss, no muss, no upgrades, no OS issues. It does one thing and does it pretty well; I'd rather have that than have an appliance that attempts to do a lot of things and manages it rather poorly.

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When I bought my FitBit it was a very nice device. The app worked and the fact that it handled figuring out total calories made it very easy to use.

But at some point there was a bug in their software which they never bothered to tell me about. I recently asked support they said that they actually knew about the problem it had turned it off for all new users so they wouldn't hit it. But they never told me. So I have about 18 months of data we're most days I expended almost exactly 3000 calories which is a total lie.

On top of that the quality of the app has been terrible ever since they released the iOS 7 version last year. They had clearly implemented custom controls which cease to work well when iOS 7 came out, and after more than a year and numerous bug reports they still haven't fixed any of them. The app is been redesigned a few times; clearly to push whatever their current goal is. In doing so they have actually taken away extremely useful features.

I spent a lot of time looking around find the best company with a health tracker. At the time FitBit was the clear winner.

But it seems that since the market growing they're happy to do whatever they want and the money keeps flowing in. It doesn't matter how you treat current customers. Once you've sold the device they don't matter.

Can you point me to a link with some information about this bug? I'm a current Flex owner and would love to learn about this.

I don't know if it's posted anywhere, here's what support told me (after a few back and forth emails and escalations):

> There is a setting on every users profile that allows enabling or disabling of Calorie Estimation. This function gives users an estimation of calories based on their profile history. Its best suited for users that maintain the same relative activity level daily, in case they forget to wear their trackers some of the time. Calorie Estimation used to be enabled by default, but due to some discrepancies such as yours, it is now disabled by default for new users until we can improve the technology.

> I recommend that you turn the Calorie Estimator off on your profile.

So the feature that adjusts your calorie burn based on your activity broke calorie burn estimation. If you turn the feature off.... everything works as expected. Note that I fit perfectly into the "maintain the same relative daily activity level" category.

They knew about it, they turned it off for new users because it caused problems, they left it on for existing users and didn't tell them even if the bug was occurring.

http://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/How-does-...

"Calorie estimation is used when no activities are logged or data is synced." If that's accurate, then it only "broke" calorie burn estimation on days when you didn't wear your Fitbit.

I find it vaguely amusing that this whole mini-industry seems to have grown up around selling selling devices that are pretty much just pedometers. (I get that for some people all the computerized record-keeping is a big deal that makes for a difference in kind but still...)

Kind of like the industry that's grown up around phones? :) once you connect gadgets the web, some things become much greater than when they're on their own.

My point (such as it was :-)) is that, for me, the connecting on the web thing doesn't much change the fact that most of what you're doing is just measuring the number of steps you take with varying degrees of accuracy. I can already do that with a pedometer or, under most circumstances, more accurately with a GPS. That said, I appreciate that a lot of folks find that they get a lot of incremental value out of the web-connected part whether for gamification or other reasons. And, hey, whatever encourages exercise and activity. I'm just not especially wired for that type of incentive.

I have a fitbit zip, their cheapest model, which I leave clipped to my keyring.All it does (that I care about) is step counting, which syncs via bluetooth.

About 3 months ago it broke (after many ears of success) and after looking around at all the alternatives I bought... another fitbit zip. I just hope they don't decide to stop making it.

I have an Ultra but I would always forget to dock it and recharge. So I got the Zip. Couldn't be happier especially since their Android app syncs without my having to ask it to.

I have a One and the only thing I use it for is step tracking. It works great.

Their software ecosystem is becoming a disaster.

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