Jawbone denies 'abandoning' customers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39191057

by AndrewDucker • 9 years ago

66 29 9 years ago

bbc.co.uk

I had an Up when they first came out and the quality was terrible, after a week the vibration alarm stopped working, Amazon replaced under warranty and then the button stopped working on that one after 2 weeks. In the end I just asked for my money back, it seems after 3 years they are still struggling with the same issues, I really hope they take a different quality approach if they are focussing on medical devices....

paulftw• 9 years ago

I bought the original jawbone for my partner. She loved it but 1-2 months later it stopped charging. Took it back to the Apple Store in Sydney and they replaced it with a new one.

A month later I had to go to the store again for the same reason. Apple Store staff said they were seeing a lot of returns like that.

Third band died just as quickly but we didn't bother. Downtime moved the product out of the "habit zone".

There was also a techcrunch article about their terrible quality [1]

With so many chronic issues I'm surprised this company is still in business. Haven't they been acquired by Fitbit or something?

[1] https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2013/06/12/th...

Edit: that was non-wireless version, but I think it was called 2nd gen

mulletbum• 9 years ago

Fitbits are just as bad too. The only benefit is Fitbits customer service is better. I owned a Fibit or I should say 5 Fitbits, before I switched to an UP3, then finally an Apple Watch. Fitbits would contstantly break, mostly just going completely dead and their support would send me a new one.

johnbrodie• 9 years ago

Somewhat strange that the level of hardware quality is all over the map with these devices. Perhaps we just got lucky, but my wife has been using a Withings Pulse (clip-on, not a bracelet) for the better part of 3 years now, every day, with no issues. Hell, cell phones can do everything these devices do, have a lot more sensitive electronics, and generally have a longer expected lifetime.

qzervaas• 9 years ago

Did they ever have good support?

One of their key selling points to me over Fitbit is that they support HealthKit on iOS.

However, there was a critical bug that prevented the HK integration from working properly.

As someone who knows HealthKit pretty well, I went in circles for weeks trying to get them to fix it - every response would reset the thread back to the agent walking me through basic steps, no hint of reading the ticket history.

Super frustrating, so I just stopped using it at that point.

ceejayoz• 9 years ago

FYI, Fitbit's API lets third-party sync apps send your Fitbit data off to HealthKit. http://syncsolver.com/ is the one I use.

rickyc091• 9 years ago

When the Jawbone first came out their support wasn't bad. They had live chat, email support, forums and telephone support. The first thing they shuttered was the live chat. Soon the email support became useless as the emails would stay in limbo for up to a week. Calling them directly was the only way to get help. Of course you had to suffer through the long wait times.

As for the support, they were generally on the customers side. Then again the Jawbone UPs were plagued with issues so they had no choice but to exchange it for you.

Overall, I don't think it was terrible, but it definitely got progressive worse especially when they got into a legal battle with Fitbit.

SQL2219• 9 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9744111

Traubenfuchs• 9 years ago

I don't mind getting abandoned as much as getting lied to.

If you forget wearing your pretty little piece of junk it will produce fake sleep data that looks like real data.

blauditore2• 9 years ago

That's most probably not lying, just statistical noise not detected properly.

I made a sleep tracking app a couple of years ago, using the accelerometer built into smartphones. To normalize data between different environments (beds, matresses, phone models...), I tried to estimate activity/sleep phases compared to a low quantile over all data points, after trying to remove, or at least mitigate noise. However, if there is only noise, the algorithm will interpret that as if recorded movements were just really fine and still try to derive useful information from it.

There were lots of complaints that my app would "make up" data, but this was never the case. It was just not using an absolute lower threshold of non-movements.

moftz2• 9 years ago

But you would think that the device would be able to detect zero motion for long periods of time and stop recording data and ignore any data recorded since ceasing to move. It's not that complicated to have a rule where if there is no motion (relative to someone moving their arm) for a few hours, then the device isn't being worn or the person is dead. Naively recording what accounts to noise for long periods of time is dumb; it wastes battery and reduces trust in the product.

ArielBarack• 9 years ago

I can confirm the article is spot on, been chasing their support since November and still no reply

tricinel• 9 years ago

Oh good, I'm not the only one. Sad. It made me feel special. :)

But the article is spot on. Having been an owner of the original Up Move, I wanted to upgrade to the Up2 and that one stopped working after 2-3 months of usage. Emailed support and got nothing but silence back...That was back in November.

Moved on to Garmin and could not be happier.

rootameen• 9 years ago

I have proofs that their support took 4 months to respond to an issue I had. So yea. [Edit] They didn't even fix it.

dspillett2• 9 years ago

I'm getting the impression that the health wearable market has breached saturation point and is contracting as people are either happy with what they have or stop using them, in either case not needing to upgrade or change. The reduced demand and therefore need to compete harder has had the manufacturers cutting corners or otherwise having quality and/or support issues (both recent fitbit products and MS's Band2 have seen a lot of complaints about straps breaking, for instance).

There are companies completely leaving the market too, voluntarily or otherwise: as the article says jawbone is dropping consumer products in favour of concentrating on products/services geared towards healthcare specialists, Pebble went broke (chunks of the remains were picked up by fitbit), and MS has completely abandoned the band range.

ballenf• 9 years ago

Anecdotally, I used to see people wearing various ones around the office. But not a single one in sight for past few months. Feels a little like the early video game market -- cool idea that's a few years ahead of the tech required to make it practical.

dspillett2• 9 years ago

They are very popular in some activity based groups (runners like myself) but mainly for the GPS functions and sometimes heart-rate monitoring.

I'm definitely seeing less of them elsewhere too.

I would say they are a bit more specific then video games. More like tamagochi craze, if you remember that, especially the step-counter only devices.

SeanBoocock• 9 years ago

I'm in the same boat. Have owned several UP bands over the years and have had several warranty replacements. I love the hardware form factor and the software, but the reliability, even when support was responsive, has been very poor.

My most recent band, an UP3, started having trouble charging last fall at which point I discovered that Jawbone had removed all of their support options save for an opaque support form. I have not received any response to my support ticket, nor found any more direct contact method. At this point they've lost me as a future customer, but they are also failing to fulfill their warranty obligations by ignoring customers with broken hardware.

donalhunt• 9 years ago

tl;dr: not surprised with the way this is playing out.

My experience was similar. Went through 3-4 UP24s; switched to the UP3; replaced a few of those.

Consistency with initial engagement with their customer support was always hit and miss I found but once they were engaged they were very good at replacing the device (very streamlined process with outbound replacement and ease of returning the broken device).

This approach to customer service probably led to the high resale value on secondary markets (users got fed up after the second or third replacement and would just sell the (often brand new) replacement device.

As a customer, I was very happy with the friction-less replacement process (many companies should take note if they are looking to increase CSAT scores). As a business and process owner, I thought it was crazy because the cost to the business didn't make any sense to me from a sustainability perspective (you have to have really good margins to offer that level of service and still make money).

projectramo• 9 years ago

I've had 4 or 5 up bands. They keep breaking (physically).

I would love to replace them but there is nothing remotely competitive when it comes to sleep tracking. And sleep tracking has been hugely beneficial.

surfy• 9 years ago

Apple Watch.

I have had many (most?) monitoring devices over the years. I've worn them on my wrist, bicep, around my neck and on my head. They all suffered in varying degrees from reliability or poor software or lack of versatility / upgrade path.

The Apple Watch 2 is the best yet and I think this model leaves little room for jawbone or Fitbit other than as niche players.

The battery life on my Apple 2 is leaps better than the 1 and the apps coming out for monitoring are really starting to impress. With the new water resistance you can do swim workouts now.

It's got a beautiful display, can text, call, display photos, email, maps, email, call an Uber, play music wirelessly to my headphones, etc etc.

And the reliability has been and continues to be 100% for my original Watch and now this new one.

idiot_stick• 9 years ago

the battery life on my Apple 2 is leaps better than the 1

Having to charge a monitoring device almost every day defeats the purpose, at least in my opinion. My Garmin needs charging once every 7 or 8 days.

theshrike79• 9 years ago

Yeah, not having it on my wrist for the 15-20 minutes daily during my morning shower to top up the battery is a real deal-breaker /s

r00fus• 9 years ago

I have the original Apple watch and it's seen 50+ swim sessions (including ocean/river) without any impairment to the functionality or usability. Key point is to rinse it out with clean water whenever you exist (easy: shower).

The capacitive touchscreen isn't reliable when wet - have they improved that in series2?

nunez2• 9 years ago

I would love to only use my Watch full time, but its battery life is pretty bad. It barely makes it through a day. My Fitbit Charge HR, on the other hand, can easily go a week straight (literally; I wear it to sleep) without charging.

So I wear both. not a great solution, but it works for now.

Jawbone denies 'abandoning' customers

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