
Jawbone denies 'abandoning' customers - AndrewDucker
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39191057
======
simonbarker87
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
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...](https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2013/06/12/the-
mysterious-case-of-the-missing-jawbone-up/amp/)

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

~~~
mulletbum
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.

~~~
mafuyu
Give Fitbit another shot some time! We've focused on significantly improving
the hardware quality with the latest generation of products, and they're much
less likely to break. They also all have interchangeable bands for the case
that they do.

~~~
nunez
I've had my Fitbit Charge HR for six months about. no issues yet, and I've
showered with it!

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qzervaas
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.

~~~
rickyc091
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.

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Traubenfuchs
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.

~~~
blauditore
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.

~~~
moftz
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.

~~~
blauditore
The problem is that while one is sleeping, body motion switches between phases
of intensive, slight and no movement. Slight movements are quite close to
noise, so drawing the line there is not trivial. And during certain phases,
the person lays almost completely still for up to more than one hour.

~~~
moftz
Of course there are going to be periods of slight movements that appear as
noise while sleeping. But the device should be smart enough to realize when
there has been a very long (see 8 hours) period of inactivity. No one is
staying still for that long while they sleep so the device should just assume
any data collected during those 8 hours of inactivity was just the device
sitting on a bedside table and that the data should be discarded.

Additionally, ask the user if they want to record sleep data and let them
choose the hours they typically sleep. Using that can greatly help save
battery life during the night by just having the device be more liberal in its
use of a low power mode when long periods of noise-level activity is detected.
Use the general sleep window to put the device into a mode where it listens
for the slight, noise-level movements. During the day, those movements aren't
going to matter as much compared to the night so the window is important in
clearly defining when they should count more.

------
SeanBoocock
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
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).

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dspillett
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
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.

~~~
dspillett
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.

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tricinel
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.

------
surfy
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
> _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
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

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

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projectramo
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.

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rootameen
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.

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SQL2219
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9744111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9744111)

