The fitness tracker maker Whoop has (sort of) backtracked on an unpopular change to its upgrade policy that accompanied the launch of the Whoop 5 and Whoop MG hardware last week.
The subscription-only company had told users last week that if it wanted to upgrade to a new model, beyond the Whoop 4.0, then they would have to pay an upgrade fee, or re-up for an entire 12 months. The latter meant no benefit compared to brand new customers.
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That angered members of the community who’d assumed that, as long as they kept their subscription up, they were entitled to fresh hardware upgrades whenever they should come along. A blog post live as of late March had promised free upgrades for anyone who’d been a member for at least six months. The company later said that’s was an error.
Now, after a significant outcry from the user base, the company has said that users who had 12 months remaining will get the free upgrade (it sold some 24 month subs too). Those users with 12+ months left, who’d already paid the upgrade fee will be refunded.
In a Reddit thread, the company wrote: “If you have more than 12 months remaining, you’re eligible for a free upgrade to WHOOP 5.0 on Peak. This will be automatically applied when you go to check out. If you’ve already upgraded to WHOOP 5.0 on Peak and paid a one-time upgrade fee despite having more than 12 months remaining, we’ll refund that fee. You’ll be receiving a refund – stay tuned for an email.”
If you have less than 12 months you’ll need to sign up for another 12 months to get the Whoop 5, just like everyone who has never owned one. Whoop also acknowledged the incorrect blog post that caused a lot of the kerfuffle in the first place saying it was “never our policy” and apologised for the error.
The company wrote: “We also want to acknowledge that a previous blog article incorrectly stated that anyone who had been a member for just 6 months would receive a free upgrade. This was never our policy and should never have been posted. As noted above, our policy for upgrades from WHOOP 3.0 to WHOOP 4.0 was that members with 6 months or more remaining on their membership were eligible for a free upgrade to WHOOP 4.0. We removed that blog article when it came to our attention and updated WHOOP Coach with the proper information. We’re sorry for any confusion this may have caused.”
Whether this will affect the Whoop’s status as one of the best fitness trackers remains to be seen.
One user seems to think the reputational damage is done, posting to Reddit: “You don’t publish a policy by accident and keep it up for years. Removing it after backlash doesn’t erase the fact it is real.”
Opinion
Whoop caused some confusion with its original statement on Friday evening (certainly to me after a long, long week) where it spoke about an “error of fact” in a way that seemingly questioned the reporting around the issue rather than the incorrect blog post. There is now clarity, but it still feels like loyal Whoop users are getting a raw deal. Only those who signed up for two years and have a year or more left are getting the upgrade.
