Whoop is in injury management mode. After debuting its Whoop 5.0 fitness tracker, customers had been angered to search out it had reneged on a promise of free {hardware} upgrades. In a new Reddit post, the corporate now says customers who’ve been members for over 12 months can get the Whoop 5.0 free of charge.
A part of the outrage was prompted by Whoop’s complicated messaging. Early yesterday morning, my colleague Victoria Song reported that to get a Whoop 5.0 band, customers would want to increase their current membership by a further 12 months or pay a one-time improve charge. Nonetheless, till a minimum of March twenty eighth of this yr, Whoop’s web site had a blog post that mentioned customers would solely have to have been a member for a minimum of six months to get a free improve to next-gen {hardware}.
After the backlash, Whoop is now altering its tune — considerably. These with “greater than 12 months remaining” are “eligible for a free improve to WHOOP 5.0 on Peak,” one among its new subscription choices. These with lower than 12 months left, nonetheless need to both lengthen their membership one other 12 months or pay a one-time improve charge, the corporate says. The identical data is mirrored in an update on its membership pricing page.
The corporate addresses the sooner weblog publish, writing that “a earlier weblog article incorrectly acknowledged that anybody who had been a member for simply 6 months would obtain a free improve. This was by no means our coverage and may by no means have been posted.” Whoop goes on:
As famous above, our coverage for upgrades from WHOOP 3.0 to WHOOP 4.0 was that members with 6 months or extra remaining on their membership had been eligible for a free improve to WHOOP 4.0. We eliminated that weblog article when it got here to our consideration and up to date WHOOP Coach with the right data. We’re sorry for any confusion this will have brought about.
That appears to line up with a Forbes interview that a Reddit user found, wherein Whoop CEO Will Ahmed informed the outlet that members with a Whoop 3.0 band might improve to the 4.0 mannequin, as long as that they had “a minimum of 6 months of membership left on their account.” The corporate used related language in a 2021 blog post concerning the Whoop 4.0 band.
Even some who’re extra accepting of the change have criticisms. One person writes that whereas they’re “happy with the change,” they don’t purchase that the weblog publish was made in error. “They need to simply personal that they modified their thoughts/coverage somewhat than declare it was a false posting to start with.”