Whoop 5.0: Manufacturer rows back a little on new subscription models

After the launch of the new Whoop 5.0 fitness tracker, customers were annoyed that the company did not keep its promise of free hardware upgrades. In a Reddit post, the company now promises that customers who have more than 12 months left on their subscription can get Whoop 5.0 for free. However, not everyone is happy with the adjustment.

Whoop adjusts subscription model retrospectively

The reason for the uproar was that the manufacturer explained during the announcement of the new Whoop generation that customers would have to extend their existing membership by a further 12 months or pay a one-off upgrade fee in order to receive Whoop 5.0. Previously, however, the manufacturer said that users only needed to be a member for at least 6 months to get a free upgrade to the next generation of hardware.

In a Reddit post, Whoop has at least rowed back a little. The manufacturer writes that users whose subscription has "more than 12 months left" are "eligible for a free upgrade to the Whoop 5.0 Peak model". Users whose subscription is shorter than 12 months would either have to extend their membership for another 12 months or pay a one-off upgrade fee. The company also provided these new details in an updated version of the subscription prices in the Support Center on May 10.

Whoop also explained that the free upgrade to a new generation of hardware, provided users had at least 6 months left on their subscription, was a mistake. The relevant part of a blog post on the Whoop website that promised this was therefore deleted.

Some Whoop users still annoyed

However, this was precisely the promise Whoop CEO Will Ahmed made in an interview with Forbes magazine, as a Reddit user discovered. In it, Ahmed said that members with a Whoop 3.0 band can upgrade to the 4.0 model as long as they "have at least 6 months of membership left on their account."

While some users are happy with the changes made to the subscription model, others are still upset. One Reddit user, for example, doubts that the previous upgrade promise was made in error: "They should just admit they changed their mind/policy instead of claiming it was a false post to begin with." Another user' s post "You don't accidentally publish a policy and leave it up for years. The fact that you remove it after a backlash doesn't change the fact that it's real". A user in a similar thread wrote: "It's not about the cost, it's about the fact that they changed what they promised."

(afl)