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Whoop is trying to recover from a recent setback. The launch of their Whoop 5.0 fitness tracker left users upset after the company failed to honor its promise of complimentary hardware upgrades. In response, Whoop announced on Reddit that members with over a year of subscription can now receive the Whoop 5.0 at no cost.
The confusion stemmed from Whoop’s unclear communications. Earlier, my colleague Victoria Song explained that to acquire a Whoop 5.0 band, members were required to either extend their current membership by another year or pay an upgrade fee. However, until fairly recently, Whoop’s website had indicated in a blog post that members with at least six months of subscription were eligible for a free next-generation hardware upgrade.
Following the negative feedback, Whoop has partially revised its policy. Customers with over 12 months left on their subscription can now upgrade to the WHOOP 5.0 for free through Peak, one of its new subscription models. However, members with less than 12 months remaining must still extend their subscription by another year or pay an upgrade fee. This information has also been updated on the company’s membership pricing page.
The company addresses the earlier blog post, writing 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.” Whoop goes on:
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.
That seems to line up with a Forbes interview that a Reddit user found, in which Whoop CEO Will Ahmed told the outlet that members with a Whoop 3.0 band could upgrade to the 4.0 model, so long as they had “at least 6 months of membership left on their account.” The company used similar language in a 2021 blog post about the Whoop 4.0 band.
Even some who are more accepting of the change have criticisms. One person writes that while they’re “pleased with the change,” they don’t buy that the blog post was made in error. “They should just own that they changed their mind/policy rather than claim it was a false posting to begin with.”
