- Peloton is introducing a $95 “used equipment activation fee” for bikes purchased from outside its official channels in the US and Canada, aiming to boost revenue and maintain onboarding quality for new subscribers.
- The fee has sparked criticism as it reduces the cost savings typically associated with buying secondhand equipment and diverges from practices in other industries, potentially discouraging used market purchases.
- Peloton’s hardware sales continue to decline, but subscription revenue has seen slight growth; the company still faces financial struggles despite cost-cutting measures and layoffs.
Still too steep if thats what they consider a bargain price. Im all for companies making money long as they pay their rank and file fairly though
Will no one think of the onboarding quality?!
Don’t Tesla do the same bullshit? If you paid for some feature then sell the car, the new owner has to pay for it again?
This shit should be illegal.
Just outlaw things that don’t work without internet connectivity. Activation included.
AAAAND that’s the moment I’d go from frothing progressive to bomb-slinging radical. That very moment.
Why?
I hate the IoT with a fervor of ten thousand rabid honeybadgers and if it were legally mandated for every piece of technology, I would go full luddite and tear as much down on my way out to a cave in the woods as I could.
That’s the “full self driving”. All the newer cars come with computers capable of doing it, but you either pay a $99/month subscription or a one time $8k charge.
I just checked out their website and apparently you can either transfer it to a new Tesla or leave it with the car and basically sell it to the new owner. Not what I expected at all.
there’s a fucktonne of stuff that SHOULD be illegal that isn’t because no one has made a big enough stink about it yet.
refined sugar for one.
Cloning celebrities for sex trafficking for another.
Cory Doctorow calls this one “it’s ok because we do it with an app” and urges regulators to enforce the laws already on the books. It’s an absurd defense legally, but there’s no enforcement of antitrust or consumer law at all anymore
Lets hope a blue wave changes that. I mean I don’t have any illusions that dems aren’t almost as corporate owned, but Harris has voted more consistently with Bernie than any other congressman
Havent heard anyone talk about this but its particularly inisidious because most likely consumers wont find out about this fee until AFTER they buy it…
For a subscription fee of [+$5/six months] your brand new pair of Peloton Underwear™️ won’t shit themselves.
Anti-shit underwear? Sign me up!
The downside: You have to shit them yourself.
They should have been more conservative in their business and expected that it was only surging because of the pandemic. They cashed in on the IPO but should have gotten out. Now they’re beholden to investors. Probably made enough money to not care if the company crashes and burns.
I predicted Peloton’s failure on launch, two of my cryptobro friends laughed and dumped semi serious money into it.
LOLLLLLLLLLLL
The tech world has become and endless conveyor belt of stupid greedy miseries.
No subscription-based company products should be in public schools. That would stop with inculcating model acceptance.
No federal agency should be using any subscription product, including any cloud products. Public data should not be capable of being held hostage or monetised.
Both are a waste of public funds and set a bad example.
We can put marketing teams in the fields and mines doing honest toil.
The tech world has become and endless conveyor belt of stupid greedy miseries.
Simpler. It’s easy to create artificial maintenance costs there as needed. That, of course, wouldn’t work well without oligopoly.
Government officials are interested in buying such products due to kickbacks, which means that everybody else directly or indirectly needs them for interoperability. Thus oligopoly persists.
It’s as if only radical solutions would work, be it radical authoritarian or radical libertarian.
It’s easy to create artificial maintenance costs there as needed.
That reminds me of the bricked polish trains, not only did they create artificial maintenance cost, they also tried to ensure that only they (and not their competitors) would be able to do that maintenance (unflipping the kill-switch)
In that particular case it was plain sabotage, I’ve read that article. They also denied knowledge of that kill-switch.
I meant cases where both the vendor and the buyer know how these are formed, but due to kickbacks are fine with it.
It’s the McDonald’s ice cream machine fiasco all over again.
The marketers yearn for the mine
So they shouldn’t lease buildings, or subscribe to water and power? Should they also not use document archival and storage services that have existed for decades?
Water and power still need to be reconfigured, obvs we’re not there yet, but they don’t contain my personal info and can’t leak it.
I’m not against govt working with entities when needed, but it’s become a lazy solution to outsource functions and often the blame for failure as well, rather than build a responsible solution.
It’s gotten too cozy and intertwined.
lol
I recently read that a baby crib did the same thing they charge an activation fee after it’s sold. First we had subscriptions now we have reselling activation fees. It’s just another way to get a little bit more money.
Cradlewise. At least that is a one time $120 fee and you don’t need an additional app subscription to use it, for now. It might get worse as the first set of users are just starting to sell theirs, as it’s useless after 2 years.
For Pelaton, it’s reactivation fee + app subscription.
Should just be illegal. Either you buy a thing or you rent it. This is cheating.
Anyone who has already purchased a Prloton, should be able to resell it. If they can’t, then I see a class action coming.
New sales could do this I guess, hopefully people will stop buying from crap companies
So they lost resale value and will have more trouble selling new hardware as well?
My thoughts exactly. This seems like a short term play to boost the stock price, let execs get out of the market, then sell off the company before it goes under.
Also how are they gonna prove you didn’t buy it before the announcement and just didn’t register/use it until after? Seems to me that’s gonna be sticky in the eyes of copyright
I don’t get what it has to do with copyright?
It’s as simple as they built the equipment to require an app. And it needs the cloud, so its either accept the license or stop using the hw.
It’s happening everywhere.
Thanks, I meant terms & conditions, fixed. If I buy a product that does not have an activation fee in the t&c at time of purchase, legally I probably shouldn’t have to pay it even if they implement it later and I waited to activate. That would maybe still require you to sign up even if you aren’t paying to get the t&c then though. It could be argued that since the fee was not in place at time of purchase it shouldn’t apply and that is what I meant by ‘sticky’ is all.
let execs get out of the market,
A new business architecture without this particular flaw seems to be in pretty capitalist demand today.
Maybe something about conflict of interest being illegal for such positions. Maybe just cooperatives with modern technologies to help make them more organized.
If this shit is allowed, every other company will follow. Imagine buying a used car and getting hit up with a $1000 activation fee, fuck that
They do. At least for optional features like Apple Car and Android Auto.
Don’t give them new ideas. Cars are already slowly turning into a SaaS on wheels.
Another thing I predicted a decade and a half ago that the internet of that time mocked me for…
This is basically admitting that consumers don’t actually value their subscription service for the cost. If users were buying used bikes and signing up for subscriptions Peloton would be thrilled, they would do everything that they could to encourage that like free trials. But it must be that most people who buy used bikes don’t find the subscription worth it and cancel within a few months. Adding this fee both extracts more money and creates a sunk cost fallacy that will cause them to go longer before cancelling.
If the product sold itself they would just let people pay them subscriptions, its basically free money.
So you’re saying there will soon be a scene dedicated to cracking Peloton software.
Cuz that’s what I’m hearing.
Already exists. The Peloton subreddit has a guide on rooting your bike and installing custom apks.
Damn. Might be time to pick up a used one.
Thanks for the heads up.
Yeah I mean I’m not surprised that this business is failing. It always just seemed like a worse and more expensive version of something that was always inherently pretty boring.
I mean it was already overpriced for what it was, and it was only really good/popular during covid. A lot of people now will either go to the gym for classes or just get a bike without a $12-$49 monthly fee. I just can’t wait to see how long until they lock the wheels without a subscription
