Whoop backpedals on its paid upgrade whoops

Whoop is in damage control mode. After debuting its Whoop 5.0 fitness tracker, users were angered to find it had reneged on a promise of free hardware upgrades. In a new Reddit post, the company now says users who have been members for over 12 months can get the Whoop 5.0 for free.

Part of the outrage was prompted by Whoop’s confusing messaging. Early yesterday morning, my colleague Victoria Song reported that to get a Whoop 5.0 band, users would need to extend their existing membership by an additional 12 months or pay a one-time upgrade fee. However, until at least March 28th of this year, Whoop’s website had a blog post that said users would only need to have been a member for at least six months to get a free upgrade to next-gen hardware.

After the backlash, Whoop is now changing its tune — somewhat. Those with “more than 12 months remaining” are “eligible for a free upgrade to WHOOP 5.0 on Peak,” one of its new subscription offerings. Those with less than 12 months left, still have to either extend their membership another 12 months or pay a one-time upgrade fee, the company says. The same information is reflected in an update on its 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.”