Peloton to charge $95 activation fee for used bikes
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
It's not even as if the bike is disabled when bought used, you can just use it like any other spin bike happily. This ONLY effects people who are trying to sign up for a subscription.
While that’s true, a Peloton attracts a premium price above regular spin bikes. So if you had no intention of using the software you’d just buy a cheaper bike. If you do intend to use it you now have to add $95 to whatever price you’re paying.
I have one that I got for free, YMMV.
I thought they were stationary.
(Yeah, I get the joke)
Well, they used to.
Good point, it's like a signal that "our bikes are a premium product: you'll pay more, and feel good about it, too!". However, like a sibling comment pointed out, that sort of conflicts with the used aspect of it. If someone is planning on spending cash on a premium exercise bike, they'll pay for a new one.
I also do like how the LCD is basically a vesa mount so you, and well, I did swap in a normal LCD but you can also jailbreak the android os there too.
And you can also buy the newer bigger screen to put on an older bike.
The metrics to me are a bit meh, I get it, but the hardware itself is sturdy and any real cyclist will be doing/using strava.
But new, yes there is a premium and I don't see it worth it at all.
You're not. Like was said above, you can ride it as a stationary bike for free. You're paying for the video content put out by Peloton which is added to daily, like a tv station. I can't help sounding like a sales person at this point but I'd also point out you get access to all their old content plus the fact that all this content is tied directly to your bike and the social network of other peloton riders.
Just a week ago during camping vacation I saw someone use a Quad to fetch baguettes in the morning (<1km). Then these people go jog later.
It's all just some big WTF to me sometimes..
"just"
What if you live in the city? What if you have a 10-minute window until your next meeting? What if it's raining? What if it's snowing? What if it's dark? What if you live in Arizona and it's the summer? Etc.
We all have different needs so I wouldn't write off people that want an exercise bike for their house.
Some people will never buy a used peloton, so this doesn't affect them. Some people will never buy a new one, but the bikes have depreciated so much that a used one is a "steal" at 20%-50% of its original cost, they will grumble about, but pay, the fee.
Peloton doesn't care if your used Peloton doesn't sell. That's one less used bike that didn't kill a new bike sale (they need to move new bikes to keep distributors, retailers, and investors happy), and maybe you'll get tired of it being unused and sign up for the service again.
I guarantee they did all sorts of market research before they instituted the policy.
The bigger problem is that they've lost a number of top-name instructors, the CFO is selling stock like it's about to burst on fire, and while they stemmed the bleeding a bit, they're still pissing money down the drain...
Sure they do. People who buy a used bike are not necessarily substitutes for people who will buy a new one. And new ones are more appealing to purchasers if their resale value is high.
> new ones are more appealing to purchasers if their resale value is high.
The kind of people dropping $1.5k on a spin bike to pay $45/month for a glorified youtube don't care much about resale value.
Peloton cares about the price of used Pelotons because they understand that economics regards the decisions made by the marginal consumers - the ones who would buy a new one if the resale value of used ones was $1 higher.
Yep.
But the people that will buy a used one is probably a decently sized market, and those people will still subscribe to pay the company monthly to access the premium features.
If you have a floor, a wall, and autonomy over what enters into your mouth, then you already have everything you need to gain muscle and lose fat.
Nobody needs a $1400 bike with a $40 monthly subscription to maintain a calorie deficit. It’s absurd. Peloton preys on their customers’ fear of sunk-cost by selling common exercise equipment at exorbitant prices. They want you to fear that if you don’t use the equipment, then you’re wasting your money.
This is incredibly underrated. Basically I lost weigth by focusing on this first. then exercising became easier.
YMMV, but one thing that helped me control food intake was meditation, for a lot of us, over-eating is a response to anxiety.
My best tip for not eating junk food: Don’t buy it. It’s so much easier to eat chicken and rice when you don’t have a bag of Doritos on standby.
100%. We use food as entertainment. To get a dopamine hit from fats and carbs.
For most of human history, food was scarce. We evolved to get huge dopamine hits from food. Our brain sees starving as a danger. It's only post WWII that food became abundant.
Now those signals work against us.
Not always. Sometimes things are just tasty.
> over-eating is a response to anxiety
It's more complicated than one cause. Overweight people have an absurd appetite and/or lack of satiation either by being overweight (self-reinforcing) / metabolic dysfunctions, from genetics, and/or from side-effects of medications.
The Peloton subscription does not just include cycling programs - there are many other exercise disciplines. The bike is expensive yes, but is a solid piece of kit and works great with the software (obviously I guess).
I don’t use our sub much these days but my partner still very much loves it. She uses it for the bike itself as well as yoga, stretches and some others.
The instructors are frankly incredible, there are so many of them and all provide different experiences. They are what you’re ultimately paying for.
Exercise is just as important for health is food is, it’s not all about losing weight.
That doesn't mean squat (heh!)
Most people still need desire and motivation and feedback. And these exercise tools can provide the latter two in droves if properly designed.
My gym costs $60 a month and gives me access to classes and other equipment. At the cost of a Peloton, a Peloton bike by itself would not pay for itself comparatively for 24 months. That doesn't take into consideration tax on the bike purchase or the monthly subscription. Folks really willing to pay that much money just to not leave their house?
It's largely ineffective to lose weight by exercising, and so much easier to reduce caloric intake. https://youtu.be/mTABw0EyIWY
Nobody needs a $500 PS5 and $80 video games. Nobody even needs a TV. A lot of people don't need a new cell phone.
Also, do you think owning an exercise bike means you're overweight? Maybe it's a hobby, maybe it's even fun? Let people exercise and spend their money how they want.
Next up: fixed-term contracts, impossible-to-cancel membership fees, and variable pricing via salesmen.
(You're not wrong)
Funny thing is, he just left Chipolte - where he got them to move their HQ from Denver to where he lives in SoCal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laxman_Narasimhan
He's now free for Peloton. It was a joke but now it's no longer fuuny. lol
https://blackwellscap.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Peloton...
2. As others noted here, Peloton bikes sell for well under MSRP in the secondary market. A $1000 used Bike+ (or Bike with the swivel attachment) and a $95 one time activation fee is much cheaper than spending $2500 new before taxes and delivery fees.
3. I did road cycling for a long time. I still do, but much less frequently than I did in the past. Raced for a little. (I was terrible, but also not very committed.)
Peloton is amazing.
The instructors are top-notch. Way better than your local cycle instructor, on average.
The programming is vast and really well done. There's something for everyone.
The community is quite social, if you're into that (I am not).
The bike itself is really well made as well. Nothing cheap about it. I'm especially fond of the auto-resistance feature because it gives me a good ballpark as to how hard I should be working to get the most out of whatever class I'm taking. (The resistance on the bike is extremely well calibrated and calibrates on boot, I believe. This is a huge problem at cycling studios, since you're usually using beat-up bikes that haven't been calibrated in a while.)
You can absolutely get some other spin bike, strap a tablet onto it and use Peloton that way, but I think you'd be missing out on a lot. You could also fix your road bike to a trainer and use something like Zwift, Strava or Wahoo but that's an entirely different thing.
Looks like I can't connect it to the internet or else they'll even take that away.
Might need to just rip out the wifi chip.
My question is, preferably to a contract lawyer, would Peloton owners have a case to make that Peloton has diminished the value of their property by $95? Is that even a thing? If there was a competitive marketplace, for example, an alternate service for you to hook your bike up to, it would be an argument against this; but as far as I am aware, a Peloton bike can only be used with Peloton's services.
So why are you creating a $95 barrier-to-entry for those new paying members? Are you really so strapped for cash that you want to drive potential customers to your competitors, or entirely away from your online subscription?
If people are selling their Pelotons, and the buyer is buying a subscription, Peloton should be grateful, not punishing their customers with arbitrary onboarding fees.
[edit] I might be thinking of the variable resistance: that's controlled over wireless.
But the market decided they were going to be the next Apple, and they had a CEO stoking those flames (and killing a few kids along the way). Turns out that 2020 was not a great year to be forecasting who was going to be the next Apple (who would have guessed), and now they're paying the price.
If the market had accepted that Peloton was actually just a good fitness company they probably would have had the opportunity to be a decent company, just not the next Apple. Maybe not every company should try to pursue infinite growth.
For example, no spare parts, or ability to subscribe, or customer service, if you don’t pay.
The software is only an implementation detail that even free software couldn’t stop.
This is the type of things companies do when they look at their business only by the numbers without any understanding of their product or their customers. Unfortunately this is happening more and more across all industries as financial engineering takes precedence over product development.
There can be lots of reasons that a company mistreats their customers. I would be very hesitant to say that every instance of mistreatment of customers is an indication of monopoly status... and while they are (were?) the most popular ...
https://www.traqline.com/newsroom/blog/us-fitness-equipment-...
> As of September 2023, the most popular Fitness Equipment manufacturer continued to be Peloton, in both unit (11%) and dollar (25%) share.
> However, as seen with outlet share, Peloton saw decreases in brand share. In dollars sold, Peloton saw the largest decrease in share across all Fitness Equipment brands, with a loss of 4 points YOY; in dollar share, Peloton lost 1 point.
That does not look like a monopoly.
Rather this looks more like desperation from a company on its way down trying to milk any revenue out of its customer base.
Weight gain in association with other changes is still a signal for pregnancy, just as mistreatment of customers in association with other characteristics of monopolization is a signal of monopoly status.
If one wants to claim that some company of a monopoly - they should back it up with more than one signal... such as a dominant position in the market, no substitutes for the products, or lack of concern about other companies entering the market (such as NordicTrack).
It sounds like I dodged a bullet with them; if nothing else I'd probably be fired for calling their leadership fucking morons.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/02/peloton-staves-off-liquidity...
Think of how much better the signal-to-noise ratio of email would become.
https://www.att.com/legal/terms.otherWirelessFeeSchedule.htm...
They may waive the fee, but it's there.
That'd be like Apple charging you $75 if you wanted to use iCloud+. It makes used products less valuable, which ultimately hurts your brand image in the long-term, even if you might be able to boost services revenue for the next quarter or two.
This peloton fee has no good reason to exist. None.
It also reminds me of the fable about the frog and the scorpion.
I remember a thread on here a while back where some folks were sharing their peloton-alike setups and sadly I've lost the bookmark for it.
Isn't it possible to hook a road bike up to some kind of 'bike treadmill' or such and go on virtual rides (maybe with an iPad or a tv or something infront of it?).
With the kinds of money Peloton are charging, it did seem like a much better deal, and you get a road bike included...
Does "capitalism" now just mean that businesses can do whatever they want?
Consumer rights are awful in the United States, but that isn't because our economy is capitalistic. It's because our government is inept.
It just serves to poison conversations on the subject.
I personally don’t think there’s a good discussion to be had around the subject of this post btw.
There’s literally no good reason for that fee. None.
Well, look at the precise manner in which our government is inept. Capitalism is basically a religious ideology here. Any time anyone suggests anything pro-worker or pro-consumer, there are no shortage of people who will call it "communism", and demand completely unregulated corporate power as the solution, claiming that to be the path to free market capitalism.
We have decided that making money = success, and do absolutely nothing when companies charge $95 just to allow you the opportunity to subscribe to a paid service, as a punishment for buying your equipment used.
So yes, Capitalism as an economic practice can exist in tandem with strong worker and consumer rights and protections, but Capitalism as an ethos is the reason why we are lacking so many worker and consumer rights and protections.
There's a weird juxtaposition where a lot of libertarians are really into right to repair. And look I'm all for right to repair but I am not a libertarian. Frankly, I'm not convinced capitalism is the best method to organize society at all.
But it's fascinating now when private companies do terrible things, they still manage to blame the government even though they are against a large government regulations.
Definitely a strange dynamic rossmann community.
Because
In an ideal spherical free market in a vacuum, nobody would buy even slightly enshittified things, because a rational educated consumer understands how it erodes the whole market and thus harms them personally.
In reality, of course, consumers frequently barely know anything about what they’re buying, and en masse will happily trade away any rights for a meager discount (or nothing at all), without even really knowing it. The worst part is that there is no effort to fix this - only some crutches and legal duct tape to protect consumers from most blatant abuse.
I suspect that with information gaps and lack of full transparency, no matter if it’s some perfect free market capitalism, textbook utopian communism, or anything realistic in between - things are still going to be broken (just with different flavors).
In other words, capitalism is a distraction, and lack of even just a strive to have true well-informed competition (which is fundamental to any socioeconomic model, not just capitalism) is the reason we can’t have nice things.
there are plenty of normal alternatives for people who just want exercise, bad example of broken capitalism to me
It's a lux brand at a premium price, an item many people buy to be in a social group rather than focusing as fitness tool, and there are cheaper and arguably better solutions available out there.
Do you debate any of those statements?
A trainer like that can be used with all kinds of software. Personally I like the social aspects of Zwift. Group rides, competitions, just biking along the map with other people around. For structured workouts Trainerroad is great, but it's also possible to do in Zwift. Other apps like Rouvy exist, probably apps for more traditional spinning sessions as well, or you can just make your own workout in any of the apps matching a YouTube video and put the video on.
If you want classes, etc that is separate. I already get that via Apple Health.
If you want real-time competition, you could use Zwift, but then you're increasing the cost (albiet, you are using a best of breed system and composing from parts.)
There are plenty of other setups with various levels of connectedness. Cyclists I know love Zwift, though they also sell a bike type thing and their kickers are not exactly cheap.
I'd argue that Peloton is likely still the best at home spin studio replacement if that's what people are looking for.
One last point is that I think Peloton gets unfairly targeted for non-use. Gyms, all fitness equipment, even things like boats and motorcycles are frequently bought and never used. Just how consumerism works.
What's different with a Peloton vs others is that there's a ongoing subscription cost, so it sitting around unused with a subscription is a real monthly cost. A better comparison would be a gym membership. Also the Peloton takes a lot of floor place in your home and can't really be stored away.
It sounds like a dumb idea to me but some people have one and love it.
Including your road bike?
Obviously there are cyclists who also use a Peloton, but I've found that's not who it's targeted at. It's the spin studio crowd who the Peloton is aimed at. I'm guessing many of those haven't ridden an actual bike in long time.