

Whoop reverses track on subscription.
In earlier years, Whoop had said with some caveats that those with active memberships meeting a certain threshold would get a free hardware upgrade should a new device be launched. Last week, a new device was launched with Whoop 5.0, but to get the strap, customers had to either pay a $49 one-off fee or add a further 12 months to their subscription. Neither option was financially onerous; it was simply that Whoop had changed track.
Despite Whoop updating its policy, Zdnet and some other sites did what journalists sometimes (but not always) do. They did some original research and found examples where Whoop had previously made the commitments. Like I did to find this
Whoop has done the right thing and mostly backtracked to a sensible position. Now, if you have over 12 months on your subscription, which means only those signing up to a 2-year commitment get this, you will get a free upgrade.
A second part to the backtracking is perhaps more significant and fairer in that new customers who only signed for a 12-month subscription also get the upgrade. It’s never a good idea to hack off new customers or, indeed, its never a good idea to hack off customers, period.
Try this to-the-point summary to check out all the new changes with Whoop 5.0.
Take Out
Whoop’s initial plan seemed like a reasonable one to me. Lock in already paying customers for a bit longer, whilst also letting them lock in a price today that is cheaper than the one they otherwise would have faced at renewal.
However this was reneging on a previous commitment, so Whoop has done the right thing here although people who signed up between 2 and 6 months ago (and thus who have 6 months subscription left won’t get the upgrade when otherwise they might have expected to based on how whoop crafted the upgrade from 3.0 to 4.0.


Seems a more reasonable approach. Anyway there will always be a need for a cutoff somewhere, be it 6 months or something else.
I don’t like their subscription model, especially for something that has no resale value later on (unlike an Apple Watch for example), but on the other hand if you are not staying around for 12 more months, seems strange to be complaining about not getting the latest hardware for the 4 months (for example), that you have left. YMMV