They are losing money still so desparate moves like this I guess make sense, but adding friction to the new subscriber workflow just seems wild. There's a reason why just about every subscription out there offers free trials/discounted first months. It's to get you in the door.
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.
> It's not even as if the bike is disabled when bought used, you can just use it like any other spin bike happily.
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.
>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.
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.
You'd be surprised, they go for like $300 used, easy in many markets. I like it for the overal quality. I tried the sunni, and whatever brand was high on the amazon affiliated marketing stuff (ew right) but the peloton works fine.
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.
The market is absolutely flooded with used bikes. Looking in my area I see two dozen on CL alone within a 30 mile radius for $300-$900 (the $900 guy is delusional.)
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...
> Peloton doesn't care if your used Peloton doesn't sell
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.
I read what you wrote. But that's not how economics works. You don't base your conclusions on actors at the extremes - the people who wouldn't buy a used one at any price (do these people actually exist?) and people who would never buy a new one.
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.
>Some people will never buy a used peloton, so this doesn't affect them. Some people will never buy a new one
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.
>the idea of paying for a subscription to ride a stationary bike
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.
This is such a weird thing, paying to see scenery when riding your stationary bike and then post on the social network, when you can just go out with friends and bike for real in the nature.
In an alternate reality where the opposite happened, a poster much like you just posted incredulously how you saw someone take the stairs to the gym, then hop right on a much superior stairmaster instead of just using the stairmaster the whole time.
> when you can just go out with friends and bike for real in the nature
"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.
If you have friends near you, and if weather permits. I would go to the gym in winter to cycle and run precisely because it allows me to exercise out of reach of the cold and rainy weather.
I've personally never taken a ride where I saw scenery-- and I don't think most people think of that when they justify their subscription to themselves. I take ones with a coach. I'm aware there's free coaching videos aplenty online I could download and rig up to some other stationary bike, but chose the Peloton anyways so it would all come integrated and at the level of quality I saw in the demo store.
In Northern Europe and the US, riding your bike outside is not a pleasant or optimal experience for about half of the year. It’s also just a lot easier to wake up, make a cup of coffee, and hop on the stationary bike than to drag my bike outside.
I agree that real is better, but "fake" scenery lets you explore and ride virtually in all kinds of natural and urban surroundings, which might be interesting to some people.
Is there something worth leaving to? I have my old subscription limping along because I do like the trainers, the music especially, and use the non cardio programs, but would like to switch to something that isn't actively making the product worse to make money. Yt dl came in handy before their cardio money grab.
Zwift, maybe. But you need / should have a power meter to do that properly, and it works way better with a trainer that can adjust resistance on its own.
I have no idea how peloton works but I while ago I thought about “gamified” cardio machines, treadmill, bike, rowing where you follow courses which vary in difficulty (like uphill or against currents) and the machine varies the resistance according to the scenery.
If I did a push-up for every product that has “revolutionized” the fitness world in the last several decades, you would see my body and probably assume that I had used those products.
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.
That’s also how I lost most of
my weight. Sure, you could spend 25-45 minutes on the treadmill… or you could just not eat 5 Oreo cookies, and you would achieve the same result (from a caloric perspective).
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.
I think the most important role of excercise on the weigh loss journey is the sense of accomplishment and effort. Whenever you’re tempted to eat some junk you’ll remember the body pains, the sweat you dropped and think: is it really worth to eat that?
I've lost 60 lbs. so far using GLP-1 agonists. It's quite a bit easier to get around, so I'm easing into cardio and weight lifting once again.
> 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.
> for a lot of us, over-eating is a response to anxiety
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.
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?
If it's freezing-ass cold or boiling-ass hot, sure. If it's a moderate-ass temperature, it doesn't make sense, sure, but not everyone lives where that happens and for some, even that's a bit of a problem.
If you have clinical-ass depression or executive-ass dysfunction, lowering the barrier to exercise can be really important. Sure, $1400 with a $40 subscription is way too expensive, but there's definitely a case to be made for the exercise bike in front of the TV for a lot of people.
> Nobody needs a $1400 bike with a $40 monthly subscription to maintain a calorie deficit. It’s absurd.
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.
Well, you’re not wrong in theory about the wall and floor, but if everyone did what you’re suggesting, public gyms would not exist.
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.
Peloton is just bringing all the things people both love and hate about going to the gym to your home. This is just a copy of the gym's initiation fee.
Next up: fixed-term contracts, impossible-to-cancel membership fees, and variable pricing via salesmen.
Probably a worthwhile addendum that they had a "restructuring" in May, laying off 15% of their staff, ~400 people, and their CEO stepped down. They've yet to find a replacement CEO, still running under interim leadership.
No he didn't...he just negotiated another huge increase in pay and weekly use of a corporate jet for a 1000 mile commute back and forth from SoCal to Seattle.
Funny thing is, he just left Chipolte - where he got them to move their HQ from Denver to where he lives in SoCal.
I remember seeing an activist investor powerpoint going after peloton in 2021. The thing that stuck with me the most is the CEO saying he would talk to the CTO maybe once every couple months.
1. Part of the $44/mo Peloton subscription is subsidized by the $2500 bikes. Given that they fucked up by scaling production to a vastly overestimated demand forecast AND that increasing the subscription price for all members will lead to future problems also, it makes total sense for Peloton to reclaim some of the value this way.
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.
I have the Bowflex equivalent to the Peloton, and they charge $120/year for the classes. I did it for one year, and realized I almost never actually did the classes, just the free built-in training sessions. I didn't renew the next year for that reason.
The effect of this should be to reduce the price of used peletons by around $95 - i.e. effectively seller pays. I imagine that's the thinking behind this (ie it only affects the customer who's leaving the service), but it probably leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the buyer anyway, which doesn't feel like great business
Only if the information clears the market. If sellers don't get exposed to this, they don't know to lower the price, if buyers aren't exposed they'll think they got ripped off and resell or become predisposed to churn.
I am curious about the legality of this. This directly diminishes the value of Peloton bikes for sellers. Imagine if the fee was so high that it was greater than the value of the bike; the used market would obviously be affected. If there was no subscription, but a purchased license, I would understand that argument, but a fee on top of a monthly subscription?
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.
>The Bike and Tread maker said the secondary market is an “important source” of new members.
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.
I guess there's more social aspects with Peloton that people are into, but it's also easy to hook up a road bike to a fluid trainer and call it a day. Cheaper to get started (even including buying the bike), and no subscription.
Alright, go out to the back near the dumpster. Ask for Tony. Tell him you need a Peloton. If he asks "Which model?", say "Preactivated". You didn't hear this from me.
I'm still hoping for a gamified exercise bike where you can weave through traffic and the hardware physically tilts. When is biking sim going to approach racing / flying sim.
Yeah that's the brand I was thinking, they had one where bikes tilt up/down to simulate hills. I'm hoping for one that also tilts side to side. Their software/game also looks kind of meh. But I don't really need exercise bike to "simulate" biking, throw it in MS flight simmulator and do multi axis ET bicycle flights, or at least some sort of twisted metal.
Peloton's interesting -- for the audience they target they have a pretty good product (if you're setting up your road bike on your stationary trainer and signing into Zwift, you're not their audience), they have a committed and paying user base, and their instructors turned into legit celebrities.
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.
They could still become the next Apple, but they have to enter a period where everyone just assumes they'll go bankrupt (because they are teetering on that edge), then hire back an old CEO who nurtures some good ideas (and does a better job of minimizing the faults and selling the strengths than Melon Husk) and magically turns them into a company whose profits are measured alongside major economies.
Setting aside the larger issues with Peloton's business, this particular move is something that comes due to poor product management. Having strong product sense is exactly about knowing what psychological effects product changes will have on your customers and target prospects. This type of change stinks of spreadsheet product management where rather than applying product sense, they just took the current rate of sign-ups with equipment where the serial number had been previously registered and then figured out a price they could charge that would juice their numbers on the assumption that the rate of sign-ups would stay the same, without acknowledging that doing so will have a detractive effect on the rate of sign-ups.
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.
Weight gain is a sign of pregnancy. I've gained weight... A̶m̶ I̶ P̶r̶e̶g̶n̶a̶n̶t̶?̶ Am I pregnant? It's highly doubtful - I've got the wrong plumbing.
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 ...
> 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.
To be clear, it's a signal of monopoly. Not every signal is meant to be used in isolation.
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.
I take issue with people making suggestions that some company is a monopoly each time a company is found to be mistreating its customers.
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).
But isn't the screen totally useless without a sub? I don't know enough about Peloton, but I thought you couldn't really do much with it other than ride the thing without subscribing. I guess a jailbreak for the screen (is it Android?) could be pretty useful if you want to put an entirely different UI on the thing and use it with alternatives.
They have/had a pretty good business model and then completely mismanaged COVID. Now they're saddled with tons of debt from thinking the COVID trajectory was forever, and it's crushing them.
If that 1¢ gets you straight to Inbox then the signal-to-noise would take a very bad nosedive. If not, then it will change nothing anyway. Phone calls cost money and there are still plenty of SPAM calls.
They didn't have enough bikes. That's why they got in trouble: they made huge investments in bike manufacturing, which turned out to be far more than the demand they ended up with.
Crap like this is why the subscription model has so much appeal to the finance world, just endless consumer surplus you can try to siphon off of to create more cash flow.
Peloton is both a product manufacturer and a service provider; setup fees are common with many service providers. For example, if you bring a phone you bought elsewhere to your carrier, they'll charge a fee to activate it for their network.
I've never been charged a fee to activate a device on a new carrier, probably because they'd much rather have the money from my monthly subscription - in fact I've seen offers from carriers to buy out your current contract if you switch to them.
I don't think it's that common with companies that are both manufacturers and service providers.
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.
Not sure it’s a good comparison. Apple has hefty margins on their hardware, and it’s practically required to use their services. In other words, iCloud activation fees practically exist and are included in device pricing. They simply have decency to not charge it multiple times if device changes hands.
I have literally never had this experience with a mobile carrier (Canada). There is an account activation fee (usually waived if you sign up online), but once the account is activated you can freely swap the SIM between as many phones as you like.
Even if that were the common process, which I dispute, it's still short-sighted greed. If it costs Peloton more than a homeopathic amount of money to update a database with the new owner's info, then they're doing it wrong. That's an extra $95 of pure did-nothing-to-earn-it cash extraction.
In that case, maybe we need a new word to describe businesses that are entirely VC-subsidized , then IPO with their books deep in the red and then start enacting anti-consumer policies because they're "for-profit".
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...
A Peloton is just an old-fashioned stationary bike with a SaaS. You can still buy plain old stationary bikes (aka "Spinning Bikes"), no need to rig up a real bike.
If you want a more bike like experience, and not a spinning bike experience, what you want is a "direct drive trainer". You take off your back wheel and mount your normal bike and chain on that.
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.
Zwift is pretty great for all of that. The biggest challenge I had with the whole ecosystem is finding something that doesn't have a monthly sub. I don't really do a lot of the racing / social aspects -- and I really only use it in the Phoenix summer when it's just too hot to go outside and hike. What I've found that works for me is cancelling Zwift in the cooler weather and using courses and workouts on my Garmin watch or Edge computer, which works and is free.
It does seem odd for Peloton to put any friction up to a new subscriber, given that's where they really make their money.
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.
> 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.
Zwift is maybe more popular with road cyclist because they want to ride actual road bike. Another possibility is marketing. Zwift is promoted at events like Tour de France and is main sponsor of woman's TDF. Now when I thinking about it, it would be odd if Peloton was promoted in bike races. Because the name is so generic in that context.
Peloton is actually quite hated in cycling circles because of their name clash, and how they're lodging trademark complaints about clubs or events with Peloton in their name...
You can get pretty far just attaching your regular bicycle to a "stationary bike stand", which turns it into a stationary bike. Add in Strava and you have the social aspect. Strava has a pretty good free tier.
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.)
Until the app changes, I just put my road bike on a mag trainer with all of my normal sensors (cadence, heart rate, virtual power and speed) and followed along with the heart rate zone cycling classes. My whole setup is cheaper than a peloton bike by at least $500.
> My whole setup is cheaper than a peloton bike by at least $500
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.
I thought capitalists don't want big government. Now you're saying it's the government's fault for not regulating the business more sufficiently? So which is it? You want larger government regulating stuff like this or not?
As long as the government allows it, greed will make corporations try to grab more and more, especially since the finance/MBA types have taken over. It's not strange to call that capitalism, since it is in its very nature.
>Consumer rights are awful in the United States, but that isn't because our economy is capitalistic. It's because our government is inept.
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.
Yeah it's wild have free market capitalists want small government and don't want regulations and then when a private company does something people they still manage to blame the government.
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.
I think the root issue is lack of consumer awareness and informedness.
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.
Capitalism is fantastic. Capitalism will also sell you a regular bike with a bike treadmill if you think that's a better solution. Capitalism gave us a million different ways to get in a workout - Peloton is just one. Nobody's making you sign up for biking as a service.
It sounds like a dumb idea to me but some people have one and love it.
You clearly aren’t their target audience if you’re even thinking about price, it’s a luxury brand that people bought into because their cool rich friends did and they wanted to be part of the club, nothing more nothing less
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.
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.