Peloton is in something of a financial rut lately, and we all know what companies do when that happens. They take it out on consumers. To that end, the exercise machine maker just announced it will be charging a $95 “used equipment activation fee” to anyone who buys one of its machines on the secondhand market, according to a report by CNBC.
The company made this announcement in its Q4 2024 shareholder letter. The fairly exorbitant fee will apply to any machine bought directly from a previous owner, meaning anything purchased via Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace or, heck, even a neighbor down the street. Without tithing $95 to the church of Peloton, the machine won’t have access to any of the classes or features the company has become known for.
The company says this activation fee is just to ensure that new members “receive the same high-quality onboarding experience Peloton is known for.” In a recent earnings call, however, a company representative was more transparent, calling the fee a “source of incremental revenue and gross profit,” according to The Verge.
The standard Bike, for instance, sells new for nearly $1,500, but you can pick up a used one online for $300 to $500. Now, that price goes up to $400 to $600. Peloton also requires a monthly membership fee to access content, which is around $44.
For the privilege of paying $45/month for video classes?
Edit: I googled around out of curiosity on whether you can hack it. You’re paying for a “smart exercise bike” where you still have to manually adjust resistance? What the fuck?
I’ve never understood the appeal. Seems much cheaper, easier, and more fun to find a video you like online and just use that. Could be racing down a mountain road. Or a spin class. Or that scene from Monty Python where the topless women chase the guy off a cliff.
I bought a simple spin bike thirdhand. Guy who owned it before me got it from a gym. You twist a knob and it increases pressure on a leather brake. Its built like a tank.
Its great and like you say, if I wanted I could just look up spin videos on youtube for free.
Why would I bother with a Peloton?
Yup, just get some rollers and use your regular bike.
I know there are bikes that you basically race people. It’s basically a video game and the controller is your bike. It’ll get harder or easier to pedal based on terrain. You race real people who are doing the same thing. Not sure if peloton has this but that would be way better than just some video.
I had assumed that they used the smart shit to adjust resistance automatically and whatever, but I googled out of curiosity on hacking one, and apparently, you still have to reach down and use a knob.
Virtual courses with automatic inclines and declines and ghost runs of myself could be worth that kind of money. But not just a screen and some shitty tracking.
The more expensive Bike+ does it, but not the regular one. It’s a hard sell given the price difference.
I bet some maker space genius has done a DIY version.
I’m sure you can do it. The resistance knob is basically just pulling a wire a little bit usually.
But bringing that mainstream in a complete package would be something that I could see the justification for an expensive exercise bike for.
KICKR + ZWIFT FTW
(Or any of a number of Smart Trainers and Sofrware)
https://www.wahoofitness.com/devices/indoor-cycling/smart-bikes/kickr-bike-buy https://www.zwift.com/why-zwift
Not advocating for peloton, but it’s not really that much work to dial up/down a spin bike. The point of letting the rider do it “manually” is because they may not be where the rest of the class is. They very likely need to customize the resistance.
The only real benefit here is in the real time feedback on the screen (calories, distance, etc) which also adjust with resistance, and visual queues if you’re keeping or not.
I’m aware of what adjusting an exercise bike entails.
It is completely trivial to have a class that easily adapts to user difficulty while still automatically adjusting that difficulty to simulate a varied environment, which you cannot do manually and is the entire reason a smart bike makes any sense at all over just putting it in front of a TV.
The few people I know who are into the Pelaton community do it for the competition/gamification element. They watch their status against global leaderboards and are highly motivated by it.
For those that it works for, great. I am highly motivated by competition, but those prices are too rich for my blood.
Maybe there are also people into Pelaton who are like those who pay a monthly gym subscription even if they have space at home? And could buy a home setup that saves them money. The monthly pay makes them commit financially and motivates them to go to the gym consistently.
Espresso makes more gamified bikes but also have very expensive subscription packages. These are way more fun imo than what peleton offers. Nonetheless they still feel very primitive to anyone familiar with modern gaming. It’s a markets pace that I’m surprised isn’t better tapped, but the subscription stuff is nonsense. Just give me a pack of virtual tours and the option to buy some additional ones. Offering peer to peer racing etc should be a very minimal cost. What I’d really like is a Sim that taps into Google street view for riding where I want virtually
My wife has a NordicTrack bike, it auto adjusts resistance and incline. Insane people would pay more and not even get that.
The whole reason the product is so expensive is the online services. And if the first person paid the price for that, then no one should be required to pay for just changing hands. Problem is that it was priced with the idea in mind that most people who bought the product would quit using it after a short time and that concept was the basis of their profit. It’s a bad, short term strategy designed to generate short term profit at the expense of long term profit which only benefits investors. And this leads to the main problem with the current system. The end-user is no longer considered the customer, investors are.
companies can’t keep getting away with this
$44 is more than my gym membership, and they have dozens of bikes and other equipment. These Peloton people are diseased.
Does your gym have live guided classes for under 40 a month?
Most YMCA locations have cycle classes included with the membership.
Forgot about the Y honestly, but my local one is $60+
Yeah, that’s pretty standard for the Y, but that’s the cost for everything–weights, track, courts, swimming pools, most classes, personal training, childcare. As opposed to Peloton, which is $50 for just the spinning class.
Yeah I don’t trust any kind or vender lock-in. I still get why people like peloton but its still not worth it simply because they have you buy the balls because of the hardware in my mind. I bought an ifit treadmill secondhand and it demands I make an account every time I hop on to do a run, drives me up a wall.
Yes
Damn that’s a good deal
For 15€/month
Cheapest one with classes I know near me is $85 a month
Mine does. They’re group classes, but it’s included with the standard $40/month plan (or $5/day), less if you buy a family plan. There are cheaper gyms around, so a single person could probably get a better deal if they only need spinning classes.
the downward spiral continues…
…until profits improve.
And with the way things are moving that won’t be in the first 5 years.
This is some great factory to landfill thinking.
These companies are starting to act more and more like the tax man.
Very short term thinking on this. I hope they lose it all.
The high-quality onboarding experience?
Oh for fucks sake, this is just people entering information into a webpage.
Just another failing business model trying to find somewhere to “extract value”.
Setting something up is literally the worst part of anything you buy that isn’t a lego/model kit. No one is excited to set up a new TV, phone, or computer because it takes forever and prevents you from doing wha you actually want to do with the damn thing.
I have to disagree a little bit personally. It can be a chore, but sometimes there is a sense that you’re taking this generic piece of tech sold by the millions and tailoring it to your personal preferences. It’s a little silly and superficial, but it can add a little extra enjoyment to that whole experience of getting a new shiny that you’ve been looking forward to.
All that said, paying $95 for the experience of setting up a used exercise bike is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.
Hard disagree, I love assembling things (that have a little thought put into the process)!
Hell, now that I’ve finally got my 3D printer setup properly after hours and hours, I’ve barely used it!
This is still dumb as fuck from Peloton though
Failed
Not sure how this was ever a good model, unless they knew they’d make their profit very quickly before people realized they could download a phone app for interval training and watch whatever they want.
I use an interval app, Just Run, but not just for running. I’ve used it for physical therapy exercises, because I have a bunch of them, and it works really well. I just make a list of exercises and make a sequence of them, which I do on their respective interval instead of running.
Same idea as those stupid “convenience fees” that Ticketmaster and some websites charge by allowing me to pay online.
Screw that, just let me pedal.
Add it to the list of abusive consumer practices that are somehow not illegal.
This one is not really filling up my outrage meter. Amortize it over the first year before you finally admit you don’t want to pay a monthly fee to subscribe to your ad-hoc coatrack, and it’s 8 bucks a month, and you’re already paying $45 or whatever for the whole shebang, including what have to be some pretty expensive live classes from Instructor/Influencers who have a certain amount of leverage. At least there’s a real service involved, and likely the new bikes subsidize some of it. They should admit that’s what it is, but… meh.
They’re already charging you for the real service involved.
This company has already laid off a bunch of employees, too.
The writing is on the wall - or as they say in the biz, the exercise bike is on eBay.
Why exactly am I not surprised? When you don’t have open source stuff, you don’t own your shit. And this is a perfect example of it.
Could one just swap the credit card and email associated with the Pelaton account, and transfer the account to the new owner of the used machine? No “reactivation” fee needed if it never goes idle.
Caution needed if handing it over to a rando from Craigslist, ofc. But if I were selling to friend or family, I’d be willing to put in a little effort to save them $95.
Only corporations can own things. The individual can only rent property, never own it.
I’ll push back on that a little. Peloton has, from the beginning, been a very closed ecosystem.
Contrast this to the smart trainer I have which is marketed to cyclists (a Wahoo KICKR). It uses standard protocols to talk, and while they have some software available, it works independent of their ecosystem on standards compliant equipment (ANT+ and BLE). You can even talk to it using the open source GoldenCheetah software.
I would say I own this device. Sure I can’t necessarily hack the firmware easily, but I can’t hack the firmware on my microwave easily either, but I’d say I own that, too.
