Unmasking Peloton's Top 3 User Gripes

Sweat is dripping down your face, your legs are pulsing from working so hard, you can feel your heart nearly beating out of your chest, almost to the exact beat of Chainsmokers Sway remix blasting in your ears. Your trainer yells enthusiastically, “you didn’t wake up today to be mediocre, keep pushing!”

After what felt like blacking out for the past 5 minutes, suddenly class is over and your trainer is clapping as you struggle to catch your breath while wiping your sweat-filled forehead. 

After drinking some water and unhooking your shoes, you throw your hands in the air with relief that you did it. The door swings open and your partner asks, “my turn?” 

For the past 60 minutes you transformed into the tinybutmighty (your popular leaderboard name) cycling beast you are, with the best trainer you could imagine. That is the magic of Peloton. 

Well you may or may not be surprised to learn, we have a few Peloton lovers here at Unwrap and upon sharing our mutual obsession one day, we were curious about the top customer pain points. So naturally, we turned to our platform and ingested their app store reviews. Here is what Peloton users had to say:

Pain Point #1:

6% of users report various issues with distance & heart rate tracking syncing with Apple watch

While this issue is seemingly only faced by Apple watches users, it’s one that has spiked following a recent update to the Peloton app. 

Now according to Peloton, “The Apple Watch will directly pair with the Peloton Bike+, Bike, and Tread, as well as the App if you have a digital subscription, according to Peloton's website.” 

Since your recent app update, this seems to have broken for a decent amount of users who just want to be able to track their workouts and reflect on their accomplishments week over week. 

Now this one is interesting because it seems there are a few different issues arising. While some users say it does track but is reporting the metrics incorrectly, others say it no longer syncs at all.

This user exclaims that he’s been trying to troubleshoot his issue of nothing tracking with your support team, with no luck:

“... I have found since updating that when I go from the first stacked class (a warm up walk) to the next stacked class (a hike), distance and HR inexplicably cease tracking."

While this user claims tracking only works on their indoor runs on the Peloton Tread:

“The one place I need it to track is outdoor runs and it doesn’t track any of them. I’ll have to do an indoor run on the app and go outdoors and even then it’s 50% on whether it keeps the right pace or even tracks it using Apple Watch...” 

This user claims that both the distance calculations are off and he is no longer able to upload to Strava:

"Outdoor run not working. Accuracy is way off. Calculations are wrong. Also no uploading to Strava. This use to work but stopped working after recent update. Please fix.”

There are many more with specifics that you can dive into on our platform, but for now take a look at the spike in the chart below!

Could be worth looking into, but in the words of your infamous instructor Cody Rigsby: you do you, boo.

Pain point #2:

3.5% of users want a search function

Riders’ love the wide variety of workouts but are frustrated with the inability to search through all of the classes using keywords. 

One user expressed her experience while trying to find a prenatal class: 

“I love the workouts and instructors, but the app doesn’t really have a “search” function if you’re looking for something specific. Instead, all you can do is browse...It would have been a lot easier to just have a search button where I could have entered “prenatal” as a keyword.”

And another raves about the workouts but claims the app isn’t user-friendly:

“I absolutely LOVE all the workouts Peloton has to offer...however, the app itself isn’t very user-friendly as it doesn’t offer the option to search for specific classes...a search bar within the app would vastly improve the usability of the app.”

Then we have this person who is begging your devs directly to bring back the tags feature:

“DEVS i am BEGGING you to put the class search option of people in your tags working out now back!!!! it’s been gone precisely one day and i am already LOSING it!!!!”

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Pain Point #3:

3% of users would like access to row classes through the Peloton app

In September 2022 Peloton announced that their newest equipment, Peloton Row, was available for pre-order. Upon purchasing the machine, Peloton row owners get access to hundreds of low-impact, high-intensity rowing classes. 

Peloton Bike, Bike+, and Tread owners quickly began inquiring if they would also be able to access the rowing classes through the Peloton App. However, according to Peloton’s FAQ page rowing content will not be available on the Peloton App at launch. They do also state: “Please stay tuned for more information soon.”

Now that we’re nearly six months post launch, it’s clear other Peloton equipment owners really want access to those rowing classes to work out on their own equipment. We're sure you're aware of this already but just wanted to give a platform to some of the anecdotes specifically.

Here’s what some customers had to say:

“Peloton made a row machine and I was hoping their row workouts would be on here for me to use with my concept 2. Please add the row workouts!”

“One of the photos for this app clearly states rowing, though I was sorely disappointed to see it’s not included...I am however excited to come back once that feature has been implemented. Please Peloton, add Rowing classes soon...I’m not willing to part with my Concept2.”

I think it’s safe to say Peloton may want to think about adding some row classes to the app. May be a nice surprise and delight!

Peloton & Unwrap…has a nice ring to it

Peloton, you use technology and design to connect the world through fitness, empowering people to be the best version of themselves anywhere, anytime. We use technology and design to revolutionize the way product teams analyze customer feedback, empowering them to build the best versions of their products. 

We would love to work with you. You can check out even more anecdotes around all three pain points listed above here.