Pricing done poorly. The Peloton story.

Peloton is a company that has attempted to bring the interactive group exercise experience to the comfort of your home.  They make bikes and treadmills with an interactive screen that tracks your progress and enables you to get a ‘class like’ experience from anywhere.

The devices aren’t cheap (several thousand dollars minimum) and are getting even more expensive.

Worse yet, are some of the other pricing decisions they’ve made recently.  Peloton came under fire last year for their treadmills reportedly causing injury and has even been linked to a child’s death.

Despite this terrible news, their customers vowed to remain relatively loyal.  That is until they shipped the supposed ‘fix’ for the problem.

To try and fix the problem leading to injuries, they decided to start charging people for a previously free feature.  Worse yet, it wasn’t a one time charge, but a subscription fee – one of the biggest reasons people HATE traditional gym memberships.  As you can imagine, people were outraged and threatened to not only return their products, but take legal action against Peloton.

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Needless to say, Peloton has provide a great example of product pricing done POORLY.

Despite the obvious ridiculousness of charging people to fix a problem with their product that was leading to injuries, they are shooting themselves in the foot by making their product experience worse for their customers.

The existing solution they are supposed to beat is the traditional gym membership and people really don’t like the subscription part of the gym membership.

So make sure your pricing strategy doesn’t make the existing solution look a whole lot better because if you do there’s a good chance they’ll be returning your products also.

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