Peloton Faces Backlash
The main story
Peloton is facing quite the catch 22 due to its expansive pandemic growth. As demand has surged enough to triple the company's revenue in 2020, it seems that shipment delays and helpless customer service support have cost the company more than just a few unhappy customers.
If you've been building out your home gym over the last year, you might have stumbled upon Peloton’s fancy offerings. However, choosing to purchase one might leave you in a delivery limbo.
Reports claim that some customers have waited several months before seeing their purchase arrive and have faced haphazard delivery changes at a whim's notice.
While the significant delivery delays have been a known issue since last summer, Peloton continued to take orders as usual and consequently built up a queue of disgruntled customers ready to voice their opinions.
Groups of irate customers have congregated on Facebook and Reddit, where they interact with one another and share how they've been navigating their poor experiences, all while ensuring the company's credibility declines with each passing day their orders not in hand.
To top it all off, payments usually begin within the first month of a customer's purchase. Unless they've chosen to buy Peloton equipment outright, they'll be stuck making monthly payments long before their bike or treadmill ever arrives.
Teachable Moment
Shipping delays are frustrating. Ask anyone who's ordered next day shipping from Amazon and received it two days later.
At this point, you're looking at a simple cost-benefit scenario where you have to look at the damage you're doing to your brand for each sale that leads to a dissatisfied customer.
Sure delaying sales due to lack of inventory isn't ideal, but at least you have the opportunity to defend your brand identity and reliability.
Peloton has chosen to instead ride their wave of demand (not many companies can say this) without prioritizing how it might affect the consumers that helped them get there in the first place.
Unless supply chain issues will be fixed overnight, pouring efforts into making sure customers are up to date with the latest changes (which it sounds like it's not doing very well) doesn't fix anything.
Mix this in with reopening gyms, order cancellations, and competitors jumping for their piece of the business, and Peloton will be dealing with a lot more issues than a $2k bike can fix.
