FuelBand Bug or Feature?

I’ve been using a FuelBand on and off for about a year. I upgraded to the newer FuelBand SE as soon as it became available, and immediately noticed that Nike built a bunch of new badges in for users of the newer devices. As you obtained more Fuel, you can unlock the ability to earn these ever increasingly difficult to earn badges. But, I noticed something kinda’ strange. Not all of the badges were available to me that should be. In fact, only a few badges were available. But, as I continued to obtain more Fuel, all the new badges unlocked. All of the badges from the Nike Running app were available. Upon further inspection it turned out that the only ones of the new FuelBand SE badges available were those that required the number of Fuel that I’d had when I got my first FuelBand. Basically, a loop where you need 1,000,000 plus the total that a badge is supposed to be unlocked at in order to unlock the badge. Seeing a bug and a phone number for support on my Nike+ account, I called Nike. They were very nice and didn’t make fun of me for bothering to call them about something so trivial as badges from their app. The guy who answered the phone was very nice. I have to admit, I was totally surprised that there was someone on the other end of the phone to help me deal with an app issue. Then, today (about a week later) I received this email, restating the problem I explained to them:

Hi Charles, We have researched this issue a little further and I believe we have determined what is going on here. I appreciate your patience while we looked into this! Any trophies or milestones earned before the update on November 1st, such as the 500k NikeFuel milestone, are not awarded retroactively. This means that though you are nearly to 1 million NikeFuel, you have only earned 700k and above. Fortunately, you can start earning these earlier milestones again after you hit 1 million NikeFuel. It looks to me like those should be unlocked for you very soon. This is definitely expected behavior, and I am glad to determine that things are working correctly for you. Please let me know if there is anything else that I can help you with, Charles.

Holy crap, they actually bothered to research my utterly trivial issue. So I guess if you ask Nike phone support, this is a feature. But, I still kinda’ think it’s a bug. Reason I think that is because Fuel added to my account by the Nike+ Running app since I started using my FuelBand actually contributes towards my ability to unlock new badges. And it’s not like absolutely none of the Fuel from before works, just not a lot of it. I’m sure there’s a field in SQL that’s not in use until you use a FuelBand and it keeps a running total. Makes sense from a database standpoint. It’s not a big deal, and the whole point of this stuff is to be more healthy, so it’s not like I’m going to stop when I hit a million Fuel at some point this week anyway. The whole purpose behind this post is to actually express my gratitude that there was someone at Nike on the other end of the phone to support of all things an app they make available for free (granted, you need a FuelBand to basically take any use out of it but there’s a whole ecosystem of apps and you don’t actually need any of their products to use them). I am constantly impressed by the folks at Nike for the little things just like this. Thanks ya’ll!

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