Consumer Reports temporarily removes Peloton Tread+ from its ratings & is no longer recommended

Last night, Consumer Reports posted an article which detailed their decision to remove Peloton’s Tread+ from their Treadmill ratings pages, as well as their decision to no longer recommend the product. Before it was removed, the Tread+ had been the top rated Treadmill by Consumer Reports.

Their article states the reason for the removal was the recent urgent safety warning issued by the Consumer Product Safety Commission last weekend. Peloton’s response to the safety warning was to call it a “unilateral press release about the Peloton Tread+ treadmill is inaccurate and misleading”. The next day Peloton CEO John Foley put out a statement to members sharing Peloton had no plans for a recall: “You may also have read news reports suggesting that CPSC believes that we should stop selling or recall the Tread+. I want to assure you that we have no intention of doing so.” In the letter from John Foley, he does detail plans to update the Tread+ so members can add an access code that must be entered prior to use, in addition to the safety key.

Consumer Reports provided some more thoughts on their decision to remove the Tread+:

“We are taking the rare and unusual step of removing the Peloton Tread+ from our ratings based on the incident data described by the CPSC, given the severity and the nature of the injuries and that the agency has not seen these types of injuries with other treadmills,” says Liam McCormack, vice president of research, testing, and insights at Consumer Reports.


“Given that the incidents involved not only children but adults we believe that there is a safety risk, and we’re removing our rating and recommendation while we investigate further, monitor the company’s ongoing response, and await more information from the CPSC,” McCormack says.

Note that the decision to remove is a “temporary” removal, and as the quote above states, they plan to “investigate further, monitor the company’s ongoing response.”

Peloton provided a comment to Consumer Reports to go along with their notice:

A spokesperson for Peloton told CR in a statement: “Peloton cares deeply about our Members’ safety and well-being. Every new feature and product release is thoroughly tested and measured against industry standards.” The company added: “We are continuing to work with CPSC on its investigation into these incidents.”

You can read the full post from Consumer Reports here.


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Chris Lewis
Chris Lewis is the creator & founder of Pelo Buddy. He purchased his Peloton in 2018, and uses all the different devices: Peloton Bike, Tread, Row, and Guide. He has been involved in the fitness industry for more than a decade - previously co-founding the websites Mud Run Guide & Ninja Guide. You can find him on the leaderboard at #PeloBuddy.

1 Comment

  • Peter says:

    It appears the CPSC’s missive against Peloton was issued under pressure from Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who is agitating for a Peloton recall-

    https://schakowsky.house.gov/sites/schakowsky.house.gov/files/Letter%20to%20CPSC%20re%20Peloton%20FINAL.pdf

    It is unclear what the purpose of a recall would be as the accidents were not cause by a product malfunction. Additionally, there are no industry safety standards for treadmill design and the CPSC has not signaled any intention to create any. So there would be no way for Peloton to modify the Tread+ to show compliance. Any recall would just be a complete exit from the treadmill market on the basis of the fact that treadmill accidents are possible.

    Competing treadmill manufacturer Life Fitness is headquartered in Rosemount, IL, which is in Shakowsky’s district.

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