Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy recently revealed that Peloton has received more than 500,000 requests for a replacement bike seat post since announcing the voluntary recall earlier this month – which is more than Peloton was expecting.
In case you missed it, on May 11 Peloton and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a voluntary recall for the original Peloton Bike due to a potential safety issue with the seat post; shortly thereafter a recall was announced in Canada as well. The recall only applies to original model Peloton Bikes sold between January 2018 and May 2023 with a version number of PL01 – the recall does not apply to the Bike+. Customers have been visiting Peloton’s website and registering to have a replacement post sent to them at no cost.
We recently shared images and one member’s experience of their seat post breaking on them.
However, as McCarthy shared during the recent J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference, Peloton did not anticipate such a high number of members requesting a new seat post. He stated:
In total, we have had a request for just north of 0.5 million seatposts and which is significantly larger than we were expecting…and it is going to take us a while to work through the — all of the requests.
McCarthy attributed this in part to the CPSC’s language surrounding the recall, as they have recommended that members stop using their Bikes until they replace that part.
When Peloton first identified the problem with the seat post on the original Bike, they expected a loss of $8.4 million as a result of the recall and the subsequent fix. However, McCarthy now thinks that cost may be higher due to the unanticipated demand. When asked about this, McCarthy stated:
Well, I think because of the wording of the recall, more people have requested a seatpost than we were expecting and so there’s going to be a negative impact. I am uncertain what the size of it’s going to be at this point as compared with our financial expectations, probably, somewhere in the neighborhood of, I am going to give you a broad range, don’t freak, $10 million to $20 million of incremental costs, something like that over time, as we work our way through the backlog of seatposts, but hard to know.
The full financial impact of the recall will likely not be revealed until future fiscal quarters.
While shipping of replacement seat posts has begun, orders are being fulfilled in three phases. You can read more details in our recent article.
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