- At-home exercise company Peloton is recalling roughly 2.2 million bikes due to a faulty seat post.
- The recall involves Peloton bikes with an adjustable seat.
- The model number is PL01, which can be found on the inside front fork, near the flywheel.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced on May 11 that at-home exercise company Peloton was recalling roughly 2.2 million bikes due to a faulty seat post.
The company “has received 35 reports of the seat post breaking and detaching from the bike during use, including 13 reports of injuries, including a fractured wrist, lacerations and bruises due to falling from the bike,” the CPSC statement said.
The recall involves Peloton bikes with an adjustable seat. The model number is PL01, which can be found on the inside front fork, near the flywheel.
The bikes were sold from January 2018 through May 2023 at Peloton and Dick’s Sporting Goods stores in the United States, and online at Onepeloton.com, Amazon.com and Dicksportinggoods.com.
There have been at least 35 reports of the seat post breaking while the bike was in use. At least 13 injuries have been reported due to the faulty seat, including a fractured wrist, bruises and cuts due to falling off the bike.
If you have a bike that is being recalled, you are urged to immediately stop using the recalled bike and to contact Peloton. The company will send consumers a free seat post they can install themselves.
To request the free seat post, consumers can contact Peloton toll-free at 866-679-9129 from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. ET, 7 days a week or online.
This is not the first recall that Peloton has faced. In 2021, the company recalled about 125,000 of its Tread+ treadmills for a full refund, because “adult users, children, pets and objects can be pulled underneath the rear of the treadmill, posing a risk of injury or death,” according to a CPSC announcement.
The recalled treadmill was linked to dozens of injuries and a child’s death.
As the CPSC investigated reports of injuries, the agency asked Peloton to recall its treadmills, according to Consumer Reports. The company initially refused.
The agency cannot force a company to issue a recall without going to court, CR said.
The company agreed to pay a $19 million fine for delaying to notify the CPSC of defects in its Tread+ treadmills, the agency announced in January 2023.
On top of the fine, the settlement with CPSC requires Peloton to “maintain an enhanced compliance program and system of internal controls and procedures designed to ensure compliance” with the Consumer Product Safety Act.
For five years, the company must also file annual reports regarding its compliance program and system of internal controls, the CPSC said.
George Ball, PhD, associate professor of operations and decision technologies and Weimer Faculty Fellow at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in Bloomington, pointed out that by the time the company issued its recall, 70 injuries had occurred, which is less than 1% of treadmills affected by the recall.
“While that [failure rate] seems really low, there were children involved, a death, and resistance and even pushback against the regulator,” Ball told Healthline.
In this week’s Peloton bike recall, a much smaller fraction of bikes sold resulted in injuries compared to the treadmill recall, which Ball said suggests the company is being more responsive to product failures.
So “I think we will continue to see highly responsive recalls from Peloton for a few more years,” he said.
Co-founder Foley stepped down as CEO of Peloton in February 2022, a position he had held for nearly 10 years, reports CNBC. In September of that year, he resigned his position as executive chairman of the board.
A new CEO, though, is more open to initiating a consumer product recall, Ball and his colleagues found in a 2021 paper published in the journal
“They are less connected with the reputation of the firm, and they are able to clean house from the previous CEO,” said Ball, an effect that is strongest when the previous CEO left on poor terms, as Peloton’s Foley did.
Peloton’s current CEO Barry McCarthy is still within this “sweet spot.”
