A Strange Bug on Strava

Something that prevented me from sleeping till I solved it

Incomplete things, especially those that make me feel — “it’s so unfair” prevent me from sleeping and annoy the hell out of me. It sets off a chain reaction in my head. Like a bug that is boring a tunnel in my head. A bug that keeps me fighting till I’ve found it and squished it decisively.

One such bug, though a software one kept boring inside my head after I subscribed to Strava via Appstore (instead of the web page). Last year I had subscribed from the website, hence I had not encountered the bug.

The User Journey

So, I paid subscription money via UPI (instead of card). I got the success message. Even the app popped up the celebratory message telling me that I was in. But still I could not see the premium features of the app. I tried the trouble shooting protocol given by Strava’s AI customer support bot.

After my failure, I went back to the bot and informed it about my failure. I thought I would get a resolution. But this time, even the AI bot didn’t know the answer.

I thought the handover to the human customer support individual would happen instantly. But turns out that Strava is running a lean team and it didn’t have anyone to address my irritation immediately.

“A few days”. In spite of all this AI? This annoyed the hell out of me. I tried thinking what could have caused this bug. Maybe the email ID connected to my Apple ID was the issue? It was not the same as the email ID connected to my Strava. So I went ahead and updated the email ID. I followed the trouble shooting protocol and failed AGAIN.

My next course of action was to login with Apple instead of logging in with email ID. This threw a surprise. It opened a five year old Strava account that was not connected to any email ID (but only to the Apple ID). At this point I should have realised the root cause of the bug, but I didn’t.

I thought there should be a way to merge my current Strava account with this old Strava account. I tried updating the current email ID to this dead account. But the product failed to give a proper error message (something like “This email ID is already connected to a Strava account). But that didn’t happen.

Stubbornly, I tried connecting a different email ID to the same account. Again, the product failed to deliver an error message. This time there was no logical reason to reject this action. But still I hit a wall.

I took a break and hoped Strava would solve it in a few days.

I went about my day and finally decided to sleep. But I could not. How the hell can it be this way? I rolled over in the bed and got up. I switched on my laptop and googled “how to merge Strava accounts?”. There was no answer. And finally I had an idea. If I deleted the old Strava account connected to the Apple ID, then maybe the conflict would be resolved.

I didn’t want to lose the data of my cycling days. But then I wanted to sleep peacefully. I deleted the account, opened my current Strava account, performed the same trouble shooting routine given to me earlier. And finally, the subscription was activated. Voila!

The Ideal Solution

When I opened a second Strava account on my iPhone, I should have been prompted to merge the account with the older one (as an option). That would have prevented any future conflicts.

Even otherwise, at the time of payment via AppStore, the product could have warned me about a possible conflict because of another account mapped to the same Apple ID.

Let us assume that these two ideas are too revolutionary. At least the Strava AI bot should have searched the database and told me about the conflict arising from two Strava accounts mapped to the same Apple ID. Even that did not happen.

The ultimate failsafe would have been to transfer the customer support chat to a real person within minutes or hours of the failed solution. Forget the failure to have a live customer support agent.

At least the bot could have given me a definite timeline for resolution. It just said “a few days” which only created irritation in my system and failed to generate a feeling of peace.

Conclusion

Anyway, this niche edge case exposes several product gaps in Strava that can be addressed for a smooth journey for users who might face this in the future. I hope that some product manager at Strava reads this detailed post and fixes the gaps.