Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Once upon a time, like a week ago, I had a great combined GPS tracking system and activity monitor for my two Siberian Huskies. I received text and email alerts when they left our acre yard. When we were out of town, I could easily add our dog-sitter to the notifications. The GPS was reliable and consistent with notifications for both dogs within a minute of one another. The activity monitor was great. The TAGG point system gave a great overall score that consistently reported the obvious observable difference between the two dog’s baseline activity levels. The activity graphics were well designed and easy with color coding for low, moderate and high activity times. In my 4 years with the TAGG system, I WAS EXTRAORDINARILY HAPPY with the product! When Whistle bought our TAGG, I was optimistic that there would be improvements on to the activity reporting since that had been the Whistle specialty versus GPS tracking for TAGG. Maybe, some more innovative ways to review and compare the granular data such as tracking the different activity levels in the TAGG point score over time. Today, less than a week after the big software “improvement” rollout, I have a GPS tracking system and a completely worthless activity monitor that Whistle keeps claiming is the greatest and best. Let me explain how worthless the activity monitor really is. I have two purebred registered Siberian Huskies age 5 and 3.5. As purebreds they have the same gait and head movement patterns. Since the new Whistle software rollout, I tethered them together with a 13” mushing neckline spacer and meticulously tracked the reported Whistle activity variances. Given the breed characteristics and tethering, both dogs should record statistically identical activity. Over 5 different days with 8 separate walks ranging from 2.5 miles to 3 miles, I timed and measured the walks with my personal fitness tracker and compared the results reported by Whistle for each dog. We walked 26.2 miles over 386 actual minutes under an average pace of 4.07 miles per hour (a very fast walk, just under a jogging pace). Whistle reported an average variance between my two dogs (the younger dog, Kiefer as a percent of the activity minutes for the older dog, Penny) of 88.76%. The range was 66.18% to 123.5% with the closest walk being 91.04% variance. Remember same breed, walking no more than 13” apart, BIG difference in Whistle recording. Of the 386 actual minutes on these 8 walks, Whistle managed to only report 249 minutes (64.51%) of for Penny and 221 minutes (57.25%) for Kiefer. Please remember these are true power walks at an average pace of over 4 mile per hour. These are well-trained Siberian Huskies that proudly consider walking as their “job.” They heel, never putting a paw beyond my stride and with their noses never behind my waist. There is no leash wander. No stopping to smell or rest. We just maintain a constant quick pace. This is the perfect walking style to test the activity monitor performance and reveal how truly inconsistent and inadequate it really is. We have a full acre hillside lot. The entire lot is contained by an invisible fence. Whenever I call the Huskies (probably 5 or six times a day) they come running full speed (at least 50 yards from the front yard to 100+ yards from the back wooded hillside). None of these sprints show up on the Whistle activity goal minutes. During the day our Huskies are outside in the acre yard at least 8 hours per day. They explore, chase squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and deer. They dig holes. They wrestle. They frequently run back and forth from the back woods to watch garbage trucks, lawn care crews and other dogs walking by on the sidewalk. Only a few of these frequent activity bursts show up in the activity goals calculation. My dogs have been engaged in vigorous walking for over 77 minutes per day. Their average recorded Whistle activity during these walks is only 47 minutes. Whisper claims that “similar” dogs average 62 minutes. I am curious to know what is “similar”? Under the Whistle formula I would have to walk my dogs at my current 4 mile per hour pace for 102 minutes per day to be just “average.” There is no possible way that any average dog in the Whistle system is being run almost 7 miles per day. It appears from my analysis of the data that the calculated activity must meet the following criteria: (1) Movement at more than 4 miles per hour: and (2) Lasting for at least 4 continuous minutes. This is ridiculous! The activity monitoring is a joke. TAGG had the GPS / activity monitor combination nailed. Whistle completely blew it! My Huskies and I are very sad to see a good product go down to the easy venture capital money dished out to Whistle. It has been a week since I wrote this activity tracking part of this review. Not only has the activity tracking failed to improve, the GPS notification performance now equals the activity inconsistency. Also, I cannot get anyone from Whisper to talk to me despite multiple requests to cancel service and refund tracker purchase price; they now make you wait 45 minutes on hold and then hang up on you. Over the past few days I recorded the notification time differential between my two Huskies. Every zone departure is together walking within 13 inches of one another or riding in back of Jeep. Under Tagg system, both notifications reliably came in within 4 minutes of leaving the home zone and pinged my phone within seconds of one another. This is critical because the whole point of GPS tracking is to receive a quick notification so I can immediately retrieve my errant pet. The only thing reliable today under Whistle is that Kiefer's notification comes a long, long time after Penny's (if it comes at all). Monday 10/12: 38 minute lag between Penny notification and Kiefer notification, but return notifications within 1 minute of one another. Tuesday 10/13: 39 minute lag between Penny notification and Kiefer notification, but return notifications within 4 minutes of one another. Wednesday 10/14: No Kiefer left zone notification, but goal achievement notification arrived while gone (so tracker was on and "operational") but return notifications within 1 minute of one another. Thursday 10/15: 26 minute lag between Penny notification and Kiefer notification, but return notifications in the same minute together. Saturday 10/17: 15 minute lag between Penny notification and Kiefer notification, but return notifications within 3 minutes of one another. But let's not get too excited that things are improving. A few hours later on Saturday 10/17: 51 minute lag between Penny notification and Kiefer notification, but return notifications within 2 minutes of one another. Since the return notifications come close together, the collar devices are clearly transmitting the data. The problem is that Whistle's back end programming and/or server capacity is a mess. Basic incompetence to transform a fully functional system into a total mess.