Apple Watch 'not syncing' in cheap deal

Customers need to acquire 160 activity points per month to avoid paying extra for the watch

Some customers who purchased the latest Apple Watch for £69 ($86) under a deal offered by Vitality Insurance are complaining that their activity data is not being uploaded by the firm's app.

If certain levels of activity are not logged every month customers are charged extra for the device.

The Apple Watch usually costs £369 in the UK.

The firm said a small number of customers were affected and some had synced their devices incorrectly.

Vitality declined to give figures of how many had taken up the offer.

Under the deal, customers who do not submit enough activity points per month have to pay a sum of up to £12.50 every time they fall behind - this amounts to the full price of the watch if they are not exercising.

The contract lasts for two years.

Anna Holt, from Winchester, told the BBC she and her partner had both taken up the offer, and while his data had synced, hers had not.

She was advised to email screenshots of her activity data to the customer service team, she said.

"It defeats the object," she said. "There seem to be a lot of others complaining about it online."

Overnight, her device suddenly started syncing, she said.

There is no issue with the Apple product itself.

The Vitality UK app, which has a number of features for customers alongside tracking the Apple Watch data, has a large number of poor reviews on the app store and the majority of the 667 ratings it has received so far give it one star, the lowest score.

One reviewer complained in November that only steps and not running data were syncing while another said on 10 January that steps were only being recorded as zero.

"I have to constantly email customer service to get them to update it manually," they wrote.

Another described the app as "well-intentioned but muddled, frustrating, constantly changing and usually not working".

Vitality said an earlier issue with an updated version of the app had been fixed.