FreeStyle LibreLink - US Negative Reviews

FreeStyle LibreLink - US App Complaints & User Negative Comments 2024

FreeStyle LibreLink - US app received 23 complaints, negative comments and reviews by users. Have you ever had a bad experience using FreeStyle LibreLink - US? Can you share your negative thoughts about freestyle librelink - us?

FreeStyle LibreLink - US for Negative User Reviews

✓ Why don’t these things work ?I have been using Libre products for a couple of years. This is my third sensor in a row that has given me a good reading and then on the next attempt I am told “sensor error: glucose reading is unavailable. try reading again in xxx hours”. Typically this happens if a I change a sensor before bed and take a single reading before I retire for the night. The next attempt to read the next day gives the above error with a 4-12 hour delay before I can read my glucose again. I love these things when they work, but dang if I can figure out why they are so fickle. I changed my pod at 1:30p today and got a good reading about an hour later. Life happened and I was unable to check again until 9:40p and I got the above error with a 4 hour recheck time. 4 hours from will be the middle of the night. I am betting I get a 12 hour “recheck time” in the AM because I will miss the window while asleep. My frustration level is through the roof..Tulsa DadVersion: 2.5.3

✓ Needs workDiabetic since 2003. This is the first time a continuous reader seemed worth wearing, but it still needs work. Sensor issues are one thing (8 hrs is too short for consistent nighttime coverage; inaccurate lows are misleading; 1 out of 4 sensors comes unstuck or stops working), but let’s talk about the app. Decent UI, though the graphs are problematic: you can’t compare consecutive 7-day periods, only the last 7 days/14 days etc. Averages are not useful if you can’t track over time. Also, it’s maddening that the axis changes with each graph - can’t easily compare one to another if the axis isn’t consistent! And it irritates me that I can’t export my data to CSV. Seems inappropriate that i can’t back up or examine my own data. Also, why isn’t there a customer service or support feature in the app? All they have is the user manual and such - no way to report issues with the app. Makes zero sense that I have to call during business hours if my app is malfunctioning. For example, my app keeps crashing at the moment whenever I try to sync my new sensor. If I reinstall the app I’ll lose my data!! Unacceptable..Acp47Version: 2.2.1

✓ Such a joke & rip off!Stuck the sensor on my arm, went to download the app & get the same error message everyone else is getting about the server being down. So I call cust service & they wanted to create an account for me. I don’t want that. I want to be able to use the app!! My pharmacy won’t have the reader until at least tomorrow so I figured no big deal, I’ll use the app AND save some money...looks like I will be forced to pay out of pocket for the reader because the app seems so unreliable!!! I find it hard to believe with all the money invested that they are STILL experiencing servers problems!!! I don’t believe for one second that the servers are down. It’s not like we are talking about some freaking photoshop app here. With the amount of money I have to pay EACH month for this I shouldn’t have a problem from the moment I try to use it. So now I have this thing on my arm & who knows when I can start getting my readings!!! Watch it will go to waste and then there goes more money I’ll have to shell out.Nala21aleekaVersion: 2.2.1

✓ Love and hateLove the capability and the easy to read screens. I’d LOVE to see the average glucose converted to A1C on the reports. Just wish I could use this app all the time. I’ve been a customer for years, long before US approvals. And the Libre changed my life!!! Every country in the world except the US only waits 1 hour for a new sensor to warm up, and the sensors stay usable for 14 days allowing me to easily remember to apply a new sensor every other Sunday. Therefore I have to use my reader for 11 hours while this app blocks the ability to read a new sensor. I don’t keep or use finger sticks any more, haven’t for years. I sure hope nothing bad happens to anyone in the 12 hours you block readings. Then again days 11 -14 the app blocks readings, so again I am forced to use my reader. Being I sometimes travel allot, trying to keep in mind if I need to pack a new sensor for a trip is no fun when the day of the week it expires always changes - so I stay with the 14 day reader (as all sensors are the same globally - at least for now).KentHereVersion: 2.2.1

✓ Readings Are Way Off!I have been using this app with my iPhone 11 Pro Max for about 6 months. I started with the freestyle libre meter to read the sensor and changed to my smart phone because you have the option to leave notes which I thought was fabulous. I would say what I ate what I drank how long it was before I measured and how long after. I left all kind of information I started relying on it 100%. lately, the past couple of days I've been getting very low readings in the 40s and 50s. really scared me! I ate my glucose pills I drink juice I did everything I could to get my blood sugar up. And even after eating something high in carbs afterwards it will start falling quickly. That is just not like me. I decided to start testing my blood at the same time I test with the meter and found it off by about 100 points. Phone = 186, Freestyle sensor reader = 284. One Touch Ultra 2=244. All I can say is they're not even close. The scary part is I didn't even know. If we have to keep checking the accuracy of the phone app, it's a waste of time. Might as well just use the blood glucose meter and poke my fingers again and stop getting the Freestyle Sensors sent..BR the OriginalVersion: 2.5.3

✓ Needs to be so much betterThe Freestyle Libre as wearable technology is a wonderful breakthrough in diabetic management, but the app is so rudimentary it’s a joke. People want to be able to use and synthesis the data being captured. The daily curves should be able to view actual reading numbers (the Dexcom app does this by scrolling with your finger across the curve and the reading numbers show up). Notes are viewable by hovering on a note, but only for the current day. Unavailable for historical daily graphs. You should be able to view more than one day at a time on the daily graph. For example, you should be able to view a 14 day, 30, 60 day graph as so many blood glucose apps will. Which brings me to another point. Libre data should be shared with many more apps. OURA, My Fitness Pal (or other popular meal tracker apps) so people can see the impact real time of particular foods. The app needs some serious work to take advantage of the advance this wearable technology represents. Ask diabetics what information they want! The data is already collected. Step up your game here..GinaschultzVersion: 2.8.1

✓ Stores your data in their own cloud. No Health integrationYou need to create an account to upload your data to their service. So it constantly leaks information to them about your activities that can be reconstructed from your continuous blood glucose such as: when you woke up, your activity level, when you were eating a meal, even what kind of meal you ate. And, of course, your diabetes health status. And this is presuming your instantaneous blood glucose is the only day that they are helping themselves to, and they aren’t logging your location data or IP along with it, which would combinatorially increase the amount of information about your life that they possess. Information is ruthlessly cumulative, can be combined with other information, and can’t be recalled once it is out there in the world. It does not support integration with Apple health. The whole point of apple health is to have one place to manage policy for your health information on your iPhone! Until I tried to find my data in Apple health I didn’t even know it was allowed to have iPhone health apps that don’t use it..SpatulateVersion: 2.5.3

✓ First Impression-Abbott arroganceMy first impressions are below, here is an update. Abbott had the server back up on April 20 as promised. I have been using the app for about 20 days. It does the job but the inability to export a simple CSV file with history of readings is frustrating and is not technically challenging. Because of this I am going to stick to my “arrogance” comment in the title. I have bumped stars from 1 to 3. ====================== Original review follows ====================== I downloaded this app on Thursday April 27. Like others, I immediately saw “Error communicating with server” After uninstalling and reinstalling, restarting my phone and checking Abbot’s website, I called support. Support tech asked me a series of questions unrelated to the app. I kept asking if we could discuss the server connection issue. Turns out he was just gathering marketing info. Once he had everything he wanted, he said “The server is down and will not be up until Tuesday”. He seemed to already know this but did not have the courtesy to say so immediately. I now realize Abbott has known this for days but lacks the decency to save users the frustration of a useless interrogation or to post a notice on their site saying their server is down. Let’s see if it’s really back up on Tuesday, April 30 as the tech said it would be. With this kind of medical data, I am surprised that Abbott does not seem to invest in readily available server failover services..Mrs CarmVersion: 2.2.1

✓ There is no current update for your app.I’ve been using the freestyle Libre 14 day for INXS of a year. The last time your app was updated was it year ago. For the last month I’ve been having an issue with getting my sensors to scan. I’ve gone through the rigmarole of having customer service replace my sensors. But the problem is not with the individual sensors. In addition to going through all of that with your customer service division who by the way doesn’t listen. I have had my phone checked by my service provider and Apple. It appears that your free style libre libre link is not compatible with the current Apple update. I have now been without a glucose monitoring system for a month. Since I had been using your system for over a year when my other monitoring system broke I did not replace it. Your customer service department has replaced seven sensors. This would be wonderful but none of them will work because your app is out of date and no one seems to want to own up to this or give any idea of when it will be updated. How sad. I really really liked having this CGM but if it doesn’t work what good is it? I don’t expect that you will respond because that would be taking ownership of the issue. Please fix it soon..DsrstrfnkfvVersion: 2.5.3

✓ Crap wareThis software seems to get worse as time goes on. Abbot is a large corporation and should be able to attract good developers. I know since I’m a senior developer. This software misses entered information “at times”. It may show the missing info in the generated graph for the day, but misses it in the log. This is serious because when trying to decide to give yourself insulin or not you don’t have the data to make the determination. A good test group should be able to catch that, especially in the automated regression testing or functional testing. It’s inexcusable to have this happen. Also, the readings are consistently off from what a glucometer is telling you, sometimes as much as 40-50 points. You would think that someone at Abbott checks these numbers against real blood sugar readings. You would think that someone at Abbott checks these numbers against real blood sugar readings and shows them when the doctor pulls up the info to see if you were really in the range or not. You need to provide more info for the doctors. I found out they don’t see some of the things, like what you entered for glucometer reading and shows them to the doctor when the doctor pulls up the info to see if you were really in the range or not. They make it impossible to complain to them other than this rating item. There is no way to use the app to tell them if something is wrong. That means terrible management. I highly doubt if they even look at this also..RomEmanuelEvansVersion: 2.8.1

✓ Pretty Useless if you ask meI’ve been using the Freestyle Libre for a little while now. I very first one I used fell off in less then a week, so I went out and bought the pads that help the sensors stick on better. They worked better for a while, I sensors actually stayed on. I then had a sensor tell me after scanning it to wait the hour like they do. After the hour was up I scanned the sensor only for it to tell me to wait 10 minutes and scan again. After waiting the 10 minutes I scanned the sensor again with the same message. After about 3 or 4 scans it tells me to replace the sensor because it’s bad. Now I pay for these out of pocket. After the first few issues the sensors worked great for a while. Now recently my last 4 in a row have not worked, each giving the same issue. I scan it, it tell me to wait the hour. I wait the hour and it tells me to scan again in 10 minutes. Wait the 10 minutes, it says scan again in 10 minutes, after 3 or 4 times it says the sensor is bad. I have one more sensor to try but I’m not really hopeful that it’ll work either. I have the latest firmware installed on everything. Good luck everyone!!!.Whodax24Version: 2.5.3

✓ 3hr Delay to transfer to Apple HealthI’ve been using Libre sensors for a couple years. In so many ways I prefer your sensors to your more expensive competitor. However, you have really dropped the ball by delaying transfer of blood sugars to Apple Health for three hours. When your competitors make these results immediate. You can’t claim you are trying to provide the best care for diabetics, if you are purposefully preventing them from using other, more capable diabetes management tools than your own log. At best this is a contradiction to your own marketing Dept messaging. At worst, it’s corporate bad faith. Part 2: Developer suggested I contact customer service for help. It turns out, Customer Service informed me, there is no support for data sharing with third party apps including Apple Health Kit. Word of warning, if your hoping to use another app to manage your diabetes, you will have to manually enter each scan into the other app. Abbott, the idea of a CGM only reaches its full potential if you facilitate the user getting this data into their preferred management app. In other words, you need to implement Apple Health Kit integration. As your product currently stands, your in the dark ages as compared to your competition. Next time someone complains about this, you could just tell them you’ll pass the request on to the developers..Todd-SquadVersion: 2.2.2

✓ What the eff?!? I’m so over it smhI can only get two meters a month which makes sense since it lasts 2 weeks. My last meter had days left on it but it started giving numerous error messages before it just said it’s unusable or something. I had to go out of my way and get another refill request n pick it up two days after the failed one. I installed the new sensor n waited an hour to check my blood and it gave a reading but with the symbol indicating to do a actual finger reading. That’s what it says all the time now. And out the blue it says it’s unavailable and to wait 4 hours! So is this one going to stop working too and only after just installing it hours before?! And if it’s going to be so freakin inaccurate all the time why don’t you people include the strips and lancets to check by finger? Oh I have to go buy another regular meter huh? Well what the heck is the point of this one?!? It’s 3:30am and I have no idea what my readings I can’t get up and go by a meter now nor should I have to! I shoulda listened to my co worker and not get this brand.KyeNjCaVersion: 2.5.3

✓ Zero Stars if PossibleOver the course of 2 months, I purchased 6 sensors; 2 of them didn’t work. That’s a failure rate of 33%! So what do I mean by “didn’t work?” Readings of in the 50s to 60s when my finger pricking stated readings of 110 or so. I called the first time this happened and was told to give it a few more days. The second time this happened I called and asked for replacements. I was told I needed to research dates, times, and readings. Keep in mind that just being on the phone for the first and second call quickly adds up to an hour. The first call should have informed me of the prolonged process they would expect me to follow. When I asked the second call associate to reference my first call he indicated that the note only said “call dropped” which it hadn’t, so this confirmed that the call center is unprofessional and disinterested in providing good customer service. Save your money and seek a better product...or just keep purchasing sensors until you get one that works..Oscar.joseVersion: 2.2.2

✓ Buyer Beware! UselessNow on my 7th sensor in two weeks. Three have fallen off, 1 never worked from the beginning, and 2 just quit and said “replace sensor”. Seventh times the charm? Worst customer service I have ever dealt with. App support team is ill-equipped to provide support beyond basic support script of “you did something wrong, sorry for the inconvenience.” And, the support team is strictly available during bankers hours on Eastern time, M-F. Good thing diabetes only an issue during those times. Good grief. I am highly suspicious of good reviews in App Store. Before buying, make a smart choice and read the Developer Responses. Clearly these are not responses from “developers” who would be genuinely interested in receiving constructive feedback or offering insightful and helpful troubleshooting for an app to which they devoted their career. Instead, the responses are “please contact support”, which indicates to me these are canned responses from bots, as so many of the reviews specifically mention a user has attempted to contact support with no meaningfully positive outcome. The cognitive dissonance between my reasonable expectations of the promise of groundbreaking if nascent technology and my two-week experience is a chasm I cannot overcome. Thoroughly disappointed. Please conduct due diligence..HOMEMEANSNEVADAVersion: 2.2.2

✓ Update the App to work with iOS 14 please!I have been using the Freestyle Libre 14 day sensor for a couple of years. I used the app on my iPhone. On New Years 2021 at midnight, it stopped working. Abbott customer service is not open on holidays or weekends (so don’t have a problem or emergency except M-F during normal business hours) so I had to wait until Monday to call. They said they would send me a new sensor but were unhelpful as to why it stopped working. I waited until Wednesday (my normal sensor change day) to apply my new sensor that I had on hand....it wouldn’t work with the app either. Another call to customer service, they would send me another sensor. I finally dug out my reader and charged it up....and the sensor worked fine with it. Numerous calls to customer service and the technical support still provided no answers. I finally got on the App Store and read all the “fine print” and it says that the app only works on iPhones with iOS up to 13.6. Apple is now up to 14.4.1! Abbott needs to update their app to work with the current IPhone operating system!!.JGLL-GmamaVersion: 2.5.1

✓ Can cause life threatening issue.Love the convenience and ease of testing. But I have had three sensors in 10 months give me crazy readings. 30–50 points higher than glucose test Or 30-50 points (mg/dL) lower than glucose test. I went dangerously low believing the sensor was correct and my “shakes” were not glucose related. The first two times the company apologetically and quickly sent a free replacement sensor arriving in a few days. Today I was told a new guideline prohibits sending a replacement or even acknowledging an issue unless I have their branded reader (I’ve always just used my iPhone) and “calibrated” finger stick to prove their arm mounted sensor has a life threatening error. The new guidelines also turned a three minute tech support call into a forty minute detailed grilling, requiring reading off dozens Of numbers, arrows and codes from phone app and sensor box- which if I had not kept, would preclude “any” help. But even after all that. resulted in no action or replacement. Terrible and dangerous client support experience. Even when escalated to “corporate resolution department” all I got was same nonsensical legal clap-trap. I suspect failure rates are much higher than FDA finds acceptable and by clamping down on replacements, Freestyle is trying to prevent a re-call or new “black box warning” required on medical devices that have issues. This worries me. And should worry you and your physician..Optimist-ohioVersion: 2.2.2

✓ No Apple Health reporting?The sensor is extremely useful for me as I am attempting a transition from medication to diet controlled type 2 after weight loss and significant lifestlye (diet & exercise) change. However, I notice it is not transferring glucose data to the health app and I can’t figure why. While the technology is wonderful, the app is relatively lacking in design from my traditional onetouch. I would like to know why the apple health app isn’t receiving the data. I gave 3 stars for the ease of use, level of data driven information this provides for sugar control, but I have to deduct 2 stars. 1 because the app is not communicating with apple health and a second because the app is overall not as good in design as my onetouch. Overall, I’d say if insurance pays for it, I recommend it. This device offers a well deserved level of 3 stars for its function. Could easily be 5 if these app issues were improved upon..Hop6195Version: 2.2.2

✓ App Verses ReaderI just switched from the reader to the app because the pharmacy filled my script with the 14 day censors rather than what the doctor prescribed which were the kind that only works with the reader. I started 2 weeks ago with the reader and was testing about every 30 minutes during waking hours. Loved using the reader, the only drawback was having to carry 2 devices (it and my phone) However , the app developers have made a major misstep. They need to understand the power of sounds as motivation and how beeps and rings stimulate seratonin and dopamine receptors. The absence of these sound ‘rewards’ on the app are a big disappointment. When I scan with my phone it barely makes a noise and it’s not at all pleasant. There’s nowhere on my iPhone or within the app itself to set tones. Please add this feature..ElizPet2021Version: 2.5.3

✓ FeaturesI love this device. It’s life changing! However, there are two major features (maybe one is a bug) that are missing. Would you please turn on or fix badge notifications on iOS 14.3? Lock Screen, Notification Center, and Banner notifications all work great. I even have sound. But, not Badge notifications. This really hampers my progress by not giving the hourly notifications I’ve configured in the notification style that I choose to employ badges). This should be a relatively easy thing, no? Hopefully not and really hope you can enable. Second I assume is an RFE. Apple Health integration would be very helpful for us data / analyst types as Apple Health, while a bit lackluster in configurability, is otherwise an excellent dashboard to help monitor health, in general. I currently workaround this issue by using iPhone Shortcuts. But even still, it requires manual entry of the glucose reading and also double manual entry for insulin reporting, assuming the user wants to retain data in both applications while hoping for the day they’ll integrate (as do I). I do save on excess screen taps this way, though. And mostly I want this because the brilliance of the device itself deserves nothing less than the best out of the application used to interface with it. Your changing lives with the hardware. So can we go ahead and bring it up to the finish line?.Jerickson1075Version: 2.5.1

✓ Just. Doesn’t. WorkI received FreeStyle and was very excited about it. Started using it exactly two weeks to the day. I knew I didn’t want to carry the sensor reader that came with it and was happy to see I could track it with my iPhone 11 Pro Max. Downloaded this app and was quickly dejected. It just didn’t work. I called and asked why. My telephone representative was awesome. She took the time to research, asked me for the serial number on my sensor and told me that the app needed to be updated to work with the newer sensor I have received. So I will wait. Hopefully soon it make it worthwhile. I chose this over Dexcom and I hope I don’t have to swap. Update: Awesome!! I received a response this morning letting me know that the app is under review by the FDA. Hopefully, 🤞🏾, an updated app will be a an early holiday gift. Thank you!! Update: I guess this app will never be updated. It’s been months sense I was told they were looking at it but my assumption is that there “look” was never a clear and positive one. 😔.LRamonTVersion: 2.5.1

✓ Be careful entering your email addressThe app is a little glitchy. When you setup the app, you enter your email address. But you only enter the address once, not twice like some apps require to be sure you entered the right address that is free of typos. I entered my address wrong. I noticed it during set up but there was no back button to go back and fix the mistake. Then, once I was done setting it up I went to my account profile to correct the mistake. You can change your name and birthday and password but you can’t change your email address. With the incorrect email address, you can not link app-to-app (I was trying to link to Veri). I called customer support to see if they could do update my email address from the back end. The answer was no. The only option is to deactivate your account and the reinstall the app with a new account. But that also means you lose the sensor you bought because the sensor only calibrates once. This would be an easy fix for the developer: (1) either add the space to enter the email twice to confirm the right address, or (2) have a back button on the set up pages so people can fix their mistakes during set up, or (3) have a back door via customer service to fix wrong addresses without losing the sensor. The sensors aren’t cheap. When I finish this sensor, I’ll likely switch to a different model and not use Libre because this was an annoying defect in the app..Mary T 63Version: 2.8.1

✓ Very Inaccurate & InconsistentI’m a type II diabetic recovering from open heart surgery. My docs want my glucose readings to be within a set “constant carbs” parameters which means a lot of finger sticking. We are trying the 10 day Freestyle Libra system and comparing the readings against my Ultra Onetouch glucose meter readings. The Freestyle Libra readings are so far removed from the Onetouch readings as to make it unusable for valid glucose measurements. Very disappointed in this system. I cannot make a direct correlation of the difference between the two systems. Sometimes the difference is 10 mg between the two and at other times the difference has been as much as 70 mg. The Freestyle system cannot seem to tell if my glucose is going up or down. It also cannot hold more that 8 hours of data which means I miss significant data at night. Nor can I set my upper or lower limits for glucose levels. The only “alarm” the it sends to my phone is when the 8 hours from last scan is up. I have had three significant hypo events that it did not acknowledge. The same with hyper events out of my target zone: no alarm. A scan is required to get any data whatsoever out of the system. This is an expensive system that most insurances won’t pay for. Being grossly inaccurate makes it pretty much worthless..T3hn2!Version: 2.2.1

FreeStyle LibreLink - US works most of the time. If it is not working for you, we recommend you excersise some patience and retry later or contact FreeStyle LibreLink - US.