Customer Service and Support


Why is the customer service and support so terrible?


This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

17 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Why do you ask silly questions?

Is it silly because I am only finding out how terrible it is?

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

I’ve only needed to contact them once during my 5+ years of Sonos product ownership. My experience was that the response was quick and helpful. I’m sorry that your experience was different. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Just posting a comment without any explanation does not help anyone, - least of all Sonos if they would want to improve things…...

Userlevel 7

Why is the customer service and support so terrible?

Thankfully, in my 8yrs+ of Sonos ownership, I have had minimal dealings with Sonos Support, as the product just works.

I’ve read great reports about the helpfulness of support to resolve issues, both on this community and elsewhere. Mainly around product replacement where a hardware fault has been diagnosed, rather than audio interruptions. They can’t be faulted for the former. Their hardware product support procedure is second to none.

Whilst support can view the actual diagnostic information you send and highlight problem areas, I would say the community here is extremely helpful in understanding and resolving user’s playback issues, without having access to those diagnostics. If you detail your issues here, explaining your system setup, router etc then you may have more success 

I can sympathise with you however as my current ongoing communication with Sonos Support is less than satisfactory. Too many scripted responses without understanding the issue. 3 times I have been told incorrect information [play:3s don’t support Atmos when bonded as surrounds with an Arc] from different support staff. Their product knowledge around Atmos is lacking and I will further feed this back to Sonos when invited to do so.

I’ve only needed to contact them once during my 5+ years of Sonos product ownership. My experience was that the response was quick and helpful. I’m sorry that your experience was different. 

I think the last time I had to call Support was ~14 years ago, when my CR100 locked due to a stray electrostatic discharge upon replacing it in its cradle. They were excellent back then.

They were excellent back then.

They were excellent even in 2014. But thereafter I have to also say that things have gone downhill, starting from the time some support moved to the EU. My last interaction a few years ago was frustrating because it was very clear that rote responses were being given to emails. I decided to not rely on that support anymore and use this space for the very occasional trouble shooting needed. Which continues to work as well as it did back in the day, largely because all the regulars have not gone away.

Obviously I cannot say if things have further deteriorated to “terrible”. But this slide seems to be the bane of scaling up and Sonos has not been exempt.

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

My last and only call for help to Sonos was last year when my Beam would not communicate with Google assistant anymore and the usual trick (uninstalling/installing GA) did not work. The person I spoke solved my problem. This was the Dutch language help desk.

I’m in New Zealand now, was previously in North America. I used support in NA to solve an issue where I needed Boost because I was on a mesh Internet system and found that helpful.

My current issue is with one of my Fives dropping sound completely from all services, doesn’t matter what I play through it. It happens randomly and wasn’t sure why. I would have to reboot it to get it working again. I thought it might have been because of my turntable setup plugged into that speaker, so I swapped the speakers around. Found it wasn’t anything to do with the turntable because the same speaker had the same issue when switched which leads me to believe it’s a hardware issue.

I have at this time contacted support 4 times with this issue and the amount of times I had to repeat myself about what the problem was was frustrating.

Even after the issue last night where I was on a call with somebody that I couldn’t quite understand where they still sent me an email afterwards to give me info on “line in” settings when I thought it was clear it had nothing to do with line in settings because it no longer had a line in that speaker.

Anyways, they also suggested I don’t use the Boost anymore even though I have a mesh setup on fibre. So I’m giving that a go but I’m thinking the problem will exist and I will need to call support up again for the 5th time on this one issue.

Did support ask for a diagnostic?  I would think that info would provide some good information about whether it’s a hardware issue or network, as well as validate any suggested fixes for network.  Removing the Boost would obviously be for solving a network issue.

@BrendanVDB 

Removing the BOOST is a possibility, although in my mind a stretch, unless there’s an issue with it, which would show up in the diagnostic that @melvimbe mentioned.

I’d still keep a device wired to the router of your mesh network, as Sonos doesn’t do well with connecting to many mesh networks, due to the way that many of them function, with differing subnets, an anathema to the way Sonos operates. And with a device connected to the router, unless you have a Roam or Move, there’s no need to keep the wifi information in the Sonos controller’s settings area. 

Based on your post, I’d actually be betting on a duplicate IP address on that device. Unplug it from power, then reboot your router. Once the router comes back up, plug that Sonos device back in, which should force it to get a new IP address from the “refreshed” table on the router. 

 

An update (late because for some reason these messages keep going to junk mail).

Turns out my router had gone through an update and created a “Guest” wifi network that I wasn’t completely aware of. I turned it off to hopefully stop the problem, I also removed the Boost from the equation and disconnected it.

The reason I had the Boost was because from when I was in another house that had a Mesh network I was told to get a Boost to get rid of the connection issue the speakers were experiencing.

So I kept the Boost in this setup because I had a wifi extender connected as well. I’ve turned the extender off but that means I now don’t have good coverage at the one end of the house anymore. I believe there might be a way to make the wifi extender act on the same network and not confuse Sonos but I am yet to turn it back on and try.

An update (late because for some reason these messages keep going to junk mail).

Turns out my router had gone through an update and created a “Guest” wifi network that I wasn’t completely aware of. I turned it off to hopefully stop the problem, I also removed the Boost from the equation and disconnected it.

The reason I had the Boost was because from when I was in another house that had a Mesh network I was told to get a Boost to get rid of the connection issue the speakers were experiencing.

So I kept the Boost in this setup because I had a wifi extender connected as well. I’ve turned the extender off but that means I now don’t have good coverage at the one end of the house anymore. I believe there might be a way to make the wifi extender act on the same network and not confuse Sonos but I am yet to turn it back on and try.

Just to say WiFi range extenders are not supported by Sonos, but that doesn’t stop you using it for other network devices around the home especially if you filter out the Sonos MAC addresses and controller from using that AP or/and have it use a different SSID and wireless channels to the main router. At least it will help provide extended WiFi coverage for your other devices.

Userlevel 6
Badge +12

Been using a mesh system for over a year now as I wanted to use my sonos moves in the garden, isp router wifi was terrible no range and lots of dropouts 

Never had any issues with any of my sonos products since using the eero pro 6 system, all my speakers use sonosnet except for the moves and roams never added boost or extender to my network 

Since I have had the mesh network I switched isp and now use a 5g sim router and the mesh so everything is now wireless 

All work flawlessly so I would recommend mesh over extenders 

 

Had a Roan that stopped charging. Went thru trouble shooting over the phone. Roam is defected we will send you a new one. Sent defected Roam back and it’s been received. No one can tell me when the replacement will ship or give me any information. Ready to buy a Bose unit and be done with Sonos. Horrible customer service 

Had a Roan that stopped charging. Went thru trouble shooting over the phone. Roam is defected we will send you a new one. Sent defected Roam back and it’s been received. No one can tell me when the replacement will ship or give me any information. Ready to buy a Bose unit and be done with Sonos. Horrible customer service 

Similar experience here. My Roam’s power cable LITERALLY melted and damaged the device. It’s been two weeks and all I get is the runaround. Support tells me to wait and wait and wait. I just emailed the CEO of Sonos but I’m not optimistic. 

Userlevel 1
Badge

Yes, “Customer Support” has been horrible lately. Here’s a few other horror stories:

https://en.community.sonos.com/community-feedback-229090/horrendous-support-6869733
https://en.community.sonos.com/community-feedback-229090/customer-service-6869415