Hi everybody,
Well, I don't need to mention about the lates 2 patches and all the misery that brought with is. I decided to email the CEO, Patrick Spence, with a kind request.
Here’s what I wrote him (I’m not from the USA, so apologies to maybe not the totally correct language):
Dear Patrick Spence,
I’m a Sonos costumer, living in The Netherlands. The reason why I reach out to you directly is because there are some issue’s going on since patch 14.12 (and still in 14.14) where a lot of costumers who have the Arc and the Sub, are affected.
In the last few weeks, the community forums kinda explodes with complaints about the Trueplay which entirely flattens out the Sub. Me personally had to feel the drivers to make sure it was still participating in the setup.
From day one, the patch was released, I immediately concluded there was a problem and contacted Sonos-support about it. After hours spent with the technicians they decided to send my case to a higher level of support, which is still open. The case number is 04126532.
Well… I can try to explain the whole problem in words, but that way this email would be tremendously long. Therefore, I kindly ask you to watch this video from Peter from Singapore: https://youtu.be/sUAGvoOQLFo
He is testing a lot on Sonos equipment and this last video is wrapping the whole scenario together.
The main thing for me is, the lack of communication from Sonos, about what’s going on and what to expect. Not even the fact, that since patch 14.12 with Trueplay has made the Sub worthless to listen to. Things like that can happen, but your staff doesn’t even respond on the community’s to the people who are waiting for over 5 weeks now, to get their Sonos-experience back. The only action from Sonos, was a statement (https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/14-12-update-6872573) that advised us to turn off Trueplay till the next patch. Well….. After patch 14.14 it was still not fixed. That makes me wonder, where Sonos have their priorities, right?
I have tried everything I can to get the sound back from pre-14.12, but the only way is to disable Trueplay and at the cost of a very thin and poor vocal range, have at least some sound back from the Sub. It's a big compromise tho. If this is a “fix” for a few days, it’s fine, but this takes over 5 weeks now.
Can you at least talk to your staff about this big issue and prioritise this at #1? I also like a statement from Sonos to the public where they tell us exactly what’s going on and where they are with their progress. During this progress, keep the public informed with the most recent developments, so the public (your costumers, who paid a tremendously amount of money for their systems) knows what to expect and when. I know, Sonos never talks about future updates, but in this case, they really should.
Thank you for reading the above and I really hope, you get your employees together to solve this issue with the highest priority. You costumers kind of expect the issue to be fixed in the next upcoming patch. And if that’s takes another long time, give us at least the choice to revert back to version 14.10 to enjoy the system like it was ment to be.
With kind regards,
Jeroen van Ruler
Just about one hour ago I received this reply:
Hello Jeroen,
Thank you very much for reaching out to us and for sharing your important feedback and the video along with the community link.
Your initial email has been shared with our CEO. Patrick, however, cannot reply to all the contacts he receives and as such a case was created in our customer care system and escalated to a Senior Technician to assist.
My name is Edward and I am part of the Escalation team at Sonos. I will take the case over on my name and help you further from here.
I'm sorry to hear that the sound experience isn’t as you desired after the update and I deeply understand how frustrating this can be, especially when you cannot listen to music or watch TV with the desired audio. However, I will do my best to help you towards a solution.
To begin with, at this moment, the only workaround for this issue would be to turn off the Trueplay for the Arc Home Theatre setup and of course fine tune everything with the EQ settings. This isn’t the best, nor final solution, but it is the best that we have for now.
I can assure you that there is an ongoing matter that has a major priority in our system and as soon as there is a fix for it, it will be published.
As you also mentioned, we don’t disclose any information regarding updates. However, I hope that it will bring some rest if I share that this situation is, as mentioned, marked with “major priority”. Therefore, a rollback to a previous software isn’t really an option and will not be implemented.
Another point that I would like to mention is that our support page mentions the fact that in the 14.14 update there will be Bug fixes and performance enhancements. This doesn’t entirely focus on the issue that you mentioned. However, as stated previously, this audio quality issue that you encounter is tackled with the utmost priority.
I hope that this email brings some rest, even though it doesn’t yet bring your desired sound back. However, If you have any further questions feel free to reply this email so that I can personally answer your questions.
Best Regards,
Edward C.
Sonos | Customer Experience Specialist | Customer Experience Operations
This is what I came up with as a response:
Dear Edward,
Thank you for your quick response on this matter. I really do understand the fact Sonos isn’t disclose any information about future updates, but in this matter, an exception has to be made. Since patch 14.12 everyone with an Arc+Sub is affected. Sonos didn’t really thought it trough when releasing this patch out to the public. It feels like the public is now a kind of beta-testers and have to deal with the mess that the sonos-engineers have made. It’s really ridiculous that Sonos doesn’t even take the trouble of informing the costumers what’s going on. That’s also my main complain, besides the lack of audio quality from my Sonos-system.
You can tell me when there is a fix, it will be published, fair enough and appreciated, really. But this issue is known by your engineers for 5 weeks now. Meanwhile a lot of people who invested some serious money in your products are infected and therefore really disappointed in your company. The least Sonos can do is keep us informed and speed up the progress even more, so it gets resolved better yesterday than tomorrow.
We really have lost the trust in Sonos by now. Also with the patch 14.6, where we lost connections to the sub and surrounds, also toke too long to get solved. Then, at the end, Sonos was releasing 14.10, and everyone was happy. But not long after that, they destroyed our happiness with 14.12, and now the debacle start all over again.
For me, I have turned off the auto updates, and will never turn in on again. I have to be very careful and do a ton of research to decide if I want to update in the future again. What a loss, because the main reason for me to invest in Sonos, was the simplicity of the system. Now I have spend more time troubleshooting problems caused by your engineers that I could enjoy my system. It’s really a shame for your company!
As you can read I’m not happy and very disappointed. Never the less, I appreciate the fact you take the effort to reply to my email and want to thank you for that. Just think about get your engineers work harder on the fix, or roll back to 14.10 and most important, let your staff communicate correctly to the costumers on the community. Your costumers deserve it, period!
With kind regards,
Jeroen van Ruler
Now let’s hope and assume the fix is getting ready very quickly. If I do receive another respond to this I will post it here….If Sonos doesn't inform us about the progress, I will. What a joke, that we need to go this far to get our systems get working as it supposed to be. It’s ridiculous really. I’m very disappointed and angry for the fact, that Sonos lacks the decency to inform us about their progress of their mess.
