Publish the dates when products will become 'legacy'

Ryan, can you tell us when the next downgrading of products from modern to legacy will happen, and which products?

I would have to replace 5-year-old Play5’s, and I will not. I will not invest in premium audio equipment that will be useless after 5ish years. 

For customer care and to be a sustainable company, you need to design products where the electronics can be upgraded. The audio hardware is still great. 

I love the Sonos experience, but with your current business model, it is not worth the continuous replacement cost. 

@Ryan S...I think I’d stop sticking plasters on this disastrous piece of PR and get your CEO to respond URGENTLY on the key points that are being raised 

I received the same email and came straight onto the forum.  I have spent £000’s (original Ones, new play ones, 2 X Connect for integration with my hifi, connect amp, sub, sound bar etc) on my Sonos and if I had know then that products were going to be made obsolete after 5 years, I wouldn’t have bothered.

As many have posted, you are priced as a premium product.  When I spend £000’s on equipment I expect it to be support for more than 5 years.  My Apple iMac was bought in 2011, Apple stopped providing updates in 2018, but it is still running fine today and my other apple products can be updated without me disconnecting my iMac from the system. And even if I sold it, it would sell for more than 30% of what i paid for EIGHT years ago!

@Ryan S I agree with @Lomas - You need the senior Exec at Sonos to read what is being posted here by your CUSTOMERS or I for one will not be giving another penny of my hard earned cash to Sonos.  I bought the Connect Amp 18 months ago and got an email within a year saying a new version was being released and I could get a 30% discount and scrap the one I had bought Seriously???  You guys are disconnected from what is acceptable with your customer base and any reasonable person - The volume of posts above should tell you that

Ryan

I purchased a Connect:AMP unit brand new from a mainstream shop in 2017 and it is marked as ‘legacy’. This product had to be ordered in since it was out of stock at that retailer at the time. The serial number starts 5CAA. Hence for this unit it is under 3 years since being sold by Sonos as brand new rather than the 5 years you commit to above. I trust that Sonos will be prepared to work with the retailer and their supplier in question to ensure I have a fully supported unit that will not be affected by the end of software updates coming in May for the full five years of your commitment.

Thanks

You might want to contact Sonos Support directly instead of hoping to be noticed amid the flood here. I’d suggest an e-mail with attached scans of all your documentation of the purchase as a good starting point. Include your phone number too so they can contact you to discuss it if necessary.

Contact page has several contact options, some open 24x7.

@russellmasding, As Stanley_4 said, this is something that you should contact the team directly for. They can help identify when that unit was manufactured.

Just queued for 30 mins and spoke to someone who had clearly received calls on this topic all day.  I read out the part about the rest of my system not being updated while legacy products were connected.  He wasn’t aware of that part and initially asked me if I had mis-read it!

@Ryan S - I think Sonos needs to eat some humble pie, issue an apology and come up with a better solution.  I still have Marantz CD-63 KI-Sig that I bought in the 90s.  It doesn't need updates, still sounds great and cost me less than my Sonos Connect that is about to go unsupported.  Ok, so It can’t stream to multiples rooms or from Spotify, but my point is, when you invest in premium products you expect to get more than 5 years of value from them

Sorry to hear that the person you spoke to didn’t have all the details. I’ll look into that and see what might have happened.

This part of my post is the least of my worries. The main part is that I (along with many others) have invested £000s in Sonos hardware that in likelihood will be obsolete and worthless in less than 5 years

@Ryan S ask yourself, what large purchases £500+ have you made for you house and how upset would you be if you only got 5 years out of them? 

Sonos need a solution to this now, otherwise many of us will vote with our feet, and our wallets…

Anyway, it’s solved the dilemma of whether I buy a Play 5 for my office or a Naim Mu-So Qb

Response to Ryan regarding earlier post … of course I also contacted the Sonos team privately!

The public questions for Sonos to address are that (1) Sonos do not allow customers and retailers to differentiate between different versions of the Connect:Amp - there are no version numbers or specs available on the box, the units or via the software. The only way is via the serial number and Sonos are keeping this translation private and (2) Sonos have no idea when the last of the pre-2015 units left the supply chain because of the lack of clear marking.

The resolution of my private situation was a mixed bag: (i) call Sonos support who confirm unit is indeed pre-2015 manufacture and hence legacy (ii) contact retailer who (after speaking to Sonos) insists the pre-2015 and post-2015 versions are the same product (iii) push the retailer rather harder and persuade the retailer to follow up the supply chain (iv) Sonos flipflop to say manufacture date of unit was actually 2016 so the unit is modern.

So I think I have a ‘modern’ unit … but will I be confident until it successfully updates.

Lessons for Sonos - Don’t hide different product versions (not fair on consumers or retailers). Don’t make claims (such as 5 year commitment from purchase) unless you have controlled when the product stopped being sold.

I hope Sonos live up to your revised statements regarding ongoing support for legacy devices …. only time will tell