Sonos contributing to electronic waste

Are financial reasons any less valid than technical reasons?  Should a company not strive to make a profit? 

Absolutely not. It’s just a recurrent theme on the forum that removal of support for older devices is somehow inevitable for technical reasons, when it’s not.

(I was amused to be offered a trade in discount for a Connect:Amp that I bought at retail less than 18 months ago. Uhm … no thanks. I can understand the argument for the older ZP devices, however.)

I would say technical and financial, for the very reasons you state.  Technically, they cannot keep up with the current functions.  Financially, it makes no sense to maintain multiple code bases for a dwindling amount of users who by very definition (frozen to one release) will be unlikely to purchase more units.  

I have currently three items on their ‘trade in list’, but I would rather they just gave me the 30% off new products than bricking the old ones, which I suspect they’ll do soon enough anyway. I already ‘lost’ 3 ‘remotes’ when they stopped supporting android 4.2, but I also have 6 Play:1’s that I suspect is next on the list.. I ‘d hope they would let people keep playing systems on old versions, maybe I’ll experiment with my firewall settings to stop Sonos form upgrading but keep controller communication and music streaming going.. 

I have no need for Apple Airplay or cringy voice control..

My fondness of Sonos is falling..

No need to experiment - there was a very good document kindly created by someone here, which detailed how to go about things. It was for v8.4, but the basic principles still apply. If you can’t find it, I have a copy that i can send you.

I’ll agree that as a species, humans create too much waste and “latest technology” seems to be accelerating this waste generation. But, here we are. Should we stop creating new technologies and continue using the current technologies or revert to older technologies that could be dragged out of attics and basements? Would this old technology still be operational? While there are some outliers, most consumer electronics gets into very serious component failure in the 15-20 year range. Consumers are reluctant to spend amounts approaching the cost of new replacements when repairing older, usually less functional, products. Further, one can completely resolve a failure only to be facing a different, unrelated, failure a short time later.

In my opinion, SONOS is attempting to create a more responsible path forward.

Shipping units back to SONOS is one option, but why spend the resources boxing up, then shipping the units to SONOS? Local recycle is kinder to the environment.

Total capitalism here, they need to sell units for shareholders...I’m reading media posts on how great it is SONOS are offering to recycle, but looking at the ‘trade-up’ they’d rather you drop it at any electronic recycling (typically in the UK that’s the local tip) as it’s cheaper than returning to SONOS  … it’s such a scam; very very disappointed with the ethics here.

These units aren’t even that old, my Play 5 was registered in 2017 and is on the ‘trade-up’ list, so why would I scrap that?! If I wanted Alexa support I’d just by the little plug-in for >£20 etc. 

It’s a company under threat from ever increasing competition on the smart speaker market that has clearly got to the bottom of the barrel to increase unit sales.

As stated in the post above you, recycling locally is better for the environment then shipping it elsewhere to be recycled.  And you can ship it to Sonos if you wish.

  The trade-up program is optional.  If you’re happy with your play:5 then keep it.

I suppose it’s subjective regarding what marketing methods are ‘bottom of the barrel’ or not.  Sonos did release it’s Q3 financial statements recently and it does looks like sales are moving in the right direction.

https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/sonos-fiscal-q3-2019-earnings-1203295731/

Interesting article by The Verge here about Sonos' sustainability. Seems like it's an even split between the public caring / not

https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/30/21042871/sonos-recycle-mode-trade-up-program-controversy

And the best argument in the whole article is that “something (...) feels very off”: “But for those who do want to take advantage of the trade-up program, something still feels very off about having to render these products inoperable in exchange for a discount on the current Sonos lineup.” Wow, investigative journalism at its best. ;-)