Class Action Suit over the destruction of the controller app, rendering many of the customers' products useless

I suggest you consult a lawyer before making the threat in public.  Your suggestion will be brought down to Earth very quickly. 

You refer ‘who’, exactly?  You mention ‘class action’ in the heading but not in the text — are you launching this class action  ?  If not, what are you saying here ??   This seems a fairly pointless post, and I would suggest there is nothing to see here.  

In all the years I’ve been here, through every serious and/or trivial slight foisted upon Sonos owners, for everything from network problems to the S1/S2 split and the CR100 debacle, the number of times a class action lawsuit was threatened numbers in the hundreds, if not thousands.  The number of times an actual class action suit was attempted, meaning actually filed?  Once.  And the class consisted of a single owner (He lost, by the way). 

Just dont buy sonos again and rate 1 STAR

This level of corporate malfeasance is pretty much unprecedented IMO. How can they retroactively brick products people paid for with forced updates they know are bad?

There is a strong case for a class action. I will fund the initial legal review and report back.

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

This ignores the significant investment many have made in the Sonos ecosystem.  

We bought $800 soundbars and $400 speakers because they could do things that $90 soundbars and $20 speakers couldn't. But with a criminally irresponsible revamp of the app, these expensive products have become as useful as their much cheaper counterparts. 

Class action is the best route to recover losses. I am conducting a legal review.

Is that a “legal review” with an actual lawyer?  Cool.  Let us know how it goes.

Yes, with a lawyer.

Make sure they are aware of this clause in the Terms of Use you agreed to:

Class arbitration and collective relief waiver. YOU AND SONOS ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT ALLOWED BY LAW, EXCEPT AS SET OUT OTHERWISE IN THIS SECTION 13(c) AND SECTION 13(g) BELOW, ANY ARBITRATION SHALL BE CONDUCTED IN AN INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY ONLY AND NOT AS A CLASS OR OTHER CONSOLIDATED ACTION AND THE ARBITRATOR MAY AWARD RELIEF ONLY IN FAVOR OF THE INDIVIDUAL PARTY SEEKING RELIEF AND ONLY TO THE EXTENT NECESSARY TO RESOLVE AN INDIVIDUAL PARTY’S CLAIM, UNLESS SONOS PROVIDES ITS CONSENT TO CONSOLIDATE IN WRITING.

https://www.sonos.com/en-us/legal/terms-of-use

Then hope they don’t bill you for wasting their time. 

This clause may be an unfair provision and without effect. We will see, but thank you for the heads up.

It’s actually pretty boilerplate for software EULA type agreements and one reason this talk of a class action suit is rather silly (well, that and the need to show actual damages).  It’s why you see thousands of threats to sue Sonos over every slight real and imagined, and only one suit ever actually filed (by the way, it was a class of one single user, and they lost). 

Thank you. I can afford the legal review and Sonos have pissed me off enough to make it personally worthwhile. 

Good for you.  Like I said, let us know how it goes (if only to discourage future idle threats by silly people who don’t know the law). 

It is really irksome when people defend such impropriety.

I do find such a clause would be seen as an unfair clause, a waiver to make you exempt from wrongdoing.

I think that this would be of interest to the DOJ.

Marketing products with the capability to play back from personal libraries then removing this function to force you in to paid subscriptions.

The clause you signed up to, you mean?

Bring it to their attention then.

You blew any credibility with that made-up conspiracy nonsense.

I thought it just requires a slightly different process to enable access to stored music? Still accessible though. And no-one is forced down the paid subscriptions route. 

Whilst this thread is resurrected, is there any progress to report, or timescale to expect an update, @JEHJEH ?

The most common type of unfair terms are exclusion clauses whereby one party seeks to exclude their liability. This includes implied conditions

It would make signing it immaterial.

Conspiracy?

Until such time this feature returns it remains a possibility.

Some people have invested a lot in this system and can no longer use it for the intended purpose. You find it acceptable ?

Snake oil comes to mind

What? Pointing out other’s statements doesn’t make me a Sonos supporter. I didn’t say any of it was acceptable but Sonos doesn’t apply legal clauses lightly. They’re not a backwater organisation, and legally will not have overlooked a single thing. 
 

Charging a subscription for something remains a possibility. Just as you changing your name to Susan remains a possibility. Or a horse running for Pope. Or anything else I could invent right now. That doesn’t make it a remote possibility though.

You keep going on about inaccessibility of music libraries. Have you not applied the solution that has been talked about thousands of times on here?

Interestingly, like you and I @nik9669a, JEHJEH is in the UK which I believe doesn’t have the clause mentioned above, but as I said before in another thread, you would need to be able to clearly demonstrate damages to stand a chance of having a case. We’re far less of a knee-jerk litigation culture than the US, so I would imagine no UK lawyer would consider this a viable, winnable case. 

No matter how wealthy the complainant suggests he is.

There are, AIUI, several forms of group or collective claims in the UK. I don’t think any are actually called a  “class action” but the principle is there. I was waiting to read @JEHJEH ‘s update to see what advice they were given. 

The way you are presenting your argument is critical of anyone considering this option.

Shooting it down before all options have been explored.

Looking at pitfalls or reasons it may not be successful is reasonable but not the way you are looking at it.

You think there are no damages, if a material change has been made to a system that makes it useless to you that you can no longer use it as intended. Especially if it can be demonstrated those changes and the problems are avoidable or deliberate.

As the poster indicated they are consulting a lawyer if there is an avenue of recourse. But you and few others are suggesting dont do it.

Surely the best approach is to look at all options not give up before you even start.

The fixes dont work or are  not complete a solution, three months on.

One has to question how functions that existed before cannot have been considered in design or reinstated.

Or why they havent run this on  beta or left the option of S2 16.0 being available until it is fit for purpose.

It’s annoying right now, but in a month or so this should all be fixed so everyone can get back on with their lives. If it’s not, then Sonos is clearly struggling and customers will have given it a significant length of time to then enable recourse to legal exploration. Sonos’ next quarterly report is due to investors early August so I would imagine this is the absolute deadline to get this sorted. After that, then it feels open season for legal action but right now, all the while they have a (albeit shifting) roadmap to fixes, legal talk feels premature and disproportionate.

And we know why they didn’t leave 16.1 available as it didn’t support headphones, so two different versions of the app was presumably felt to be unworkable. Clearly they made grave errors of judgement there.