New SONOS App - Feedback

I would advise anyone to avoid Sonos at all costs. They sound good when set up, but the time and energy it takes to set it up is awful.  Good luck connecting devises to your network or connect my the devise to the app.  Or god forbid connecting multiple devises to one network.  The system is very temperamental.  Any other system must be better than this.  

Need help getting rid of new S2 update

Here is a Tweet from Patrick Spence Jan 23 2020:

“Thanks for all the feedback & my apologies for not responding sooner. I wanted to make sure we get it right. All Sonos products will continue to work past May: https://blog.sonos.com/en/a-letter”

So Spence and Sonos have a history of screwing over their customers, and having a damn hard time in listening and then sheepishly walking back. 

So come on, we have been here before, so lets roll back the App, apologize and let everybody use their systems! Stope screwing around and making yourselves look worse by the day!

And to Blackrock and the Board, maybe two really big strikes ought to be enough to throw this guy out? Don’t you think?

you might as well have burned the sonos building since releasing the latest update. Have you bothered to read the play store reviews? The app keeps crashing and made components stop working. I cant even control my arc anymore, after a year of working fine. Now it says I have to register it and when i try to , "fix it" it just crashes the app. Thanks for making my expensive sonos system a paper weight.

This new app is complete garbage. Not only did the ease of use completely get removed from the user experience, but also I am unable to update my Wi-Fi router settings. Therefore, rendering my entire Sonos system inoperable simply because I changed Internet providers and have new equipment that needs to be updated in the app. Why on earth would you roll out an app that is not fully functional and does not allow basic updates to the system to be performed in a fashion similar to the previous version of the app?! Absolutely appalling.When I bought a Sonos system I paid for quality and I paid for ease of use . Apparently, that’s not what I purchased. These issues had better be fixed immediately, or I will no longer be purchasing your products. Whomever pushed this version of the app out without testing the integrity of it should be fired.

We all know how users disappointed with the so called “upgrade” which almost make the app unusable.

We paid the premium to Sonos, believe they will give the best effort to satisfy the user need, which turn out NOT true with sucks app 80.

AND the company insist it’s a “brave” effet. 

Brave for what? make the user painful? or ? 

I seriously doubt the intention of this change and SONOS looks like to move to became another Spotify or what ever. It’s not what the existing user want, since we can simply goto Spotify and save all the investment on Sonos. 

Really disappointed with Sonos,. and it’s not the commendatio to my friend on any home sound system recommendation any more, I’ll recommend KEF,Sumsung,etc now instead of Sonos now. 

Dear SONOS,

I won’t reprosecute the already well-known stuff up that is your new app, and the functionality missing, the interruption to people’s lives and the massive loss of faith we feel.

The reason I write is to ask you to GET IN FRONT OF THIS!  COMMUNICATE to your user base!  Don’t just tell us to install the Windows/Mac app on our magical spare computers we have hanging around home. 

PLEASE TELL US WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND WHEN.  This is basic public relations 101.  I feel like nobody on your staff ever learned about, or experienced “New Coke” and the disaster that was.  This new app is your New Coke moment.

We don’t mind that you want to roll out a new app, honestly, it’s fine.  But until it’s fit for purpose, please please please let us run with the old app and at least be able to wake up for work on time.

We don’t want much, we really don’t.  Clear communication including timelines, a bit of humility instead of telling us how brave you were (>eyeroll<<), and an interim solution.

You know what makes me laugh the most.  It is REALLY clear not a single one of your Dev or Management team use alarms, sleep timers, or queue management.  If they did, they would never have released this as it is.  Oh wait - I bet they have access to unreleased versions and aren’t affected.

Tell us - what version is your CEO using?  How does Patrick wake up?

On behalf of thousands of us….

This update is HORRIBLE.  Totally destroyed it.  Did the people that designed this write in crayon?  WTF!  MORONS!

My suggestion for all of us affected by this debacle is to email the CEO directly to let him know how we feel.
 

His email is CEO@SONOS.COM.

I emailed him directly yesterday and if he gets a few hundred more today and tomorrow then just maybe he will realise there is a big problem and needs to knock some heads together.

Forbes:

Learning From A Botched Upgrade

Here are four lessons to help providers avoid such a fate:

1. Don’t rush the deployment of a software upgrade. Conduct rigorous testing and elicit feedback from a large diversity of stakeholders.
2. Quickly acknowledge issues to the marketplace. Letting the community fester in the silence of the provider ensures that the situation will deteriorate.
3. Provide the choice to return to the previous version of the software. There are times when a one-way option is the only option, but more often than not, a way to return to the original is good business. This option can be temporary as issues with the upgrade are resolved. Eventually older versions can be phased out.
4. Never deliver an upgrade that is missing essential functions with the promise they may return in the future. While it’s okay to add new features in the future, it’s never okay to eliminate existing features people rely on and may have been the basis for their purchase in the first place.

I loved the old version of the (Android) Sonos App.  Why change it and break it?  Why?

• Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t! Currently the following are grayed out:

1. Recently Played
2. Your Services

• Where did the sleep timer function go?  I use that function almost every night.
• When I slide the volume bar (or use the phone volume keys) I no longer get a number indicating the volume level.  I really liked that feedback
• When I view a play-list I observed it is much slower to load.  I have a Pandora play-list with 155 songs and it is painfully slow.  I don’t think it will be usable with my Pandora Favorites list, which has over a 1000 songs!

New and improved app??????????

I feel that it is too busy with too much swiping up and down which in my opinion is confusing to know where you are in relation to what you’re trying to do. Oh, and where is the option to add a song or album to the end of the current queue? If I have to just play an album or track then select another one after the first choice has played I may as well get my cd’s out of the box and go back in time. Come on Sonos get this problem fixed pronto.

Sonos...With this latest disgraceful Controller Upgrade, why have you left the PC Controller software un-touched, but force-upgraded Android * Fire Tablets with completely dis-functional software which is totally unrecognisable & pure awful? :-(

My message to CEO Patrick following last SONOS ‘ugrade’: Thank you so much. The Latest upgrade takes away the primary reason I have used SONOS for the last 15 years.

Hi, Patrick

I don't stream music EVER

I have ripped all my cds into my music library, comprising 37,000+ songs. 

I used to enjoy using SONOS to select my ENTIRE music library and request RANDOM / SHUFFLED playback. This allowed me to see a random list of  all the songs in my library, and skip or scroll down to songs from my library I wanted to hear.

The randomisation of MY music It allowed me to 'sweat' my asset (my cds), listen to neglected album tracks, inspire the next song choice, rekindle my interest in songs  I owned but had forgotten about.

Unless  I am missing something,  your latest product upgrade has taken away the option for me to play my entire music library randomly and thereby TOTALLY ruined my SONOS experience. 

Well done you.

Gally64

No ability to mute or tap on the volume to adjust the volume of multiple linked speakers!

Recently played appears for a couple of seconds then disappears and doesn't return.

The new app has rendered my entire sonos system utterly useless. I cannot link any of my speakers to the app.  I paraphrase, but it seems to say this more often than not: “I’ve found your speaker, but I can’t find your speaker”. what absolute nonsense.

I have tried EVERYTHING that has been suggested.  I’ve unplugged them all, and reset them, reset my router, signed out of the app, signed back in to the app, transferred ownership of my account, switched my phone off and back on again (not necessarily in that order).

I’d just like to be able to listen to music through them because the speakers are great, unfortunately the app is not. Well, they were great, now they’re just rather expensive paperweights.

Hello,

What in the world is going on with the new app?  It has completely ruined my system and I have no idea how to fix without investing a ton of time I don’ have.  After install, it would sometimes show some of my speakers, sometimes show all of my speakers, sometimes actually switch speakers when I wanted it to but most of the time it would stay on 1 specific speaker even though I had unselected that one and selected others.  The 3rd party app (Spotify, Pandora etc) support works way better (which is saying something), I can at least play songs on the speakers I intend.

After MUCH frustration with the app, I tried resetting it.  Apparently that was a mistake because now I’m just met with bug after bug trying to re-add my system.  I started with the Move, and that won’t work.  Tried factory resetting the Move as well.. it finds it but then fails toward the end of setup.  Second time I tried it started saying to use a different mobile device.

I can’t believe none of this would have come up through proper testing.  I see tons of similar complaints.  This is a GIGANTIC misstep for your company.  The primary advantage you had was seamless integration and setup.  That’s gone now, and I don’t know how you gain that trust back anytime soon.  I would consider switching over to any other system to avoid the headaches I’m experiencing now.  Not worth going through this much to listen to music, yet I also really like listening to music so it sucks.  Thousands of dollars invested in the system and it won’t even connect, but at least the new app looks slightly cooler.
 

App is extremely slow to load.

Awkward interface with lots of wasted space. 

If there is an improvement included with the update, I haven’t yet spotted it.

So - that’s me out then….cannot believe how appalling this release of the new app is. I will be buying a ‘smart’ speaker that is, not dumb SONOS kit anymore.

Roll it back Sonos. This is an unmitigated disaster. Actually considering selling all my speakers and moving on. 

What is going on at Sonos?? The app is unusable l. Slow to respond to changes in volume. Can't access music library properly. 

Whoever authorized the release of this app should be fired.

You gotta be kidding. 

How could you do this?

Same issues here.  Ridiculous. 

With the introduction of iOS 80, my Sonos system (17 speakers) is practically nonfunctional: (1) the response to inputs is very slow, (2) I can no longer create playlists by adding songs to the current selection, (3) Sonos has deleted the sleep timer, (4) the volume control is not logical and is not very touch sensitive, (5) Sonos has not apologized or addressed the enormity of the problem, (6) I have lost all of my playlists (I assume permanently), (7) the interface between Sonos and my music services (such as Apple Music) is not operational. I can’t understand why Sonos management thought these dramatic changes were necessary? One help desk suggestion I saw was to revert to using one’s desktop computer to control Sonos! Really? Please bring us back to the reliable interface we were used to.

Just want to say I found a copy of the old app. Reinstalled!

My whole system is gone!