They may say it is the CEO. but it goes through to support and this is the response I got when I sent it to the “CEO”:

My name is Teodora and I'm a senior member of the Customer Experience team here at Sonos. Our CEO, Patrick Spence, brought your feedback to my attention, and I wanted to reach out and see if there's anything I can do to help address this.

I understand you’re experiencing troubles with the new Sonos App and I’ll be more than happy to provide you with an explanation.

This feature is not currently available in the Sonos app, but will return in a future update. You will not be able to view, enable, disable, or change any settings related to their Sonos alarms on either iOS or Android apps. For what concerns searching the music library, this is not possible as the new App uses only universal search. To find the music library you can go to the Home screen and scroll down to Your resources. There you can browse the music library.

This revitalization of the Sonos app is our most ambitious software update yet, and aims to address what our customers have been asking us for. It’s a huge undertaking, and we are taking the time and effort to ensure all features work seamlessly and meet both our standards and the standards of our listeners. With this commitment in mind ,some features will not be available at launch, but will be added to the app on a rolling basis over the coming months.

Thank you for your collaboration and patience!

Best regards,

Its a joke of a response

It’s a joke, but unfortunately the joke is on us, the customers!

Sonos are Gaslighting their customer base.

Time for a management change.  They rolled out a buggy new app with missing functions and think it’s okay. Worst customer experience ever. If they fix the issue not soon they will lost us as customer an we will trash Sonos speakers ….

Sonos basically released an app that rendered my personal music library useless: I can’t search, I have to scroll 470 times to reach the letter “K” under albums, etc.

This basically broke the whole Sonos system for me as this has been my primary use case with it as a loyal customer since 2006. As a result, I am now researching competitors because I don’t trust Sonos with what you will break and disable in the future anymore.

Email sent.  I doubt it will do anything but just maybe enough people sending one will make them reconsider their “Brave” launch.

Almost certainly any communications are handled by AI - that's what's listening to you

I have just a lengthy email to him. It will be interesting see whether I even get a reply. Meanwhile I'm going to try the "install 16.1 " route.

You will get nothing back, unfortunately. But if you do…nah. 

Hello Patrick:

Alissa Heinerscheid (formerly Bud Light’s VP of Marketing) said congratulations on your courageous new app.  

I’ve rolled back to 16.1. Thank you to everyone who posted help on how to do that. I’m upset that Sonos see the need to control my security by disabling my local NAS drive music library. But, much much more annoying is that everytime I open the new app it fails to recognise my Sonos Moves. And I use them all day long. It just about recognises the rest of my system, although start up is slow. But the Moves regularly aren’t recognised for several minutes, if at all. Just unacceptable. Of course, I’ll email them as well, perhaps post on Social. But I realise this may not achieve anything… at least I will have vented :-)

Just an update further to my prior message and those of others since.

I have, as yet, received no response from Sonos to my email

I have done the update back to 16.1 on an Android tablet. Happened with the greatest of ease. I have now turned off automatic updates. Sequence was

• Download version 16.1 .apk package (found from a forum page here, happy to share the URL if needed)
• Uninstall Sonos app (Did nothing to devices, just left all that running)
• Install package
• Was prompted to allow install from unknown sources, which I accepted
• After opening, chose option to “Join existing system”
• Entered username (email) and password
• Went in to Sonos/Settings/System/System Settings/System Updates/Turn off Update Automatically.
• Changed back Android setting for allowing install from unknown sources
• Hey presto, all working! Took less than 5 minutes. A pretty non-technical set of steps which I advise anyone to do if Sonos are not going to offer us a rollback.
• I have a system, which can see my Library etc etc. All working smoothly
• Will just refuse any updates offered by Sonos going forward

(FYI I have left version 80 running on my Android phone for the time being to see what happens with it)

The best way to show your displeasure is by hitting SONOS where it hurts: their market value. So, if you own stock in SONOS or know someone who does, disinvest and put your money elsewhere. I’d love to see a TikTok-driven effort to hit SONOS’s bottomline. That would be sweat. Alternatively, start thinking about alternative hardware and tell your friends why you’re no longer excited about SONOS, its products, and its software and support.

Two emails sent. No reply received.

The new upgrade bricked my Sonos beam. I have wasted over 10 hours troubleshooting, on the phone with support, and jumping through the hoops to no avail—zero accountability.

S

Can you run Sonos on any other software / apps? Presumably not?

Well here's my response from the 'CEO’.

I ended the email (which simply asked him to admit they’d got it wrong and give us back v16 until this was ready) with my full name, but in the reply I’m just ‘C’.

Although I’d like to think it is written by a human, it has more than a whiff of being AI-generated.

It has the usual ‘We are right and know what is best for you’ paragraphs - such arrogance - and at the end I am told to ‘Have a bit more patience.’ 🤯🤯🤯

Sonos have drunk their own Kool-Aid. 

Hello C,

Thank you for reaching out to Sonos.

My name is Ünal C., and I'm an Escalation Specialist on the Customer Experience team here at Sonos.
Our CEO, Patrick Spence, brought your feedback to my attention, and I wanted to see if there's anything I can do to help address this.

I am truly sorry to hear about the frustration you are experiencing with the new app update. Your feedback is important to us, and I want to thank you for bringing it to our attention. Therefore, I will take this case into my own hands and help you further. As a valued long-term customer, your satisfaction is our top priority. 

To begin with, the streaming industry is undergoing a rapid change. As a leader in sound experience with an open platform offering unparalleled choice, Sonos is focused on creating a better way to listen. We’ve redesigned the Sonos app to bring all your content across your services into one customizable home screen for a more personal listening experience, built on an agile software platform for a smoother, faster streaming experience that can – and will – support more innovation over time.

Furthermore, the redesigned Sonos app is a completely renovated, future-built app experience that brings all your favorite content across 100+ streaming services in one easy-to-use home screen. With a customizable layout and more accessible, intuitive controls for grouping and more, the redesigned Sonos app gets you to the music you love even faster for effortless out-loud listening.

Moreover, the revitalization of the Sonos app is our most ambitious software update yet and aims to address what our customers have been asking us for. It’s a huge undertaking, and we are taking the time and effort to ensure all features work seamlessly and meet both our standards and the standards of our listeners. With this commitment in mind, features such as playlist creation and queue editing within the Sonos app, sleep timers, and local library support will not be available at launch, but will be added to the app on a rolling basis over the coming months.

I understand how these missing features can impact your experience with our products. However, I would kindly ask you to have a bit more patience and make sure the app is up to date. This way, the features that are missing and planned to return will return.

Please keep in mind that your feedback is invaluable to us as we strive to improve our products and services. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding  

Best regards, 

Ünal C.
Sonos | Customer Experience - Level 2 | Contact Us
Ask questions, find answers, and share your thoughts on the Sonos Community.

Definitely AI, and not even the best example of that.

They don’t even hide the fact that their goal is to be a speaker system for streaming services (or maybe even become one?). This is a joke. To those of us who invested into the ecosystem to listen to local music, the joke’s on us.

May some other company that can already do this crush them, if this is where they really want to go.

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I was a huge sonos fan for years. But what has happened now is not possible. You upgrade and suddenly your own music (which you have been working on for years) is no longer playable. I don't know who's idea this was, but I don't think Sonos products will be bought much anymore. How do people think about embarrassing millions of users like this? I hope that Sonos intervenes very quickly, or this could be the downfall of what is nevertheless a very solid product.

This worked fine for a few days, and now does not work. the app tells me an update is REQUIRED and will no longer function. The update sucks and I wont’ use it. The (formerly) working app no longer works. Anyone else get this same problem?

Thinking of posting daily until $ono$ fixes this disaster.

WTF is wrong with you people? You removed features with the app update and ruined it. I installed the old app, and $ono$ made a decision to make that non-functional, forcing me to use the new app. I REFUSE to use the new app because it doesn't work, and I can’t use the old app. This means the entire $ono$ system is non-functional. WTF???

FIX THIS NOW. If you don’t, I see a class action lawsuit in your future. I don’t want speakers that don't work. I don’t need bookends. I need a SOUND SYSTEM that works, which $ono$ promised and failed to deliver.

Fire the idiots or team that dreamed up this nightmare. Hire someone who knows WTF they are doing. Fix the system that I can no longer use. I can’t fix it,you can. Do your damn job.

Sonos is the biggest scam ever… their products never work!  I am definitley going to a new company.