Sonos 8 and 8.1 are TERRIBLE.

Shame you feel that way. First. because your problems with the room selection are probably caused by trying to use the 'red room' quick grouping tool rather than the proper Rooms screen (touch Rooms on the tab bar). Secondly because Sonos have said they are making changes in response to feedback, so you may give up on Sonos just before the issues are fixed. But good luck with whatever system you replace it with.

To be fair this has been going on for months now. I am not alone.look at the thread

You are most definitely not alone and there are many threads. I think the fact that these changes were rolled out as part of the Amazon Alexa integration probably complicates matters. Let's hope the new year brings some relief.

Sonos is in a catch 22 situation I think. After rushing 8.x out the door and likely cutting corners to do so, it took them way too long to take the feedback serious (and possibly still not serious enough). This red room issue is a case in point. It's quite easy to fix by having that link point to the rooms screen, but it didn't get addressed in any of the follow-up releases.

So we are now 3 months later and people are still being confronted with a laundry list of issues on a daily basis - and getting quite understandably more than tiered of it. Sonos meanwhile may have very well figured out that rushing things out the door without proper testing and feedback, isn't exactly the smart thing to do. Especially so when you got your customers to the point that they are looking at every little move you make with a magnifying lens.

So while they aren't ready yet to release a proper fix - a holiday period which staf barely being available never helps - customers are really fed up by now - and having their family highlight the issues with new app during that same holiday didn't help that either.

So it's damned if you do, damned if you don't for Sonos, as that clock keeps on ticking, while rushing it may make things even worse.