problems with new Sonos app

Admitted…not hundreds of thousands but 43k. Still, I cannot over emphasize the damage Sonos is doing to its image …and potential future. As  @jgatie just wrote, no company is too big to fail. The lack of customer communication on your behalf is even more worrying. It leads one to

believe that these feedbacks are not

being read.  

The unbelievable hubris of the Sonos leadership to spit in our faces and tell us it’s raining. Almost with a “like it or leave it mentality”; which is astonishing.

First, Sonos, your products are not cheap. Many of us have serious investment in your products which are not cross platform and require a functioning app to operate. You are basically telling us that it is our problem and we have to wait for you to get your house in order before we can fully use our products again.

Second, it’s extremely disingenuous to imply that we don’t understand software development lifecycle. Many of us work in the software development and infrastructure world, so we are completely clued in to how to and how NOT to release a new product to market. This product should have been through a rigorous QA and Staging deployment process prior to just shipping it to PROD. This should have included a very rigorous and transparent beta testing process before making the legacy app unavailable. The extremely negative feedback would suggest that despite trying to spin this, you cut corners. You admit that this was a novel product, and not updating legacy code, so following the SDLC is EXTREMELY critical.

As someone who has been in the software business longer than Sonos has existed, my advice to you would be this:

1. Re-release your legacy app and put this product back into beta.
2. Fix the BASIC fucntionality issues before working on feature releases (i.e. adding removing products into groups, volume issues, latency issues, playback issues)
3. Re-add the most popular features from the legacy application and TEST THEM.
4. Once beta is complete, release to PROD, but also leave the legacy S2 app available with an anticipated EOL date.

This is not rocket science, it’s simple SDLC which if followed, will cause this situation to be avoided in the future.

Im not a programmer and only have a semblance of understanding of the above...but this seems absolute common sense.

It seems that Sonos have let a couple of young programmers ( with all due respect to uoung programmers) loose on this vanity project without any due diligence on the outcome.

As you and many others have said..we've invested in this product and from my point of view it's just been on a slippery slope for some time now. We used to be almost boastful of the fact we had a Sonos system....those were the days.

A would like to add my concern about the new app.

I am then former happy owner of 6 sonos products

But with new new app and no hope for fixing the issue in the future im in consideration of dropping the system.

A simpel function to make a listing cue where you can add and remove songs is not available nor is the making of your own playlist..

Sonos wants us the keep buying and supporting the company they have to listen to the customers and make the app useful again 

I sent the following email to the CEO of Sonos and received a response.

"Dear Patrick,

I am writing to express my concerns with the newly updated app. The first
issue I noticed was that I didn't have sound from my sub and play 1
surrounds, only from my playbar. When I checked in the app my sub and both
play 1 surrounds are showing as "Network Unavailable". They all were
connected to the network and working before the update. I have not been
able to get them connected to my wifi network. Three other play 1's and a
Move all showcase connected and work as before.

I've noticed that the app is very slow at responding to commands. Also upon
opening the new app, it also initially shows that nothing is connected. A
few seconds later it shows everything is connected except for the sub and
surrounds in my family room. When I go back to the app after a few minutes
it again shows nothing is connected and I have to close the app and reopen
it in order to see what song is paying, change the volume, etc.

I am also unhappy with two changes. The volume bar no longer shows a volume
number which I utilized to set for various rooms based on the number I knew
was needed for multi room playback. The other change was to the battery
charge on the Move. It now only shows a battery icon. Before the app
"upgrade", it showed the percentage charge which was very helpful.

Please issue fixes for these problems.

Thank you for your attention to these issues.

Sincerely,"

SONOS RESPONSE…

"Hello,

First, we’d like to thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us and with our CEO, Patrick. We’ve received a great deal of feedback thus far, on both the improvements made as well as where we fell short. We expect that feedback will continue to roll in, so we’ll be working through it all in the coming weeks. We also recognize that there is more work to be done on the Sonos App, and want to provide you with an update.

We’re happy to share that we have delivered a couple of software updates in the past weeks reintroducing the ability to add and edit alarms, and initial improvements regarding accessibility.

Over the coming weeks, we will reintroduce features, while fixing bugs and addressing performance issues. The missing features and their expected release can be found in the following article. https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates

We’d like you to keep an eye on this webpage for any updates on the return of the missing features.

Thank you again for sharing your feedback with us. We’re working hard to bring missing and new features to the new Sonos App.

If you are experiencing an issue with your Sonos System other than addressed in the article, feel free to visit these helpful resources, or get in contact with us:

-Sonos Community: https://en.community.sonos.com
-Sonos App User Guide: https://www.sonos.com/guides/sonosapp
-Sonos Support Home: https://support.sonos.com
-Sonos Support Contact: https://support.sonos.com/contact
-Before reaching out to support, please submit a diagnostic, see here how:
https://support.sonos.com/article/submit-diagnostics


Kind Regards,
The Sonos Customer Experience Team

Having ALL of these issues - the volume one is driving me nuts! It also takes 4/5 attempts to connect. Wish I could revert to the old app. Very frustrating when I have 5 speakers so have spent significantly on my Sonos system. How do we complain?!

I’ve just noticed Sonos message on the web about the app. 
Seems that they are working on it. I hope they will learn from this c*** up and test the app before releasing any future updates. 
https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/the-new-sonos-app-and-future-feature-updates

I hope so too but the message has been there 10 day and no progress. The new app is sooo far off the mark that they could at least allow customers to use the old one until they have something better. Many people have suggested this with no response. Indeed complete radio silence except for trying to sell new speaker. I wonder if everyone except the sales team had gone on holiday.

It is an old message from Sonos, I didn’t realise were in June already! It is quite poor, think we all here agree. I feel sorry for Sonos and their reputation in their industry and equally wish I could punch them in the soft places and demand my money back for the speakers. 
I only have three Sonos units, one of them stopped being recognisable since the update. Can’t imagine how infuriating it must be for those with large sound system or that need sound for their work. 

Hi all, 

Sadly I have seeked this forum as I cannot use my Sonos effectively anymore.. 

i have 4 speakers and eager to add some new designs.. that maybe that a was eager now… their market leading edge is under question.., 

however I agree with all the comments here, the difference with the last app is night and day.., 

before I breezed through the app, managed different rooms, combined, separated, super responsive and effortless, 

now I can’t even change rooms to search for different music upstairs  without  transferring the music downstairs to the one upstairs, I can’t work it out, 

once I put music on in one room on my phone ,  have to use Alexa to get music on the other one… embarrassing.., trying to Combine speakers is borderline pointless… keeps rejecting the request..,

volume can be a huge delay and i hate this app, which is a million miles away from how I felt just a few weeks ago…

Sonos was famed for its ease of use and app.. maybe not for much longer…