How Badly Can a Company Fail?

Love this! They are their own worst enemy, I too loved my Sonos but now lag in playing music, selecting music in a different room by pressing play on the speaker in that room is a lottery of what music I’m gonna get! It certainly isn’t what was playing in the first room. I’ve recently spoken to customer service (L1 I’m guessing)for nearly 2 hours. Having reset all of the speakers, my router, wired my speakers and followed the instructions and submitted several diagnostic codes it couldn’t be fixed. It was escalated to L2 who did email me asking me to contact them. Clearly an email from a script, as L2 initially asked me to do all the steps I’ve spent doing with the first agent! So not very joined up or targeted to the issues which were typed up by the first agent. 

I have never had any real success with the Sonos App, while the quality of the music is wonderful the software has been glitching for years, now it won’t stream, I realised I have become accustomed to having to reconnect my speakers to the system because it is continually ‘losing’ them and accepted it was the ‘price I had to pay’ for not having purchased Bose gear.  What makes my blood boil is their forced updates.  Where the app will no longer operate the speakers unless I bring in another mystery box of bloat and nonsense from Sonos.  This last lot being the worst yet.  I have spent the hours on hold to get through to ‘Customer Support’ to be told there is no way around this and I MUST install the update if I wish to continue using the system.  I have and now it plays song at a time and I must return to the app again and again to get the next song to load then play.  I will never purchase another piece of Sonos gear and will strongly recommend any and all who will listen not either.  You have had years to fix this and it appears you have an issue with ethics….perhaps not an issue, you just don’t have any.  

A simple fix to the “forced updates” is to turn off auto-update. But yes: the whole system needs to be in sync, so if one component updates, they all need to do so. 
 

And, for balance, my system is working just fine across my network. 

Also, disable automatic App updates.

My system has been sort of working for the last month or two at around 50% of pre-update efficiency; but tonight it just says ‘That content is unavailable’. Just that - no error codes, nothing diagnostic at all. What garbage this system has become, with all the support advice being random tosh about rebooting this and resetting that. Absolutely the worst software update since windows 8, or the Russian Revolution 1917. 

The new app is finally working and thankfully it will play large list which the old one never could. But the app is still messy and doesn’t allow much in customization.  But occasionally one set of speakers will stop and when reconnecting into the group it starts at the beginning of a song. AirPlay to a group including non AirPlay speakers works until it doesn’t  and nothing will help and then one day it works again.  For some reason it shows a tv as a source but a tv is not connected and if you select it by accident it is really hard to get the app to select a different source.  I have been a SONOS customer for almost 15 years but since the new app mess and new issues that have resulted for me I have started to regret getting tied into the system. I never use to have these problems. 

Thanks for the advice, yes I have disables both app auto updates and auto updates on my pc and have still had forced updates come through where the software stops completely unless I install the latest garbage being pushed.  Perhaps I have missed something else somewhere, I truly do not want any more Sonos software as for me the least glitchy was two updates ago.  Can you imagine what it must be like for the poor bastards in their customer service having to face the public each day working for a company that has screwed up for so long and so badly without being able to offer a fix?

You need to disable Automatic Updates in the system and on each controller platform. I haven’t automatically updated in many years.

Abandon Sonos - they simply no longer deserve our loyalty and plainly, are not going to fix the software.

I've already replaced 5 of 6 Sonos zones in my house with Bluesound products, and they're great! Never spending money on Sonos again. It’s over.

I’m ready to leave the Sonos platform because of what a disaster this app is. Each time I want to play music it’s a challenge. 
 

What are recommendations for a system like Sonos that streams the music independently?

Having disabled automatic updates, double checked, triple checked they are off on both the pc an phone, and to still get a greyed out screen with the only option available is to install another of their updates, I grow a little tired of having the “sonos does not force updates” spouted.

As others have stated, for some reason the company does not want to fix the problems, they have been going on for too long.  I have a house full of expensive paper weights. What a disappointment and waste.

How is Sonos supposed to fix the issues you have with the system if you prevent updates -- by witchcraft?