To The Sonos Staff and Moderators - a Plea
Since the catastrophic release of the “new and improved” app, we have seen less and less engagement from the Sonos staff who “look after’ this forum.
I also understand that you are conflicted, with a Management team who clearly are not putting customers first, it is unlikely they are going to be sympathetic to you if you stray from the ‘party line’.
I hasnt gone unnoticed that your engagement with the community has dropped dramatically, some of you have not posted or replied for as much as 10 days, others more recently but much less than we might expect. And I am sure thats because you dont really have much to say. Other than moderating the language and shutting down the ‘sue them’ posts which I am sure you have been instructed to do.
What I would ask however is that buried in amongst all the angst and anger are a couple of common and related themes. Bring back the ‘gold’ app, and how to reinstall that in the meantime. The first you cant do anything about other than repeat to your deaf management that the longer they wait to do that (and they will, eventually) the worse it gets. The second however you can help with.
Enough forum members have examples and suggestions on reinstalling the old app (even after upgrading) that firstly ‘proves’ there is no reason that Sonos could not do that. Secondly all these suggestions are buried in various threads.
If you could use your Sonos expertise to bring these together and where possible ‘verify’ the options, that would be of great benefit and you could get some satisfaction at least by quelling some of the angst. As a couple of examples there are those running android versions of the old app, and a recent post suggesting that IOS 15 and below will not update to the ‘Killer BLack” app and leave you with “Gold S2”. Does that work with new firmware if someone has been unlucky enough to do that, and if so what doesnt work? Does firmware or software kill smbv1? IS there truth in the suggestion that if you have installed the new app the old one will not work with the same Apple ID? IS it true that you now need internet to operate Sonos at all? Is that firmware or software triggered? etc etc...
It is important that you feel able to “tell it how it is” - and perhaps thats tricky if you have been given a party line to adhere to. But thats for your own conscious to deal with - it will be hard to rebuild trust in the support at Sonos after this, but some honest answers from the closest we can get would be very helpful - even if it comes with some caveats.
I do understand this is a very difficult time for you, I am sure these decisions were not yours - and appreciate whatever help you are able to give. But unless the “Gold” app gets rereleased imminently anything you could do to help those community members who are still arriving every day looking for solutions is going to help. With over 70 pages to scroll through on one thread alone some verified shortcuts I am sure would be appreciated by those who have never used the forum before and have arrived out of desparation.
It is going on 30 days since the new app was released, I can hear Patrick in the Board room saying “give us 30 days, it will blow over”. From the ever increasing Forum activity I dont think thats going to be the case…..