Warranty return process not fit for purpose - be warned
Don’t make the same mistake as me or at least be warned and know what to expect before you go through the Sonos Warranty Return process.
Background
I confirmed via Sonos support that one of my Arcs was defective. I bought (from new), 2 Arcs, 2 Sub gen 3, 3 era 300’s and 4 Era 100s. I also own a Roam. I would say therefore I am a “good customer”.
Sonos support confirmed via online chat that I should return my defective Arc and they would provide a replacement (this was after submitting diagnostics etc etc). They sent me shipping labels for UPS and I executed dispatch on the same day January 3rd 2025 by UPS. It all sounded so simple and efficient - just what you would expect from a “premium brand”. I even called my retailer and told them that I wouldn't bring it back to them after all as Sonos will take care of it. My wife and I were delighted with the apparent simplicity and convenience.
This is where the simplicity ended and I made the mistake of not doing my research and trusting in “Sonos the premium brand”.
Note that as a UK customer when you ship back to Sonos it is not back to UK it is actually to Poland. This was surprising but that's fine - no problem. This means that it takes at least a week to reach Poland - again this is ‘sort of fine’ and my shipment made it to their Polish base so I was relieved it had made it! Be warned however that this isn't the case for many people (just google the subject for shared experiences of that - plenty of horror stories there!).
Continuing on - my return was confirmed by UPS as ‘delivered’ on Friday 10th January. I subsequently contacted Sonos later that day to confirm they had received it and shared the UPS tracking data and wanted to understand next steps. The Sonos customer service agent said they had not received it - and - even looking at the UPS screen together with him online which said ‘delivered’ he said that it wasn't delivered because the ‘tick’ or ‘check’ mark wasn't like the other travel milestone ‘marks’. Clearly this was incorrect so I requested to share a file with the full UPS delivery certificate following which the agent viewed it. He didn't apologise and still used language such as ‘if this means it was delivered then its delivered’ and we have to scan everything so give them a few more days.
OK that's fine - no problem - other than the argumentative and confusing nature of the conversation with someone who I can only conclude hadn't had the correct training to understand the data they were looking at or to deal courteously with customers. As the customer at this stage you then start to think - ‘goodness me my £900 product return is now in the hands of people who don't really know where it is or what is happening’ (again google the subject and you will see that this poor service is ‘a thing’ with Sonos. My mistake - I trusted Sonos the brand - I was wrong to do so.
Monday the 13th January then arrives and I get an email saying ‘your return has been recieved and you should receive your replacement within the next 1-5 working days’ and that a courier tracking link will follow…. ‘phew!’ I think to myself, maybe I jumped the gun and everything will be OK after all.
A couple of days went by and I thought - no courier link yet? I contacted Sonos support again and they say they cannot see the status of what is happening and that I should wait a couple more days. The link will come they said.
I then followed up yesterday with Sonos support and the agent said everything was processed on the 3rd January and my product has been shipped. When I asked when it had been shipped he said 3rd January. I then asked ‘how could that be?’ when my Sonos confirmation email stated something completely different! The agent had no answer for this and said he could not help me, he couldn't see what was happening, had no way to check it and that I just have to wait for the courier link but that my replacement has been shipped and is on its way.
My current status is therefore that on day 14 of this process (and day 5 of the promised delivery window) nobody can tell me the status of anything whatsoever! Again please do your research and Google around this particular subject and again you will see this is the norm. There are many reports of very poor Sonos customer service issues similar to mine with customers whose issues go on for many more weeks. This also includes Sonos shipping refurbished products to replace products which customers bought new! This again leads me to dread that if and when my replacement arrives will I have to go through another loop of terrible customer service where nobody knows what is happening!?
I hope to report back with something positive soon but the intent of this post was simply to warn people that if you bought your product from a retailer rather than Sonos directly then make that your first port of call and avoid at all costs the direct Sonos warranty return process.
I made the mistake of trusting in the brand and it has been a mistake. I believe with the CEO “stepping down”, Chief Product Officer ‘leaving’ and ‘Chief Commercial Officer’ leaving too, that a poor company culture has become embedded and that, at all levels, the customers are being treated with contempt and complacency by demotivated and poorly trained staff who don’t seem to have any form of unified customer journey data.
I would also recommend that anyone thinking of spending money on Sonos products that they don’t UNTIL we can see some signs of improvement in App performance and function, better reliability of hardware (my retailer warned me about Arc reliability) and finally my latest poor customer service experience with the warranty return process which has been the icing on the cake!
I hope this post has been in some way useful to somebody...