Okay, I get that you’re a little inconvenienced because your Audio software has a buggy release.  I get it, as I have the same software release!

Unless you have significant inside knowledge from within Sonos, let’s put to one side that your statement above is based upon no knowledge of the business consequences of rolling back this release.  A decision that, as a minimum, would delay the launch of two new products, due to not delivering additional functionality that these additional products are dependant upon. 

I don’t know you or your background and so I apologise if you also have experience of being in this type of business situation.  But I’ve had to make calls that either wastes advertising costs in excess of £65M that can’t be moved, only cancelled, or releasing software that is not to the quality level that I would prefer.

I accept that this situation, from outside of that decision making environment, is hard to understand but I think we can be safe to assume that those that made this decision did so, in the belief that it was the best decision available at the time that a call had to be made.  Sometimes these decisions go okay and sometimes they don’t but a decision still has to be made.

However this is very much a first world problem - no one has died as far as I’m aware.  There will, no doubt, be consequences of some sort or another but you think that removing the CEO and CTO at this moment in time is the best solution for you personally?  

I’ve seen many, many emotional posts over the last two weeks and I’ve tried to not write a response like this one but there does come a time when I need to distance myself, admittedly for my own conscience, from certain statements.  This is one of them!

Whilst Sonos may not yet be at the level of “doing a ratner” they have certainly damaged the business.

These mistakes should not be happening it just seems they learned nothing from the Sub fiasco that took an age to fix, to release this app was foolhardy at best and incompetent at worst.

This app should have released as S3 keeping both S2 and S1 ongoing, I too will never purchase Sonos again enough is enough.

And how many people would buy the headphones now (before the end of fiscal year on June 30th) if they could keep the old app and wait until the new one was fit for purpose?  This was never about customers being happy with the app, it was about sales and promises to investors.  You (and I) weren’t even in the top 5 concerns.

No. Not life or death clearly but rarely, if ever, due business disputes result as such, other than product liability. That, however, does not mean users have sustained no damages. I have 30 years as a lawyer, many of them defending consumer class action litigation, for Fortune 100 companies. 

Then you and I are coming at the issue from different perspectives, as I have 30 years of delivering business and IT change.  Perhaps, we’ll just have to agree that lawyers and software delivery management have differing views - won’t be the first time in my career. 

For about a month how my system has been useless for the purpose which I purchased it for - to play music from my local hard drive.  I just don’t understand why a company would to this to its customer base.  I have spend thousands of dollars on Sonos equipment over the past few years and was quite happy until the early May update.  Right now I feel like turfing it all into the garbage bin.

Regards,

Trevor