Resharing my letter to the CEO:
 

Dear Patrick,

First of all, thank you for addressing the issue in your open letter; I appreciate it. I wanted to share my feelings about Sonos over the past couple of months, hoping you will find this insightful.

For me, the biggest issue the update caused was tuning my setup with Trueplay. The timing was terrible as I had just moved my speakers and needed retuning after the app update. Sadly, it took 1-2 months for this fix to arrive. I called support multiple times and felt they neither knew about nor cared for this issue. This made me lose trust in the company. I relied on Reddit posts to help me install the old version of the app using questionable techniques, only to find that the old app didn't let me tune either as it instructed me to update.

I had planned to purchase a Sonos Ace, and as I told support, due to these trust issues, I bought a Sony headphone instead. Even though I am hearing great things about the product, it is really hard to spend more money on something that is expensive and potentially loses important features for months.

I want to trust Sonos again. I love my Arc, Sub Mini, and Era 300s (although I had a bumpy start with constant clicking noises, which also took a long time to fix). I might be one customer, but I know that at least two of my friends bought Sonos because of me, and now they are cautious too.

In the future, I would really appreciate earlier communication and, more importantly, action. In this case, allowing customers to roll back to the previous application until the new app had full features and no bugs would have been the perfect solution. It would have saved you from this PR nightmare.

App can’t find my Move 2 to add back in, nor my Soundbar, nor my Sub. Who knows how long the support chat queue is, I gave up my spot after 45 minutes of nothing. I’ve been a fan of Sonos for 7+ years now, not sure how much more they could have crapped the bed.

Thank you for recognizing that there is an issue. Unfortunately the experience is still really bad. Please roll back to the version that worked. Nevermind all the bugs and missing features that came with the new release, the UX design is confusing and clunky.

The experience has become so convoluted that the act of simply finding a track and pressing play on the right device/zone, an action that should take seconds, takes minutes and much frustration.

Make updates to please the customer.  From the start, this seemed like a marketing update. Hard to find the buttons I use.  Perhaps allow more customizations to be done by the customer. Not everyone uses Sonos the same way. 

Thanks for acknowledging the issues.  That is a start. 

I don’t envy the Sonos support staff. They were sent out on the front lines to deal with hordes of distraught and angry Sonos users and, in most cases, with no way to resolve their problems. The folks at the top of the Sonos pyramid did not merely lose the confidence of even longtime, diehard Sonos customers; they also imposed a heavy burden on their support staff — many of whom I’d wager are seeking other employment as a result of this fiasco.

None of this mess is a matter of life and death, but it’s reminiscent of Kubrick’s ‘Paths of Glory.’ Mr. Spence might do well to take the time to watch that film and take a few lessons from it.

Good news I am now able to see my speakers in the app and add my new Roam 2. It is great to hear and control music coming through the speakers. Sonos is a very good product, very surprising how they could be caught out by a basic error in not making sure the new app was upto the same standard.

I sent a reply to Mr. Spence today after the latest update broke the workaround I was using to access my music library broke. I was unable to restore it using any method within Sonos so I no longer have access to my music. I suggested that Sonos roll back the update from May and restore the old version that worked until they can deliver a tested working app with all of the features.

I am skeptical that this will happen but that is what they should be doing. We all have much invested in their products and maybe it’s time they listen to common sense.

So my two cents......ditto, ditto, ditto, to what everyone else has said. I am also frustrated with the simple lag issues. It loses my system all the time and it takes a minimum of ten tries to get the volume to "stick" when I try to adjust it.

The apology is well accepted and much appreciated by the community/consumers/customers. Unfortunately this is nothing more than a letter for an executive plan that didn’t go as they planned, as an IT professional of 30 yrs in the industry, a design plan is the first laid out and discussed between the architectural team and the customer-AKA, the end-user. This action points to all the roads that this was the plan from the moment the project was approved and funded, too late for the many loyal consumers who tired their eyes on a screen waiting for a fix press release that up until now just came, this is the second strike for Sonos, the first one being when they attempted to retire the old devices a few years back, it is apparent that Sonos aims to anything but its consumer base, in a world of fierce competition, with new prototypes in the works, AI to change how we interact with technology and more, we the customer perhaps are not that important in the end.

I literally don’t understand how a Company like Sonos can screw up an upgrade so badly. The experience I loved has turned to absolute frustration. Features gone, constant connectivity issues, frustrating UX. Complete fail all around. I’ve gone from loyal to leaving. 
 

Maybe it’s time to demand a roll back of the original app. My career was IT and software development so I know exactly what is going on at Sonos and it’s past the time to roll back the app. Please Mr. Spence do what is right. I will send another email to him tomorrow asking to roll back.

Thank you for the letter

  I wish I had never bought Sonos....it was working fine until incompetent experts interfered.  

I know have only one radio station

However I don't expect you to care

Weirdly I was able to trueplay my Playbase and Play:1s with the new app in the new place I am in. Previously it always exited with a too noisy error. I just assumed it was because I'm on a bit of a noisy street but maybe something changed in the new app? I did reposition my rears to be more inline with Dolby recommendations, outside the seating area and angled back in. Can't think that would make a difference though.

With the nice adjustable stands I bought after I moved here and a trueplay now my 4k disc are sounding killer.

“were forced to release a half-baked app”……..  How silly

Can you at Sonos please send someone to my house in Sweden or France to get my speakers work again?

I have spent a round 20000 euro on your * products and the only thing I can use them to is to use them as bricks.

when and where can I meet your developers?

/STefan

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*

Well there you go, just when you think things are going well my system sugared the bed and took a couple of reboots to get going again. Halfway through an album and cooking lunch music just stops. Should have know, music was skipping a bit yesterday. App all over the place, library disappeared after the first reboot.

Never had these problems. These headphones better get the company into the green.

Well, simply said, I agree with the idea to go back to the old version. Easier to use and it worked. Then tweek it from there on. We also use it in our business, it’s a desater.

Partick might as well have written “So we screwed up, got found out and wont fix the issue by reinstating the old app. Instead we shall make you sufffer awful lag, lack of features, pointless responses to support requests and in general intend to carry on trying to fix something new that was broken from day one”.

All in all the response is just word salad, if they really wanted to keep their customers happy by now they would have agreed to let the new and old apps run together and users could choose if they wanted a tried and tested working format or a piece of garbage code that would make them change back anyhow.

The delay in getting back well used and relied upon features still wont be on their radar until October, so that is basically 5 months they have been messing with the basics and they still dont work properly.

Shame on Sonos and in particular Patrick for his pathetic response, may be people should begin to consider a class action against the firm for selling premium grade products at the start of 2024 and then removing all the premium features making the kit less useful than many similar (and cheaper) brands?

I’d like to ask Patrick why it would have been so difficult to put the S2 controller back on the App Stores and just have the new app recommended for users of the new headphones (or other new Hardware).

Once the groundswell of opinion was so negative with so many features having been left out / unfinished / not working it would have been a seemingly obvious path to limit the damage. 

Yes, it would have been on the understanding that no new features or fixes would be applied to S2 and it may well have needed a downgrade of the SW versions on the hardware but this has been done before (S1 App) so why not this time? 

Now that we will still have to wait till October to resolve most of the documented problems, I have to ask “Why isn’t the S2 App offered as a downgrade option today? “     

I am beyond disappointed and actually amazed at the circumstances that surround this colossal failure.  I lead software development teams and I could not fathom releasing an update that renders any product effectively useless and laying out a plan to fix it over the course of months.   All in the name of architecture and the ability to deliver better features in the future.   There is always an alternative to get customers working.   What should have been done is rollback to the last app that worked, and put this new architecture into public beta.  Let the customers who enjoy the pain of new features with significant quality issues contribute to the bug reporting.   I just don’t get how it is acceptable to render products useless while you leave customers with thousands of dollars of bricked products that are apart of their daily lives.  

I can’t imagine how anyone would trust Sonos again with a significant investment.   

Nice to see moderator being so good to remove the word * instead of fixing your *  products that we have spent REAL MONEY on!!!!!

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*

Please Google

stock exchange sonos
 

The value of Sonos is like a stone sinking in a lake, fix your product or say good night!!!!

/STefan

Or is this a plan from Sonos??? Make the stock drop as a stone, then buy shares, roll back to the working app and firmware.

volia!!! Earn a lot of money as a shareholder!!!

could be……..

Not sure if you’re familiar with the concept of ‘jobs’, but the moderators do one thing and the coders do another.