@ShaunG Thanks so much for bringing up this topic.  I would not know:

1. Some of us are not lucky enough to get a bad batch that the mic is having this intermittent issue of turning off by itself.  I got my arc from costco at the end of Nov and is having the exact problem as you described.  I had only use the arc for about 20 days and noticed the issue.  But then I was out of town for the holidays and only got a chance to file for a support ticket in Jan.
2. I was referring to this thread when talking to support.  They agreed to send me a replacement, no question ask.  I was happy with the way how they handled it until I saw your recent post.  My replacement unit arrived yesterday and it is a refurbished unit.  I agree with you that it is a ripoff.  I am returning a brand new item and they are replacing it with a refurbished unit for me.

I have been told that I am getting a refurbished unit because I have passed 30 days return policy.  I wish I learned it earlier and just return it to costco.  I reached out to sonos because I trusted that they can handle my case in a professional way.  And also, they knew about this issue and I was hoping the replacement I get is from another batch.  Now I am stuck with a refurbished unit which I don’t know how long they have been keeping on the shelf.  I assume it is very old because the packaging is still the old format.  I have talked to people from both support and sales team, and they were pointing my case to each other.  I totally agree with you that if you have the option to buy and return to a retailer, don’t buy from sonos directly because going through their RMA process is not a good experience for me.  I got the beam gen 2 two years ago and still love it.  I decided to step up to a bigger version and got the arc.  But with my current case pending, I don’t have the confidence to stick with sonos in the future.  I know many people here love their sonos.  I am just sharing my story so others are aware of this if they are on the same boat.  

I reported directly to Sonos. They will send me a new Arc. Btw, it’s the same issue. I am curious about the new one.

I hadn’t noticed the change to 45 days for the trial period but if I was in the window I’d sure go for a return and refund versus accepting a refurbished device.

https://www.sonos.com/en-us/legal/terms#legal-terms-sale-returns

Our 45 day return policy / Your right to withdraw the purchase
We are confident that you will love your new Sonos product, however, if you are unsatisfied for any reason, simply let us know within 45 days. We will refund the full purchase price, and we will even cover the shipping cost back to us.

@Stanley_4 Thanks for the reminder, when I was talking to support, they told me that I only have 30 days to return according to their policy.  I will double check with them.

As I stated before:

Microphone randomly turning on or off on new Sonos Arc (with Google Assistant AND Sonos Voice Control).

Tested with various set-ups and input-sources. Took me 1 phone call with Sonos on Friday 26 January 2024. Monday 29 January 2024 in the morning a brand new Arc was delivered (from Poland to Holland). Tested it and the issue did not manifest. Free shipping for returning the faulty Arc. Good performance Sonos!!! I am very satisfied and happy!

Case closed.

@Stalem I would just check the box carefully to see if it is labeled certified refurbished, unless you were expecting to receive a certified refurbished unit already. It was a big surprise when I thought and expected to receive a brand new unit and did not.

Also for anyone that needs it, check the box for the long serial number (there are digits in the serial number on the box that aren't listed on the speaker or in the app). It should start with a letter and 3 numbers, then 4 numbers and two letters before the remaining serial number that you see in the app or on the speaker. The second group of 4 numbers is the month and date of manufacture. So mine is "A104 2311CY", which is manufactured in November of 2023. Hope this helps, found through some googling. 

@ShaunG Thanks for sharing. I checked. My new Arc is truely a new Arc.

@Stalem That's great news, glad it worked out for you!

After waiting for a week, Sonos finally agrees to send me a new Arc after I have complained about the refurbished unit they sent me to fix the original mic issue I reported.  I am glad that Sonos listen to customer and is doing the right thing.  Hopefully, it works this time.

If it were me, and there were no cosmetic issues, I’d prefer the refurbished unit. It likely has received much more testing of all the systems before being sent out than a ‘new’ device. 

@Airgetlam Speakers are a wearable item that will eventually fail because of currents passed through the wires. Electronics are also able to wear down as they age and are used. You don't know what was replaced in a refurbished unit and yes, they go through the a ting for full functionality, but that means nothing on the overall longevity of the unit. 

Check out any company that sells refurbished units and you will see a drastically reduced warranty vs the original new equipment warranty. The manufacturers know this too, and account for it in thebreduced warranty. 

I'll take new any day with the full warranty over an unknown condition "refurbished" unit where the manufacturer can only do so much to test and evaluate the product.  Especially when a new unit was paid for, and not a refurbished unit. I'm a computer engineer, for what it's worth. 

It's good to hear Sonos is making right those of us with units that were defective from the box.

@Airgetlam Thanks for the feedback.  Do you have any data to support your theory?  I would imagine that they must have a set of testing that each device has to go through before it is being shipped to customers and I am not sure why they will reinvent the wheel and have a different set of testing for refurbished unit.  My concern with a refurbished is that it can be a return from someone who has seen intermittent issue, which is hard to reproduce with just a few hours of testing.  And if you read my previous post, the refurbished unit I received came with the old packaging.  Do you rather get an old device which has been sitting in the shelf for two years than a new one?  Unless there are comments in the community that batches built from the past is higher quality.  I am curious to know.

I expressed a personal opinion . To my knowledge, electronics that are software driven don’t suffer from degradation ‘on the shelf’. Unless you have data to the contrary, which I’d be delighted to see. And as long as the device is the same, I’m not overly concerned about ‘old packaging’. The packaging is not what I’m buying, it’s the contents of the package. An Arc is an Arc, no matter how long ago it was produced. I also don’t care if the car I’ve purchased was made on day 1 of the production, or day 364…if the car is the car, and there have been no updates to it, what does it matter that it sat on the lot for X amount of time? If there were software updates to the car (or the Sonos), I’ll get them. 

An intermittent issue could as easily be extant on a new device as one that has been refurbished. 

So @Airgetlam, all the sonos products you own, are they refurbished?  If refurbished == new, why are you paying the premium to buy new ones, given that you can always return a refurbished if you found cosmetic issues.

Those that I could buy refurbished, I did. Unfortunately, at the time of purchase, not many were available as refurbed. I do have quite a few ‘open box’ devices as well. Certainly I tend to look for refurbished when I can. I’m a parsimonious son of a gun. 

Just wanna report back here that I got the replacement arc and so far so good.  The mic is working as it should be and hasn’t turn off by itself. The new arc is manufactured in Dec 2023.

Same here in France, Mic turns off and on by itself.

Don’t want an exchange but hope a software fix soon..

Bought last week and serial number begun by A105 2308, I guess built by 2024 August.

Same here in the Netherlands, mic turns off and on by itself

Bought 28 march 2024

Is this a hardware or software problem.

Sonos ask to exchange the arc for a new one.

I'm afraid if I get a new arc it will have the same problem!

@wimvandijk : check the date of manufacture. Mine was august 23. Sonos exchanged it for one from november 23. Issue did not manifest it self. Check my input above.

Series nrumber A107 2401 cy so the arc is from januari 2024 and still I have the microfoon on/off problem 

Then I am out of advice…except that I would still let Sonos replace it by a new one. They check if the issue manifests it self before sending it to you (that’s what Sonos told me before they shipped mine).

After only having taken a brief look at the forums, it seems there have been instances of this problem reported as far back as January 2021.

The fact that units are _still_ suffering from the issue shows a lack of care and diligence on Sonos’s part.

I purchased an Arc in March 2024, along with two Era 300s and the Gen 3 sub.

The Arc I purchased in March suffered from this issue really badly, every night the Arc would turn its mic on and off on its own, multiple times.

I contacted support, who advised me to get an exchange done at the store I purchased the Arc from. I did this, and the Arc I received in exchange suffered from the same fault. I contacted Sonos support again, who advised I should swap the unit at the retailer once again. I did this, and now the third Arc is suffering from the same issue, although the mic on/off problem doesn’t occur as frequently as it did with the other units.

Today I contacted support about the third Arc being faulty, and was advised to swap the Arc at the retailer once again… Honestly, this process is exhausting, and transporting the Arc to and from my home for constant replacement is not without cost (given my location/circumstances travelling to the store is difficult for me).

Each time I have replaced the Arc, I have obtained a replacement from a _separate_ store (same chain, different location), as I suspect their warehouse has a bad batch of stock.

When contacting support about the third faulty Arc, I asked if the support agent could provide me any information about known bad batches, so I could try and avoid replacing the unit at the store with one from a known bad batch. The agent escalated to level 2 support, but eventually got back to me advising they didn’t have that sort of information on hand.

I am really over this experience. I am quite sure the replacement Arc I will be receiving this weekend will suffer from the same problem. The support rep’s have been very pleasant and helpful, but Sonos needs to fix this hardware issue and come up with a new process to remedy this problem.

Some observations on this problem in particular:

• Many seem to think this is related to enabling Google Assistant support on the Arc. I think this is misguided, as I believe I have seen the problem without _any_ home assistant connected (indicated by the microphone light turning on/off and waking up to the mic being randomly muted). I think that having Google Assistant enabled just makes the problem a lot more obvious, this is because:
  • Without an assistant, the only indication the microphone was toggled is the light on the Arc.
  • With the assistant enabled, there is an audible “The mic has been turned off/on” notification that plays through the speaker.
• I suspect there are probably lots of other Arcs suffering from the same fault landing in the hands of consumers. I think that many consumers don’t make use of the voice assistant, and thus the problem is hidden and they do not notice it, so it never ends up reported.

Very frustrating experience, I can’t believe this hardware issue has been ongoing since at least early 2021. For what it’s worth, I have tried to check batch numbers, and it seems the Arc’s I have received were manufactured recently (late 2023, early 2024; the stores I purchase from also receive many customers and I’m quite certain they’d be selling Arcs frequently). It’s unbelievable that new Arc’s are coming off the production line and suffering from this issue.

As a consumer I feel taken advantage of, I should not have to run through all this trial and error in an attempt to get an Arc that works without problems.

Picked up the replacement Arc today (this is now my fourth Arc, with the prior 3 suffering from this microphone issue, see my last post in this thread). And like I suspected, within two hours of having set it up, the mic has already muted itself…

Time to get a 5th replacement I guess……. At this point I would just refund the Arc, but I feel locked into the ecosystem, given when I bought the first Arc, I also picked up two Era 300s and the Gen 3 sub..

@Corry P - What do you make of all this? How is it that Sonos can advise me to continue picking up replacements which simply do not work. How can there be so many faulty Arcs out there? I’ve seen comments from Sonos staff advising this production issue was resolved over a year ago and bad stock purged from warehouses, but clearly that is not the case. How can Sonos’s position on this issue be to just continue to tell the customer to go to the store, and replace the product for another one, a process that is tedious, frustrating, a waste of time and unscientific, just plain trial and error…...

Hi @Lionel1232 

I’m sorry to hear of the repeated issues you’ve had with serial Arcs! All I can really suggest is that you return the latest one to us, so that we can replace it with a unit known to not be affected, rather than you having to go back to a store and effectively cross your fingers hoping for better results. We will cover all shipping costs, so the only disadvantage left would be the shipping time as compared to a visit to a store, but considering the number of store visits you’ve now had, they must be adding up to days too.

I hope this helps.

Well, I contacted support and arrangements were made to send me a 5th Arc. I told support at the time, over and over, that I did not want a refurbished unit, and wanted a brand new one instead. The support rep assured me I would be sent a brand new unit.

After getting a hold placed on my credit card, a new Arc was delivered really quickly. I tried to set it up last Friday, but unfortunately the Arc sent from Sonos is also faulty. Here’s what happened:

1. Disconnected old Arc suffering from mic on/off issue
2. Connected new Arc sent from Sonos
3. Set up in the Sonos app. Got to the stage where I was advised a firmware update was required. This step took longer than usual, and eventually the Sonos app advised that setup had failed and to keep my phone nearby to the Arc etc. (I kept it right next to the Arc throughout the entire setup process.
4. I try to update again and get the same result as step 3.
5. Arc begins to intermittently not be recognized at all by the Sonos app and just shows a flashing white light.
6. Proceed to connect the Arc directly to my router via an Ethernet cable, the Arc no longer appears in the app and I can’t set it up.
7. Proceed to perform a factory reset.
8. Try to set up in the Sonos app, same result.
9. Attempt multiple factory resets, some with the ethernet cable connected, some without. App fails to find Arc every time now.
10. Observe that factory resets are sometimes not working, despite holding the “infinity” button and plugging in the power cable.
11. Observe that Arc is now sometimes booting to a flashing white light for ~15 seconds, followed by a solid orange light.
12. Arc is still not recognized at all in the app anymore.
13. Power down all other Sonos accessories, since I’ve heard there can be issues related to “SonosNet”, doesn’t make a difference.
14. Reinstall the entire Sonos app, this doesn’t make a difference.
15. Keep Arc powered on for over an hour, still no difference (not detected by the app).
16. Check Sonos app permissions, they are all correct, toggle them all to off and then back on. Same issue.

So, it seems like the new Arc I was sent in the mail is faulty. I unplug the new Arc and plug back in the old one, at least the old one connects to the app fine, meaning I can get sound from it.

Today I called back Sonos and they asked for the serial number of the fifth replacement Arc (the one they shipped me in the mail). I proceed to look at the box the Arc came in to identify its serial number… The sticker containing the serial number shows the Arc I was sent is certified refurbished!!!!! Despite being assured when performing the RMA that I would be receiving a brand new Arc (as I should, since each time one of the previous four Arcs has experienced a fault, I have engaged the RMA process within a month). Unbelievably frustrating..

Support has now created a case for me and has advised they will email me tomorrow. Needless to say I am a little worried about the hold on my credit card… I don’t want to return the “working” Arc (the one suffering from the mic on/off issue) because the replacement I was sent:

1. Doesn’t work and refuses to pair with the Sonos app.
2. Is refurbished and not brand new.

@Corry P - Thanks for your earlier reply, it’s helpful, at least in the sense that it helps me feel like I’m not just shouting into the void… I thought I’d tag you in this update in case you had any thoughts..

I will continue to update this thread with updates on my situation.