End of Software Support - Clarifications

My five year old equipment is now worthless! 

I have recommended Sonos to so many friends and relatives and now I have to reach out to them and ask forgiveness. I will never again reccomend nor purchase your products and will replace with other brands when needed. 

Sonos, you have just made one of your biggest mistakes and will hopefully pay dearly in terms of lost long term revenue and profitability.

This is:

1. Not acceptable

2. Greedy

3. Unsustainable 

SHAME ON YOU!!

While I understand that Ikea doesn’t keep products around their products continue to operate as sold. I think this is different. I also wonder how Ikea will feel when their speakers are added to a legacy system with limited functionality?

As a Marketing Manager, and student of one of the global top 3 business schools, I KNOW this decision from SONOS will go down in Business School history as one of the best examples of brand suicide.  Complete idiots.  SONOS had such a great concept but have repeatedly demonstrated difficulty in delivering the seemless experience we expect these days, with problematic networking and poor controller clients both on desktop and mobile. It’s like they had a super developer for the initial concept and then went cheap on engineers thereafter. 
Your only way out now is to maintain for ever after two software models, 1. one that allows all devices on a mixed ‘old’ and new system to continue being maintained and debugged, as a complete system, 2. one where we can chose to run two parallel networks where the ‘modern’ kit can operate all new features, the old devices continue to operate and be bug fixed, and the two networks allow two way music play and functionality upto the limit of every device.
Of course there is another option: much higher (like 90%) discounts on a replacement kit.

Now THAT would have attracted enormous kudos and customers who would have felt reassured that obsolescence would be a minimal threat.  It would still cover manufacturing costs, but retained customers and attracted great media support as well as new customers.
I am now going to go back to the drawing board that I last looked at when I bought my SONOS speaker, and see how I have a networked music system at home without using any SONOS devices - if I succeed I will sell my SONOS kit and never buy from SONOS again.  I expect my HiFi to last forever, like the Arcam seperates and 55 yr old valve Telefunken radio amp still going strong.
SONOS, you’re a barrel of crap!

I understand your need to evolve with the times. However, I think the best way to do this is to articulate the life-cycle BEFORE I BUY.

My view is YOUR unilateral decision impairs my ability to have quiet enjoyment of MY property and is a tort. Ths is like a former property owner not disclosing they still maintain an interest in your property and showing up with oil drilling rigs 10 months after sale. It’s also breach of contract as no life-cycle was ever articulated to my knowledge, it was imposed ex-post facto and I did not receive any compensation (“spend more” is not a remedy.)

Any claim you might had life-cycle in the fine print at purchase time, has a loooooong record of being tossed by the courts as creating a too onerous burden on the consumer to the point where it impairs free commerce. That is stare decisis. Ain’t gonna protect you from the class action I’ll be joining.

You chose to tick off a lot of your customer base at the same time you took on Google. We’re watching  Seppuku … without the honor.

So let me run your company for you…

1. The lifecycle need to be on the exterior of the box since you are now selling me groceries.

1. You should follow Microsoft, critical security updates should continue, as MS does.

1. The functionality we had the day of the EOL announcement will be the functionality we are assured to continue to have. I do not expect third party apps to be bound by this, but the basic system should. e.g. My connect line-in should be able to distro sound from the receiver to all the other sonos as it can do now.
2. You should open source the old OS (within reasonable limits) to allow us to continue to get value after the EOL.
3. This is more fair to everyone and the 30% discount should continue.

If you don't want to (or can’t) do the above, then discount should be far greater, at least 50% OR give us a path we can transition to another platform and let your stuff age out being controlled by the new OS. (I’m sure Google will be happy to develop this for you.)

IMO this should be the standard everywhere. I don’t want you to die and go to Hell, I respect innovation does have a cost, but the cost needs to be upfront to those bearing it. I DO think some managers who foisted this on the public should be terminated.

I can tell you now I am SO GLAD I didn’t expand my system over the holidays, I’m looking at your competitor now, but waiting to see how you handle this.

SONOS - without doubt one of the best products on the market.

Very ill thought out announcement - way to go alienating a very large proportion of you r most loyal user base..

I have been planning some purchases for a while.  Currently own £,000 of SONOS equipment.  I’ve recommended these products to 100’s of people over the years and now feel ashamed to be in any way associated with the product as my friends / associates will have invested in your products on my recommendation. Buying any SONOS product is no longer an option and I will never recommend the brand again.

From an investment perspective I’m glad I don’t own your stock - if I did I’d definitely be dumping it as soon as I could.

Be creative - there are loads of things you could do

= work on using software with less of a footprint,

= remove the bloat in the software - reduce it’s footprint,

= have two software streams with different features that work together.  My kit doesn’t need all the voice activated bloat - strip it out of the package I receive.  Let me choose which version I get via the My Sonos account.

= consider offering an existing hardware upgrade route where you increase the memory and processing power on my equipment for a fair price - it’s a board upgrade rather than bricking my kit or offering me a derisory reduction in buying new kit.  I might reasonably consider paying £50 per item to have a new board put in my existing hardware - minimize the impact on me as a user and the environment.

Gerald Ratner learnt the hard way and it looks like you’re about to do the same.

Prevo, you’ve hit the nail on the head.

These so-called legacy players currently stream music and co-exist on the same network with ‘modern’ players which have better functionality such as built in voice control. So whats changed that you can’t support them ?

The more I think about this, the more I think this is a pure and simple cynical attempt to force users to upgrade their players.

The silence from SONOS is deafening.  It shows how little they value their community.

Disgraceful

DK_Madsen wrote: 

I dont expect them to get firmware updates forever.

I just dont expect their software to be so poorly written that the features that work TODAY on my Play 5, is not able to still keep working and coexist with my newer products, regardless of firmware status.

Not asking for new features, or updates, just asking that legacy and current products can atleast stream music from my NAS, and play streams from streaming services in party mode if i want to.

no ofcourse i should not expect eternity updates but i want my speakers to work for eternity, buying a speaker today and knowing you have to buy a new one or new ones 10 years later is absurd, you are supposed to buy sonos for many many years building an awsome system and that takes many years for some people, and then you have to start all over again. 

I have contributed to this thread and expressed my agreement with the tone of many of the other contributors. It’s also clear that a substantial number of them have bought into Sonos to replace/supplement their existing audio kit, much of which remained functional after years of use. 

They thought that Sonos had also bought into this philosophy; wrongly, it appears. That does much to explain the level of anger being expressed, with which I mostly concur. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to those responsible for drafting this ‘legacy’ policy that long-term customers would be unhappy with a 5-10 year lifespan, when some of their other equipment has lasted decades. As I’ve written before, it’s turned into a PR disaster, with bad on-line reviews, unfavourable mainstream media reporting and social media outrage. 

I suspect that as this policy was previewed to investors, it will take a brave management to reverse or moderate it. Given that that management has chosen to take on Google in the courts, such courage, with its likely impact and loss of face, is unlikely. Sadly, the brand has already been tarnished on a scale that management never dreamt of. 

I can only hope that my existing Sonos hardware will continue to give service playing music from a NAS drive for some years after the company’s demise.