End of Software Support - Clarifications

Let’s be clear - the CEO statement says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that the original announcement did not already say.

The ‘some updates’ language is fluff. What does that mean? What updates? For what? For how long?

It’s a sentiment whose value is determined by how much trust you have in the company making it. The same company that released a financial statement saying ‘we’re going to screw our customers, and they’re not going to like it’, then went ahead and did exactly that. They do not deserve any of your faith at this point.

We need concrete commitments to keep old devices functioning as part of the whole-house network, as they are clearly able to do. Anything less is nothing.

What Sonos don’t appear to understand, is that we pay PREMIUM prices for Sonos equipment because historically they have been supported, regardless of when they were released. Of course, technology changes and demands more power etc, but then they have an opportunity to build/offer a product or solution to workaround this ie. we pay a fee to take it into a Sonos dealer who will modify it to allow it to handle the new technology or have a box that can be added to each device or sit on the network to handle it.

If the legacy products will only be supported for say 10 years, then I won’t buy PREMIUM Sonos, I will buy a cheaper solution that I can change every 10 years at a far lower price. Now the rabbit is out of the hat, Sonos will have to provide a much clearer life cycle for each of their products.It’s not fair to ask customers to buy a Sonos, not knowing when they will be in legacy. Even today, many retailers are selling legacy products with NO warnings about the recent announcement. I believe even Sonos are doing this. Incredible and irresponsible imho.

Unfortunately, as Sonos is now a publicly listed company, all decisions are based on the balance sheet. They saw the cost of maintaining support for older equipment while pressrued to sell more. Ultimately, that was the owners biggest mistake, however much money they made. Maybe they can bring it back private or is bought buy a bigger company who understands the philosophy that helped make Sonos what it is today.

Until their is clarity and more importantly, confidence that Sonos truly value our custom, then its over for many of us. Someone on the Board should pay with their job as this has put the company at great risk and their shareholders won’t be happy. There is a short window here to recover the damage. If they don’t take it, tehn they are shooting themselves in the foot imho.

You and I differ on what "logical response" means.   I purchased sonos thinking that the core purpose (playing sound in my home) was basically "future proof."   In fact, SONOS's CEO said as much when he testified to congress a few weeks ago.   SONOS has every right to change its business strategy; but, if I strongly disagree with it then its not illogical, to act in the way some are recommending.   I purchased the product based on a false premise and, worse, SONOS is now consuming lots of natural resources to produce a very short-lived sound system.  Consumers may not want that type of company to exist.   its logical conclusion.

I’m still reeling from when they bricked my CR100 controllers.

I brought into their system 15 years ago so I could play my own music library and also wake up to my music with the aid of the controller as a bedside clock. It all work flawlessly until they bricked the controller and I was left using the app.

The app is just unacceptably poor and when you consider it’s the main interface between the user and the end experience, I have never understood how they can build such an inadequate and buggy piece of app, and one which relies on someone else’s everchanging operating platform installed on 1000’s of variable devices. No wonder it never works and why it has to be updated every week.

A system like Sonos should have a dedicated controller option that just works… like the CR100 did.

Like others I’m disgusted at the recent 30% upgrade offer and when I first received it I knew they would soon be making the rest of my system obsolete. And now every piece of Sonos equipment I have will be legacy.

I was going to invest in more Sonos gear until they bricked my controllers and now with this latest development, I’m glad I didn’t

15 years ago there were very few alternatives to Sonos and it was certainly the best. Now there are other options and even an echo dot with Bluetooth speaker or AV amp can do all the music streaming you need for much less...

So I did a little calculation….

Looks like Yamaha wins hands down.

Fair comment John, however to only offer 30% discount on replacement products is the real issue here (and the one causing anger), as I’m sure they would not be ‘out of pocket’ by offering a much more palatable 70% discount (I know the ‘typical’ margins these companies work to) - retaining customer loyalty and retention. They just didn’t think it through - absolute madness. 

There are two critical goals here:

1. Get Sonos to change it’s mind. This may or may not work - in order to come up with this policy in the first place they’re either in trouble as a company and getting desperate or being run by a group of pot plants. Either way that’s bad news for us existing customers. 
2. Make a fuss big enough to be visible from space so that the NEXT company that’s thinking of screwing us over in the same way thinks again. This is the big picture goal and is even more important than point 1. This cannot become the normal way of doing business.

That’s not true. The original announcement states: “your system will no longer receive software updates and new features.” The more recent Patrick Spence letter states: “While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible.”

I didn’t say they’d restored my faith, and you’re right that details are missing. They’ve broken an implicit promise that is at the heart of their value proposition.

I agree.

I myself and family members have invested a lot of money into your Sonos products, having owned them for not very long to receive news like this is not acceptable. I can fully understand softwares need updating and the hardware in the older products may not be able to supports future updates. However to only offer 30% off the upgrades we need to keep all our products working on the same network it’s shameful and a disgrace to us loyal and heavily invested customers and some people will still not be able to make the upgrades they need without a long time of saving, like family members of mine. Hopefully this will be taken on board and rectified.