Not exactly.  Only amps built 2015 and before are being sunset this May. You should check your online profile and see what it says in regards to future updates for your amps.

Ryan S wrote:

our efforts will ultimately be limited by the lack of memory and processing power of these legacy products.

As another member stated, I will continue to believe this is a convenient lie until you provide some hard evidence to the contrary.

The legacy products have long been unable to deal with large digital music libraries due to insufficient memory (unless you are prepared to strip out all metadata). However the newer devices don’t seem to be much more capable in that regard - the Sonos environment is now heavily skewed towards streaming from commercial platforms rather than personal collections.

I have spent about $2500 on Sonos speakers.  Most recent was a Sonos One for my daughter for Christmas.  Never again.  And I just filed a 1-star review on Amazon for my new Sonos One based on the incredible contempt I feel Sonos is showing me with this announcement.  Goodbye Sonos. 

Nailed it!

Unless Sonos reverses course and adopts this policy, I will never ever ever buy another Sonos product.

I will never ever ever recommend Sonos to another person.

And I will do everything in my power to discourage everyone I know from purchasing anything from Sonos.

I invite anyone who feels similarly betrayed to join me in doing the same.

I’ve been a loyal Sonos customer since the beginning. I literally had 2 of the Sonos Moves in my buggy at Best Buy when another customer told me about dropping support for legacy devices (of which I have 4). I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How can a company abandon me and the 2000.00 I spend with them on these 4 speakers (of which I have around 10)? What about my others, when are they going to be sunset? After confirming by a quick google search, I promptly put them back on the shelf. I will not spend another dime with this company and look forward to joining a class action law suit should one form. What a shame, I loved these things.

At this point, closing a thread full of negative customer feedback is like using a spoon to bail out a sinking ship. The negative press is on every social media platform, tech news outlets and mainstream news providers like BBC.

Ok so you will give me 30% off of something that I will need to throw away in 5 years! Yeah ok ..sounds like a great deal to me.  Even 50% off is still a joke.

My assumption is you tried the trade in program and that didn't bring in the revenue you needed.  Well the genius executives got together and pressured the developers...Well let's just discontinue our product.  I could just picture the meeting, the executives hearing what they want to hear and the programmers walk away and inside their heads...they think man this place is screwed...well at least I have a job but it's time to start looking for another one.

800.00 CDN dollars for a disposable subwoofer!!  Sonos is considered a high end audiophile product and you want us to treat it as a disposable product!!  This model will never work.  Most Sonos customers are far too intelligent for this kind of scam! We are all insulted by your obvious cash grab.  To me this is the beginning of the end of Sonos.  This was your last ditch effort at trying to get more revenue.

You could have become creative. Here are some basic options that you could have chosen.

1.You could have been honest and transparent.  You could have told the community that the current business model wasn't viable and you may go out of business.  You could say you valued your existing customers and you didn't want all of their equipment to become worthless if you went out of business.  Then you could proposed a subscription service with the first two years free for all new customers.  All legacy customers would need to buy the service or their legacy equipment would stop receiving support.  So many of us are deeply invested in your product that we would pay.  Some customers would leave.  Or you could allow people who dont pay for the subscription to use the app in a limited way.  Maybe no streaming support or limited grouping of speakers.  

Anyway if you dont rethink this..think "New Coke"... Companies can come back from the brink and apologize.  You can salvage your reputation, it's not too late.  But if you dont I am done buying your products, I will never reccomend your products and I will go out of my way to try and disuade people from buying your products.

It's time to listen to your customers....

I don’t want products with inbuilt speakers because I’m using my own entertainment systems and in ceiling speakers. Why upgrade to a wireless n version of the ZP80 and ZP100 when they don’t have anything more to bring to the table? Also you sell speakers with no microphones and therefore they are functionally identical except for the wireless protocol. So saying ALL your new products bring more to the table is ridiculous. They stream music from a network that’s it. Some of them have microphones some don’t.

Well your answer to why upgrade is we’ll force you to upgrade by making your old components redundant. Forced obsolescence. I purchased these products - I didn’t sign a lease. You are stealing from me effectively by not supporting them. If you didn’t think of the lifetime support costs then that’s no my fault - that’s your fault - don’t punish me for your lack of foresight.

Also now I’m retired I won’t be forking out for many new products so basically you are just kicking me in the guts.

 

Looking closer at the utterly appalling 30% trade-up discount (I know what you give to employees and distributors) it strikes me that with your admission of obsolescence and that you can no longer justify the exorbitant prices you are charging - particularly for the Amp and sub-par Port.

I used to be able to justify the comparatively high cost on the basis of longevity - indeed I can recall sales rep’s running with the same pitch. Now you have admitted you no longer control some aspects of your own environment - having submitted to the big streaming companies - your value proposition is greatly diminished. Time to drop the hardware prices I think.

Your lack of contrition at your own failings speaks volumes.

I am really disturbed. I spent so much money on my system that now is “legacy”. I am buying high end audio devices and I have never experienced anything like this before. Never. I hope you utterly fail with this and it’s the wedge for other players to eat a chunk of your market share.

Wow!  Poor business!!  So, those of us who have been long time Sonos users are being punished for being early adopters to the Sonos platform.  I am sure we also recommended many of their customers to the Sonos platform.  We are now being held hostage by Sonos for more money just to keep our systems operating. 

I never wanted to stream music from a service.  My entire reason for buying my initial Sonos devices was to play music from my library out any room in my house from my phone, table, or PC.  

I was also surprised a couple years ago when I went to play music from my library over my Sonos system and it would not work because I put my internet connection on vacation hold and Sonos could not connect to the internet.  Really??

I don’t want to integrate with Siri, Alexa, or any other voice assistant!  I did not buy Sonos to have my playlists sent to Sonos for data collection either!  I just wanted to have a good speaker I could manage from my phone to ply my music.  Boy has this company strayed from where it started!  

Very disappointing!  I guess I may have a bunch of white paper weights sitting around in the coming year! 

The idea that SONOS is anything but against the environment is absurd. The offer to brick devices for upgrades makes NO sense. 
I get it that you need to make more money to stay relevant. Don’t do it at the expense of the environment. 
ANd now the confusion if we can mix and match. This wasn’t well thought out, but you are for sure upsetting your customer base and getting WAY too much negative press. Re-think this. 
 

Also if anyone thinks this is about support costs forget it. There’s a third party one man development team that has built a good Sonos user interface on iTunes. A big company like Sonos could easily support them at a minimum cost.

I see this for what it is - a cynical manoeuvre to get new income streams from existing customers. These products aren't smartphones that offer reams of upgraded benefits they are simple media streamers and overpriced ones at that.

Disgusted.

I had two interesting conversations with the two biggest private audio/video stores in my city. 

Both shared the frustrations with Sonos and what is currently going on. Interestingly both shared that dealing with Sonos as a seller is also very frustrating. Sonos pulls moves to take over their customers and deal with them directly after they do ‘in house’ sale. They both expressed that they sell many Sonos units, but if they were gone they wouldn’t miss having to ‘deal’ with them. 

Sounds like Sonos is a big dink to everyone. 

Huh?  Did Sonos stated that they are dropping support for legacy products (at least in terms of added features) because of some sort of pressure from big streaming companies?

Is this rhetorical?

Just had this from Sonos .…

Hello Michael,

My name is Matthew. I'm a supervisor in Sonos Customer Care.

Your entire system will still work after May, it just won't update anymore. As time goes on there may be services that stop working, but you could use your system for years before any of that happens. Legacy and newer products will be able to separate so the newer products can continue to update. I don't know the details of that. There will be more in May.

You don't have to even think about possibly upgrading anything until those older products can no longer do something you need them to do. If a time comes where you do need to upgrade we can talk about discount options. But there is no reason to spend any money while the system is still doing what you need it to do.

Every Sonos device does have a small computer running inside. It is not static AV equipment that never has to update software. Sonos systems have to communicate with each other, other devices on the local network, and 60+ cloud services.

I'm certainly willing to answer any other questions you have about this.

Matthew G

——————-

My response …

Thank you for getting in touch.

I’ve spent thousands on Sonos, and I most definitely will not be upgrading to equipment that I have now found out has a five year life span from the date you chose to stop selling that version.

For me, this was a one time purchase.

Why can you not give us an option to upgrade the motherboard, to one with a larger memory chip and cpu?

That would be an obvious solution instead of bricking expensive equipment.

No.  I have not seen a statement from Sonos stating that they had to drop support in any way because of pressure from big streaming companies.

Dear Sonos, who is going to protect the rights of customers who are going to purchase used Connect, Connect amps and Play 5 gen 1 on sites like Gumtree, Facebook marketplace, ebay etc now everyone will try to sell them off to unsuspecting buyers??

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Sonos-bulk-10-AMPs-10-Connects/293438373055?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3Df4b65ce1a17b44b19e3105e0097f646e%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D15%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D153805904648%26itm%3D293438373055%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3Ada90dc82-3d86-11ea-a468-74dbd18078ae%7Cparentrq%3Ad032f85d16f0acc6c21083f6ff832642%7Ciid%3A1

This is disappointing news.  With all this ONLY 5 year guarantee talk I have decided that there are better things to spend my money on and to be honest it isn’t SONOS.   

Last week I was planning on purchasing a subwoofer, but I can’t justify that anymore.  I have two GEN 1 Play 5’s that I bought only 5 years ago that are no longer going to be supported...that’s a $700 minimum upgrade if I recycle the Gen 1’s.  

What about my Play 3’s? Is there going to be an announcement next year that those too will go end of life?  I have three of those. What about my two playbars?  What about my Subwoofer? Are those going end of life in the next year or two also.  

How about this statement?:

We don’t expect any immediate impact to your experience, but access to services and overall functionality will eventually be disrupted, particularly as partners evolve their own services and features. 

It’s clearly implied from the wording around their reasoning and the vagueness of their timeframes. Sonos can’t be more specific about how long Legacy devices will last because they have no control (or a worsening relationship thanks to legal action) over the APIs and requirements of the likes of Spotify, Amazon and Google. 
 

in short an environment they once controlled almost completely has slowly been eroded as we all demand more Streaming and Voice services. Their failure is in not negotiating or developing a technical solution that maintains core functionally while foregoing new advancements. 

If this statement would be communicated directly to everybody who has got the infamous email in the first place, I bet that much of the current fury would change to a less upbeat worry about the future.

Two of my products purchased and registered to my account in 2017(!!!) are now listed as “legacy”. Two and a half years later…  I, like many others here, have invested thousands of dollars in Sonos products and even more personal capital in recommending your products to friends and family.  I am now an angry customer no longer interested in purchasing additional Sonos products, but even worse - I am embarrassed I recommended this brand.

My original position of “Yeah, they are expensive but the UX is great and the quality of the product is worth the premium price” has turned out to be completely wrong.  If your competitors are paying attention, (and I’m sure they are!) they have a great opportunity to eat your lunch.

Please explain what you mean when you say that you will support products that you sell for at least 5 years.  I bought a CONNECT:AMP in 2018 to add to the 3 CONNECT:AMPS ans 2 CONNECTS that I bought in 2015 (less than 5 years ago - but it will be 5 years in May when you discontinue support).  If the one I bought in 2018 is still “Modern”, why aren’t the others?