End of Software Support - Clarifications

Very disappointing news!

I have lost faith completely in a brand in which I have invested a lot of money in good faith.

Shame on you Sonos.

I understood. All these workaround ideas sure are making me revisit in my head my early disappointment that none of my simple Play:1 speaker have a 3.5mm analog jack or other input. Sure would be useful going forward now. Something as turnkey as Chromecast would be a drop in replacement in that case - not as elegant certainly, but it’s improving each year.

Almost ransomware…..   Like most SONOS users, I was a huge fan until your “system requires attention” email yesterday.    Whilst we all expect our various bits of tech equipment to fall out of support at some point, this is the first time I have ever seen a manufacturer state that the rest of the equipment purchased from them will be inhibited (i.e. not upgraded further) unless you upgrade your connected “legacy” equipment.   You don’t see Apple telling customers that unless they ditch their old iPhone 5S handsets none of their other more modern Apple devices connected to iCloud will be upgraded. 

If this is down to your software then it is badly flawed and, rather than drop this bombshell on your loyal customers and making us line your pockets further by buying more equipment, you should bite the bullet and replace our “legacy” equipment since I’m sure none of us would have bought it if we knew the steps you were going to take a few years later.

However, somewhat amazingly, you expect us to upgrade when we know that you’ll do the same again on our other SONOS equipment that has yet to turn “legacy”.  Somehow, I don’t think many of us are going to be taking up your “kind” offer of a 30% discount.  In the meantime, your are destroying your brand image.

I have 4 Connect:amp , 3 Connect and 1 Bridge , plus all the speakers I use to connect the Sonos kit to. I changed to what I thought was a market leading multi room offering from my existing old LINN hifi in approximately 2012 but I made the choice to do this - it wasn't made for me by LINN.

I would be very grateful if you could outline where it says in your terms and conditions (back when I purchased all your kit) that I would be spending thousands of pounds on a product that was ultimately going to be phased out after a period of time. If you cannot do this then I expect a FULL refund ( inclusive of all installation costs ) in order for me to purchase a product from a competitor who will not pull the rug from under their customers. 

I notice from other threads that as recently as 10 weeks ago you categorically denied that you would be ‘’ suddenly making these items obsolete. ‘’

I look forward to hearing from you.

Intresting thing again.. You decided to close the original topic! After 56 pages of negative comments. Do you really think that you can hide the negative feedback? This new topic does not give any new information for us. But of course we can see that it was not the reason to close the old topic. 

You have very unhappy customers with your nightmare "end of updates" email.

And as we can clearly see you have also unhappy owners! Your stock price was 15.395 on friday. At the moment its 14.575. You just lost over 5% of your market cap. Which is almost 100 millions... Great Job who made the decision! And this is just a tip of iceberg because of this massive feedback you will loose your very loyal old customers and with this kind of attitude its impossible to get many new customers. If the original very loyal customers are very unhappy who would want to start the journey with Sonos if you can go some where else? I have Sonos equipment worth of thousands of euros, but if I have to build the system again I'm not so fool that I will choose Sonos again. 

Major media companies are telling the whole story like this: "(Reuters) - Sonos Inc is facing a social media firestorm after the wireless speaker pioneer decided to stop software updates for some of its older products." Are you thinking also how can you close the negative feedback from major news companies? All of your customers are wrong and you have made the right decision? Good luck with your style - - customers are always right because they will give you the money! At the moment owners are losing money.. So who is actually happy at the moment? People who made the terrible decision about the nightmare email? How long Sonos will need that kind of directors?

The old topic was 56 pages long after few hours.. The new topic is already this long. Third topic is coming? 

Thanks for the update Ryan. Not wanting to shoot the messenger but there’s an awful lot wrong with what’s being said here:

This is not good enough; it shifts risk onto the customer. Who can enjoy using a system knowing that it’s on borrowed time and could stop working at any minute?

While the Spotify integration (added years ago) is appreciated, Sonos have changed the software to be much more online than it used to be; for example it didn’t used to require user registration just to set up and play music locally.

If you built out all this online functionality, you need a sustainable way to maintain it. I realise customers will not appreciate it - especially at short notice - but even a subscription model if communicated well up front and rolled out carefully would be cheaper (to both parties) than throwing away good hardware, and certainly better for the environment.

Any customer with multiple legacy products will end up in this situation. They will pay for a new Sonos component for almost full price (20% price hike in some cases followed by 30% discount) but not be able to enjoy any updates until all legacy components have been replaced. The alternative is to replace the whole lot in one go. This is beyond unsatisfactory, it is astonishingly bad.

Will it be possible to play music simultaneously on legacy and new products? i.e. will it still be a multi-room audio system?

30% discount is not enough for such a small upgrade, but supposing in a few years’ time I find myself with a big pile of cash, can’t think how to spend it and for some reason don’t want to trouble my ears with hi-def audio - can I still trade in my old Sonos gear? Or is this offer going to expire?

Perhaps you can set a guaranteed expiry date in say, 2022, and extend it for every year for as long as you still want to have customers.

This is where it’s hard to maintain the pretence of being polite. Is this some kind of a joke? Let me paraphrase: “We recognize being screwed over is new for Sonos owners, just as screwing customers over is for Sonos”.

Who signed off on this nonsense?

Until now I have been a loyal Sonos customer buying many device and planning to buy even more. I have also been a strong advocate happily demoing my Sonos setup to many people over the past 10+ years.

However, I am very unsatisfied with Sonos lately over it’s irresponsible environmental actions in bricking working devices and even furious about yesterday’s email from Sonos stating that 5 out of my 9 Sonos devices will soon stop updates with warnings that this will negatively affect access and functionality (and security). In other words, I understand I can expect most of my Sonos setup to stop working soon (for example not being controllable using my iphone App)

I understand that Sonos wants to add features and sell more devices but this should not happen by treating existing customers badly – or by needlessly causing lots of environmental waste by planned obsolesce of working electrical equipment. This is irresponsible and not a way to succeed in the long term. It is a sure way to burn bridges though and get people angry at Sonos!

Personally, now that Sonos has show how little regard it has to both customers and the environment, I will now actively look for alternatives to my Sonos setup – maybe I can even find something more simple so my wife and 5y old kid can easily use it (unlike Sonos that unfortunately never succeeded in this aspect).

P.S. I am a software engineer myself, so I don’t buy the technical argument made in the email. Sonos ought to be able to add features that only work for new devices without dropping support for existing functionality for old devices. It is all about money (as minimal support for an old platform costs money).

Can’t like that comment enough!!

Ryan S…  I spoke to Sonos today and what your not saying is that once MAY comes along and you have not updated your system by replacing ALL your legacy systems, your entire Sonos network will not receive any new updates.  once you remove the legacy systems then the supported systems will accept the updates.

The option of separating legacy and supported systems can be done BUT what you are not saying is that you will no longer be able to group legacy systems with supported systems… in addition, I was told you would need two instances of the SW to control each system type…  

Sonos needs to offer the customer a way to update current systems without having to have to purchase new systems…  changing a PCBA to add memory should be a very inexpensive alternative…

I beg Sonos Sr management to consider other options for loyal customers….  Most loyal customers have turned on many friends and family members to Sonos… we did this because we believe in the product and the company… Now both are in jeopardy… 

Whoever came up with this 30% discount solution as the only option needs to consider another place of employment... what a dope… 

Why has the original thread been closed ? No difference, Sonos still sucks #sonosfail #boycottsonos