Ok I’ve been with Sonos from Day 1 as many here have also. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and see how this plays out.  They have acknowledged they made a big mistake and have stated they need to earn our trust back. Hoping that’s the case!

Sonos,

Obviously the “end of support” announcement upset a lot of people, and it is refreshing to hear you’ll continue to support legacy equipment for as long as possible.  That said, it is disgusting that your “upgrade program” essentially means sending the old devices to the dump.  Perhaps you weren’t forward thinking enough to realize the “computer” part of the device would eventually become obsolete when you initially introduced the product. (shame on you if you did)  But knowing this is going to happen with all future products, it would be nice for the environment if you’d consider a way to upgrade the processor and memory, saving the speakers, amplifiers, and chassis from further contributing to the global garbage crisis.  

Thanks for listening,

Terry

Well sorry to join the rant of 1,000’s of other Sonos owners but you have asked for it…. I was an early adopter of sonos and was so impressed with the system I have steady grown the coverage within my house to seven amps, sub and playbar. Six of them are now deemed legacy units. Even with 30% discount that would be £2500+ and avoidable damage to the planet!

Many of the previous replies raise very valid points about the software design and comparing the hardware to how PC’s have evolved. There is a massive fundamental difference with PC’s users - they can firsthand feel a difference in speed and capability. The sonos amp streams a music source (very well), no one will mind a second of buffering or whatever hardware will prevent but keep the sound quality as good as it has always been and leave us with a simple app that will have security and bug fixes.

It is crucial you let legacy and modern co exisit or add me to the list of legacy and unloved customers.

Thank you for fixing the Software issue. I understand that legacy devices cant get Lifetime upgrades. This makes sense as both a company and software limitations. You failed in the communications of this issue. I am very pleased with the changes. I have newer devices with my older system as well. Glad to hear they will play nice together. Keep up the great work. 

You really should not brick the old devices. This could be a great selling point. I would donate these to friends which in turn would enjoy them. They would then add more devices. That is a failure in your marketing team. 

Everyone - please call into the Feb. 5 shareholders call to express your displeasure directly to the CEO during Q&A session.   The shareholders who own SONOS will be listening.  Let’s let the owners of the SONOS company know how upset the customers of SONOS are.

Feb. 5th  - 5pm (eastern time)

(833) 236-2748, with conference ID 9666837.

Participants outside the U.S. can access the call by dialing (647) 689-4173, with the same conference ID.

You can burn the discount before I would ever buy another Sonos product.

But I would add … sharing more in days rather than “weeks” might be better to help extinguish the fire!

So, to be clear, you are stating that Sonos will patch breaking changes by third-party providers to keep music services functional until there is a solid technical reason that it is no longer possible. e.g. buffer underrun where the processor cannot keep up with the stream. That scenario seems unlikely given that we’re talking about an audio stream at a given bitrate which is audibly the same to most humans if increased.

So have 5 products that you now want me to “trade in” and a connect, you want to “offer” a trade in. I already spent at least 3K on your above products and you want to give me a $60 off a new 500.00 product? This is worse the the iPhone trade ins. I used to recommend this product to EVERYONE.. new construction, old, business etc because of the soft ware updates. Not anymore. And now I can’t even sell these on ebay since everyone knows they are “legacy”. You’ve basically left us all with useless products.  If your going to make us trade in stuff that make it a disposable price. 

To simplify the question to Sonos:

Is the Legacy hardware at the mercy of Spotify as an example?

Will Spotify need to maintain 2 different apps?

WE DO NOT WANT SPLIT SYSTEMS.  REPEAT:  WE DO NOT WANT SPLIT SYSTEMS.  Thanks for at least responding, but WE DO NOT WANT SPLIT SYSTEMS.  It’s very simple.

I am deeply disappointed by this announcement. I have also spent a lot of money on Sonos products but thos brings into question any future investment in Sonos products. I am of the belief that we should always by the best that we can afford. It is not the case this time.

For as long as possible, we’ll be keeping them updated with bug fixes and security patches. These devices have already reached the limit of their memory and processing power, but as long as a fix is possible for a change, we’ll do the best we can to get it fixed.

Agree. This is not what be purchased. 

The CEO letter literally says nothing different than the original announcement:

1. “...come May...they will continue to work just as they do today“ -- yes.  The question is not May, but rather June, October, 2021.  Clearly, you have some very slick wordsmiths that know how to make something sound great without actually saying youre going to change anything.
    
2. “Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible.”  This is not true -- you can honor our investment much longer than you are currently committing to...you are choosing not to invest the resources necessary to do so.
    
3. “If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.” -- You have already told us what your solution will be...buy new hardware.  That is not a real alternative solution.
    
4. “We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state.” -- You also said this in the original announcement.  THE POINT AND PROMISE OF SONOS, of course, was that we would have in INTEGRATED system.  Splitting the system negates the value proposition of SONOS itself.
    
5. “...we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.”  Nonsense.  The whole point of rendering unusable “legacy” products is TO SHAFT loyal customers by extorting them to buying new hardware when the ONLY reason why our legacy products wont work is because YOU ARE CHOOSING NOT TO SUPPORT US ANY LONGER.  This is utter BS.  If you were serious about protecting your loyal customers, you would offer a 90% discount on upgrading to new hardware.  But youre not doing that BECAUSE you know that you have us over a barrel.  Or at least you thought you had us over a barrel.

I am sure you think that this nonsense works on stock analysts who are seeing your shares slide and realize that, as you say, 92% of your customers are still using your product.  When that 92% drops to 0%, we’ll see if you actually made a wise decision here.  I'm betting shareholders, who are the only people you are trying to satisfy at this point, will realize what is going on here.

Still a massive overall failure with empty words in follow-up that only seem to assume that your customers are morons.

I don’t think we’re going to get any info on the issue of Legacy and Modern systems running separately being a monumentally ridiculous idea very soon. I guess there are meetings that have to be had before any comment can be made on that subject, since Ryan is doing a good job of dancing around the elephant in the room ;)

I like these statements, even though they are without any specific contents, apart from the coming weeks:

1. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.
2.  Legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.
3. While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so.

Obviously, there will not be any collaboration between modern and legacy products - it seems to be the very idea of Sonos to have the legacy products retired. But at least we will be ably to use these products for a while and Sonos intend to inform about and resolve, one way or another, any problems with legacy products. And their mafia methods may disappear, allowing for people to update products for features, not for fear.

It is positive to some extend but obviously needs proof. It wasn’t long ago they said that they didn’t plan to retire legacy products, which was obviously by then a lie. Maybe these new statements are lies too, or maybe they are well meant but impossible to implement in real life.

What I still need to see is a guaranteed lifetime of the legacy products stretching 2 years into the future, to allow for a decent replacement plan to be made by each individual customer. And preferably with better a trade-in offer.

You know if it’s computing power for the user interface only one new product would be able to perform that function for the user interface and the “legacy products” would work from that.

Really they are making excuses to rake in more money. + they could construct middleware on the cloud to do the functions.

There are some who are thinking the software thing is resolved, IT IS NOT. The sonos system was marketed as a hi-fi device, not a pc device. It was sold with no EOL support mentioned. There is an expection that a hi-fi system will last for many years. Sonos has pushed out tons of updates and has any really enhanced my experience, no it has not. I just want to listen to music nothing more or less. What on earth could be added to cause the memory or processes to be strained it is just playing music at the end of the day. If new devices are not compatible sonos should of held on before they announced anything until the old and new could co exist. Simple truth this is being done for profit and sonos just did not expect this reaction. Any split in having new separated from old on a system defeats the who purpose of the sonos system. Sonos just step back from this route and rethink your strategy because unless you do the enevitable will occur.

“While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.”

30% is a joke.  To replace my connect that only cost me 300$ will cost me almost 500$.  Its not going to happen.  I will find another solution.

I don’t see how this new statement changes anything.  It still looks like the best we are going to get is some type of split in two system that will not work together.  If that is what we are talking about then that solves nothing.  My Whole Home system is now a Half Home system if that.

I feel like they are putting up some smoke and mirrors by saying “we were heard about coexistence”.  The core issue is not that they can be on the same network.  Its that they work together like they do now.

Am I reading this wrong?

Wow……. corrected letter from the CEO is timely.   I have been researching what system to purchase to replace my SONOS. 

First…… Fire the leadership in your marketing department who came up with that crap transition.

Second……. You’re smart people, figure out a way to make the technology and transition smooth and long term, so I will continue to add on to my system.  Hint… split the system is a poor choice.

Lastly, I will give it until the end of the year to see how you do.  Myself and thousands of other people will be putting all future Sonos purchases on hold.  (That may put you out of business)  Don’t screw it up. 

Then tell us why the memory is stretched, it's because of the bloated updates that have been pushed onto us. Simple issue updates that don't cause these issues. Fairly simple really to resolve this.

so happy to hear this - was so so disappointed from previous message - you just saved a loyal customer 

Please feel free to print out your double speak politicians answer email which says nothing different to the original statement along with your laughable 30% discount to upgrade. Use the paper you now have and wrap it around my “legacy” play 5 then ram it right up your arse Patrick. No lube get it up you dry