End of Software Support - Clarifications

Dress it up however you like, the fact remains that as a company Sonos is unwilling to do the work required to keep our systems viable. To make it all worse, anyone who gives in to their “nice system, shame if something happened to it” extortion scheme is bricking their devices, turning them into so much high tech landfill. It takes a particular corporate vision to trash both existing customers and the planet in one fell swoop, so kudos for that.

It’s a shameful approach and effectively unforgivable from my standpoint. You’ll never get another dollar from me. 

This is appalling. I emailed support yesterday and had a response from Mikey today as follows:

Thank you for contacting Sonos. My name is Mikey.

You don't have to purchase new items, we just want you to be aware that the existing items you have will not be able to support new software features & functions after May, you can continue to use them However unfortunately the products that have been in market for 10+ years have reached the limit of their microprocessor & memory capabilities. 

You can continue to use them with the existing software OR you can choose to trade up to our newer ones the choice is yours.

The initial communication received by all of us yesterday stated that by continuing to use legacy products not allow new products to receive updates. Has this view now changed? If so, what is it going to look like? Why wasn’t this thought through fully before antagonising your loyal customers?

i find the communication I received to be arrogant and patronising. My response (by email and reproduced here for information) was as follows:

I am appalled and highly stressed by the arrogance of your reply and lack of appreciation of a loyal customer.

 So, you expect me to pay another £700 to maintain the currency my Sonos system?

There is nothing wrong with the performance of my Play5’s and I would like to maintain it that way. Do you appreciate what a big investment I have made in Sonos? Approximately £2,500 over the past 7 years. Can you understand that I feel it is perfectly reasonable to expect the system to last beyond 7 years and that I am affronted by the high handed attitude shown by Sonos.  I thought that I had bought the best, had a high level of brand loyalty, sadly this is not matched by the Sonos loyalty to their customers.

I have new Sonos products which also will not be updated - therefore my whole system will suffer over time if I do not upgrade, spending another £700! It seems that Sonos is holding a gun the the heads of their long time customers. It is simply not acceptable.

Please find a better solution to the challenge and demonstrate your loyalty to your customers.

I have sent this also to Mr Spence, CEO and President of Sonos. I hope that he reads this and the responses of many customers.

Come on Mr Spence, show some loyalty to us, your customers.

So I need to find AUD 8,000 to keep my system working … spend it on Sonos upgrades or take my money elsewhere … hmmm ???

Will this remove the ability to group old and new products together. Will this prevent the ability to stream music across all products in sync if you own a mixture of old and new ones?!?!?

this all makes me really sad. I feel silly for investing so much in products that are now worthless. audio formats have not substantially evolved in the last few years so I’m said my setup needs pulling. what are the non-sonos alternatives?

@Chris Morgs, your Connect is a newer device with better hardware than the older version of the Connect. If it’s a Connect made after 2015 it is not a legacy device and in May it will continue on as a Modern device. It’s the older version of the Connect (previously named the ZP90 or ZP80) which won’t be getting updates after May.

Yep… that’s my problem too

I responded to your other thread, too, but yes, you would have two systems on your network, a modern system and a legacy system. They’d be separate.

I shall now be returning my recent SONOS soundbar purchase and look to invest in a different system that will last longer than 3 years. I have spent hundreds of pounds on SONOS but no more. I am now an EX CUSTOMER 
Very bad form SONOS and most disappointing. I actually quite liked your product as well. 

Yeah, agreed, it does indeed make the whole smart home concept look silly, and very fragile, Sonos have opened a Pandora’s box.

I would think the whole of the smart market will be watching the Sonos story closely to see how it pans out.

For me it’s definitely an eye opener, as now I’ll be looking at every piece of tech and thinking what’s the life span likely to be. Not just in terms of how well is it made, how robust is the support, or even how trustworthy is the company. Sonos has proven in the last 48 hours that none of those things are relevant.

I’ll be spending significantly less on tech in the future. Stand alone devices is a definite, and certainly not an eco system.