Trade up scheme

Let’s be honest here. Sonos just wants to kill the second hand market. The 30% discount is so that when you upgrade,  someone else also buys new instead of your second hand. Sonos wants to shorten the replacement cycle and kill the second hand market. It’s about $$$.

I read someone saying that 5ghz support was important. Are you kidding me? 5ghz is only short range, it doesn’t go through walls and is only useful for very high bandwith applications. Not audio and certainly not the lo-fi audio Sonos transmits.

There is no reason to stimulate the trading in of my connect:amp for example. It works perfectly and really needs no more updates or anything really. What are you going to add? I bought it to power my built-in bathroom speakers and control it wirelessly, that’s what it does and i don’t need other functionality. There is no functional update that Sonos can give the new AMP that will cause me to switch.

From my perspective, they don’t need to further update the Sonos app either.

How about these technological pioneers add DTS support to their home cinema stuff?

They aren’t trying to kill the entire second hand market since trade up is only available on certain products.  If this was their sole goal, then it would make more sense to offer trade up discounts on more products, or perhaps host their own second hand market to profit from.  Sonos has said that they want customers to experience more modern Sonos speakers rather than old stuff.  I can somewhat see that, but I think a lot of it has to do with reducing support costs for the older units, and allowing for new functionality that the old stuff can’t do.

Sonos uses 5Ghz for home theatre setups, where short range makes sense and you need to sync the audio with video.  The Connect:amp didn’t have 5Ghz, so had to be direct wired if used for rear speakers.  The new Amp has 5Ghz, and can perform the task wirelesssly.

For a bathroom application, this is pretty much true.  I use a Connect:amp for my garage speakers and it does the job just fine.  I don’t see a need to trade it in right now.  However, I used to use the Connect:amp for backyard speakers and it wasn’t adequate.  Not enough power.  I also wanted to use a TV out there at times, and the Connect:amp could do the audio for that .  The Sonos Amp was a great upgrade for that space.

Killing the resale market as a Sonos motive is silly to even propose.

If that was the Sonos goal they could bought a decent sized pile of old Sonos gear off ebay for what they paid me in rebates that only got rid of one device each.

I come from a background of buying separates that allow me to choose how and when I want to upgrade depending on budget and need. Mostly, I wont want to upgrade. My main speakers at home are 20 years old. I dknt need to change them and have no fear that B&W might try to brick them. I probably come from a different era but I dont regard hi fi as the same as buying a mobile phone and no I don't want to change every few years. I hadnt realised Sonos viewed me as a cash cow and that they would change the terms if I didnt produce enough milk to try to force me to. 

grazey I’m missing what Sonos is forcing you to do?

Everything I have seen on the Trade-Up program is optional and voluntary. What am I missing?

Sonos is t forcing me - yet, but it is coming. They are a company I no longer trust. You completely evaded the points I actually did make such as the aim of controlling the market, turning customers into cash cows, the fact that its not ethical to brick tech that works. 

Personally I have thrown away lots of gear that I no longer needed and nobody else in the family wanted. I’ve always liked to keep up with tech and gadgets in the past so ended up giving away older stuff to family and friends, but some stuff nobody wanted and some stuff was just no use any more…

I threw away 3 perfectly good and working video recorders because nobody used them any more as DVD had taken over and hard disc recorders were the norm.

I threw away a couple of 32 inch wide screen CRT televisions because everything had now gone to flat screen technology and HD.

I threw away a couple of minidisc player/recorders because I no longer needed them and everyone was now ripping to MP3/FLAC onto hard disks etc.

I threw away at least 4 computer monitors.

That is just off the top of my head, there’s probably a lot more. These were all still in working order but were no use to me or anyone else any more. They all went to local dump/recycling centre.

That’s how the developed economies with stable/declining populations achieve GDP growth rates, and we are now starting to see the probable cost of these antics.

Instead of learning from this, in India we are aping this behaviour, and so is China probably - human nature is the same across the world except for minor detail differences. And in this big picture Sonos and its schemes are fleabites on a flea in a huge game reserve.

I suspect we will all keep doing this until nature bites back.

I didn’t evade. I ignored your opinions - not points, as points have facts behind them, opinions have feelings.

no you ignored my feelings based on facts. Sonos seeking to control the market is a fact backed up by experience. Sonos killing me using my iphone is a fact, not an opinion. Perhaps you are not capable of producing a coherent argument?