Is the CEO satisfied with this mess

So have you spoken to customer support staff (level-1 or level-2) since the new Sonos App was released a couple of months ago? Were they not able to assist you?

The CEO has the ability to change or do something about this mess but he doesn’t. So infer from that what you will.  

I have not been able to get through to support and wonder why they are left struggling to pick up the pieces. They clearly were neither prepared nor able to cope with such a massive issue.

When I did go online to support the answer was fundamentally - phone us and we’ll try and help!

I am afraid that for such a huge problem affecting so many people this simply is not good enough! Equally as a customer spending hours on the phone trying to re connect all items is not a thing I expect to have to do.

It is also worth noting that the share price has collapsed from c 17.8 in May to about 14.4 just now! An almost 25% collapse in share price shows what the market thinks of the company for making such a huge mess of this issue. What little old me thinks is probably irrelevant to the CEO, but stand me alongside thousands more and the markets take note!

Meh. The share price was less than $10 in October 2023 and more than $40 in April 2021. There are much more important things than the app that drive the share price.

That's not a collapse. it depends how micro you look at it (and what your agenda is in citing share prices). If you isolate the last six months, it looks like a plummeting trajectory. There’s no doubt the app has played a big part. But take a look at the 1Y chart and you’ll see it was way below that price from August to November last year. Look at the 5Y chart and, aside from the massive spike during the pandemic/lockdowns when streaming music (and TV) really exploded for a couple of years, the price is looking better than pre-Covid, although largely flat overall since. Clearly you’d want your investment to go up rather than remain flat, and the Ace was meant to boost things, but the share price always seems to hover between USD$11 and $19. 

Tales of Sonos’ demise are greatly exaggerated… That said, Spence will have some explaining to do on 7th or 8th August when the next quarter’s results are presented. 

I think you will find what matters to the CEO is whether the board and the investors are happy with his progress. They are the people he answers to and as long as they are happy with him and his explanations then I suspect he will be satisfied.

Personally I am not happy with his attitude towards customers and partners or the culture he will be influencing/creating within Sonos, but I am not the one who is paying his wages or setting the objectives and milestones he needs to deliver.

I would hope he has some serious explaining to do and consequences, but maybe this was already raised by him with his task masters as a required short-term upset/upheaval to achieve the companies long term goals.

Stranger things have happened and there are multiple times I have thought a company board/investors should eject senior members from a company as they appear to cause more harm than good in my eyes, but for reasons known only to them they don’t.

It’s too bad that Amazon Prime Days are over. I’m to the point of shopping for a new sound system. Better yet, I may just go into the basement and get my trusty Sony boombox and use it instead of dealing with the Sonos software. I’m so tired of having problems with my Sonos system!

It’s only my personal opinion, but I’ve served on many boards in my time, and I don’t see any board condoning this type of move. I’m a firm believer in the conspiracy v cock up theory, and it’s far more likely that such a huge impact was neither foreseen nor welcomed! There doesn’t seem to have been any significant or robust testing pre release, and I am quite certain that had they known in advance they would not have released such a buggy version

Audio tends to be a buy once, use forever purchase. The immediate short term cash value of current customers to a company is relatively low. Compared to an old world audio system, a SONOS system might be expanded until it fills the house, but it then becomes forever. The main value of current customers to the SONOS company is potential referrals.

I guess I am a typical customer, and started smallish ie 1 room, with Sonos- a home surround system. I then expanded it progressively around the whole house in the lounge dining room office den etc.

i can well imagine people just starting out on with Sonos will think twice, as will those who haven’t bought yet!

So the impact on the customer base is potentially huge and the Board should be very concerned. In this business competition is immense now and customer loyalty increasingly non existant.

I've written to the Ceo 

My system is useless now 

Dear Patrick

Since the latest app release my sonos system is more or less unusable. 

I can't queue music.. Adjust volume.. Connect to my music library 

I'm getting speakers and sets constantly dropping 

The fact I've invested so much of my money in sonos for years.. Even upgrading to stay current meaning having to get rid of perfectly good play 5s..costing thousands of pounds and right now have an unusable system.. It's not acceptable 

I had a party last week which was a disaster... The music was cutting out all around the house.. My new move 2 hardly worked 

People couldn't add a track 

My phone wouldn't adjust the volume 

This is actually affecting people's lives... They spend money on what they love... Music to play with their friends.... To then end up in this situation is downright disgraceful 

What are you doing about it?

Why can't you offer a roll on back and work on the updates in your own time and test properly before you launch 

I actually work in IT as a CTO...... This is by far one of the worst rollouts I've witnessed 

You're not owning it and you're not making appropriate actions... You're not saying sorry and giving people reassurance.... If it carries on people will lose trust in Sonos and try and move away from it, this could be the worst disaster Sonos has experienced and lead to it's eventual demise... Unless you start doing something now!!!! 

It's simply not good enough

14 sonos products including arc.. Eras.. Move 2

Currently useless bits of plastic costing thousands of pounds 

Good letter, but I’m sure he has had dozens similar, including the one I sent him. All we get is a standard response from a member of his staff, not even from him personally!

My guess is that a ‘roll back’ is not possible for technical reasons otherwise why put the whole company in jeopardy in this reckless way. The share price has fallen 25% since this fiasco began, a pretty huge amount for a largish company, and certainly customers are leaving in droves if this board is anything to go by. These are the loyal customers who bought more and more Sonos products . They won’t be buying any more and words spread like wild fire for a problem this serious with a tech product.

I hope that a few hundred headset sales are worth it!

Peter

@Taracats,
I can’t see what the new Sonos App has to do with the speakers cutting out? The App is a ‘remote’ not a music player.

So just as an example, a user can start the music playing on their Sonos products using the Sonos App and then go onto close it …or even switch off the mobile device and the music will carry on playing. If the music is cutting out after that, then that infers there are local LAN/WAN connection issues between the audio source and the playing speaker(s) … if there are such connectivity issues, then there’s a possibility too that’s why a user might also be encountering issues with their Sonos App aswell.

it really doesn’t strike me that the Sonos App is entirely at fault here - the things mentioned seem to infer there are other issues involved that maybe causing some (if not all) of the problems seen.

What is clear is that after some months now there are still problems that make our systems just metal and plastic garbage! That is not good enough so the company need to find a solution to getting the last decent version of the app back into circulation.

At least then people have a choice of sticking with the new if their issues are so so or going back if their issues are still huge.

Well the new Sonos App is working okay here to play music on my devices and it seems to be getting much better with each new Sonos update - I can’t see Sonos stepping back to the old S2 App now - it’s been out of circulation since early May. If they were going to bring it back they would likely have done that by now.

If you’re having difficulties with the App and your own setup then it maybe best to reproduce the issue and immediately submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and then contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to help you resolve the matter.