At first glance, it seems to me they want to prevent users trying to get a double profit out of it by making the old unit unsellable once you received your 30% discount on a new one.

I have no problem with people buying new devices when their old ones still function, we do that all the time with phones, cars, you name it. I also like the idea of a trade in program. But intentionally bricking perfectly good devices? I agree, that is a bridge too far. That is not a trade in program, there's not even an actual “trade” happening! It is just an incentive to buy a new device and trash the old one. I highly doubt that many people will “responsibly recycle” their old player. 

A real trade-up program would have you send your device to Sonos so they could actually recycle it. And even if they would just silently trash it, at least it would not look like such an obvious money-grab.

In a time where many of us are concerned about our climate and the tremendous amount of waste our society generates, a program targeted at consumerism, that actively generates e-waste, is not a really good move, Sonos, however much I like your brand.

Furthermore, since Sonos devices, even the older ones, retain their value quite well, you would be better off selling your device second hand. You would have a very good chance of getting more than 30% of a new device out of it, and you will make someone else happy with a perfectly fine piece of hardware, instead of creating a brick that is of no use to anyone.

What? 

Give us your money - we don’t care where you trash your ‘old’ devices.

Sounds like Wall Street ethics to me.

Yes, I'd rather that the scheme involved it being sent back so they could at least give the equipment to a good home. (Possibly some charity that wouldn't ordinarily be able to afford one). 

Hopefully they'll rethink this odd scheme! 

Not seen this in the UK yet.  I too don’t like the idea of disabling a working speaker.

Am I the only one thinking the time is approaching where the older units will soon be retired.  Sonos must have to take quite a hit on developments to keep the compatability going.  We’ve seen the retirement of controllers and docks, what next. Or when

Hi everyone, thanks for sharing your feedback on the Trade Up program, I’ll make sure to share it with the involved teams.

This program is designed in many ways for people who have some of our oldest speakers and components that are missing out on some features. These are first generation products which in some cases more than 10 years old. Over recent years we’ve launched new products like Sonos One, Beam, Amp, Port, and now Move that offer new experiences like voice control and Apple AirPlay2. This program is an offer to allow long-standing customers to trade up to these powerful, modern Sonos experiences.

Personally, I think a great use of it would be trading up a ZonePlayer 80 into a Port, which would get better specs all around, a better DAC, and add AirPlay 2 as a feature. We’ve seen that whenever a new product or product replacement launches,  we’re always asked if there’s a trade up option just like this. In the past, we haven’t had one, which leads to people upgrading and storing old devices in closets or getting rid of them while buying new devices at full price.

As a part of this offer, we want to encourage responsible disposal of older devices. The best way to do that is to make recycling a condition of receiving the discount. We are prioritizing environmental responsibility and encourage our users to responsibly recycle their deactivated products through local e-recyclers. You can find certified e-recyclers here: https://www.google.com/maps/search/e-waste+recycling It’s less environmentally friendly to force everyone to ship these older units to us first than it is to recycle the devices responsibly at a local center.

I understand the reasons but surely these items don't need recycling and therefore the proper thing to do is not to deactivate them. If they are not going back to you anyway let the owner do what they want with them. I appreciate some may sell them the on thus meaning you don't have a potential sale further down the line but dressing it up as ethical  by saying you encourage people to dispose of them responsibly isn't the right way forward. 

Surely you can come up with a better alternative?

The team certainly worked on a lot of options for how best to make this program work. While we’re proud of how long our products last, we don’t really want these old, second-hand products to be the first experience a new customer has with Sonos. We hope that in upgrading to the latest and greatest, people will recycle responsibly, and we feel it’s the right decision to make recycling a condition of this offer. The program itself is also entirely optional, and merely an offer for people with eligible devices.

Ok, I've missed a bit here. How is it a condition of the offer? Do they need to supply evidence that's it's been recycled properly (although reusing it is still the most ethical solution)?

Cheers

Finally someone who cares, see my post also: https://en.community.sonos.com/components-228996/sonos-contributing-to-electronic-waste-6831622#post16370430

No evidence of recycling is needed, the retailer get a £15 credit / contribution to the recycling fee but you know retailers will throw away in general waste and make an extra £15 profit

Where does anyone get the idea that the retailer is responsible for the recycling?  The recycling is expected to be done by the consumer.  

In Sonos’ T&C’s that have been sent to retailers. The customer brings in the old component and the retailer has to record and send off the S/N, then the retailer ‘recycles’ dumps the product

Not according to this (from Sonos rep Ryan S) (bold by me):

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-228996/sonos-contributing-to-electronic-waste-6831622#post16370458

We are prioritizing environmental responsibility and encourage our users to responsibly recycle their deactivated products through local e-recyclers. Lists of local certified e-recyclers can be found online, such as here: https://www.google.com/maps/search/e-waste+recycling

Certified e-recyclers adhere to sustainability policies and practices for managing electronics, including the reuse of materials, energy recovery and responsible disposal. Recycling locally is more eco-friendly and sustainable than packing up products and shipping them back to us. That said, our goal is to keep players out of the landfill, so if local recycling isn’t an option, customers are welcome to ship it back to Sonos at our expense.

Note also, Sonos will do the recycling if the consumer cannot recycle locally and they will pay for the shipping.  I guess this thread is all for naught. 

Recycling the older products is a condition of the agreement for receiving the discount, and recycling locally is more eco-friendly and sustainable than packing up and shipping back to us. According to the terms and conditions of the program outlined here: https://www.sonos.com/en-us/legal/tradeup-terms Emphasis added to the specific note.

PRODUCT RECYCLING

ISSUANCE OF THE DISCOUNT CREDIT IS YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE CONSIDERATION FOR PLACING YOUR SONOS PRODUCT IN RECYCLE MODE. ONCE YOU HAVE INITIATED THE RECYCLING PROCESS AND RECEIVED YOUR DISCOUNT CREDIT IN THE “MY ACCOUNT” SECTION OF SONOS.COM, YOU SHOULD FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS IN THE TRADE UP TAB OF THE “MY ACCOUNT” SECTION TO SHIP YOUR PRODUCT BACK TO SONOS OR DELIVER THE PRODUCT TO A CERTIFIED ELECTRONICS RECYCLER FOLLOWING DEACTIVATION OF THE PRODUCT.

ONCE YOU HAVE INITIATED THE RECYCLING PROCESS, YOUR SONOS PRODUCT WILL NO LONGER BE USABLE. BY PARTICIPATING IN THE TRADE UP PROGRAM, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOUR SONOS PRODUCT WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION AS A SPEAKER OR NETWORK DEVICE AND DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTIES RELATED TO THE SONOS PRODUCT, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, WITH RESPECT TO YOUR SONOS PRODUCTS, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT AND THE IMPLIED CONDITION OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY. YOU AGREE THAT YOU WILL SHIP YOUR PRODUCT BACK TO SONOS OR RECYCLE YOUR SONOS PRODUCT WITH A CERTIFIED ELECTRONICS RECYCLER WITHIN TWENTY-ONE DAYS OF INITIATION OF THE RECYCLING PROCESS.

There are also retailers that are participating in this program. They handle the process slightly differently, but they are also required to recycle the products responsibly, per our agreement with them.

Clearly you missed the point of this thread. Sonos are encouraging people to recycle items that don't rneed recycling. As Ryan has already said, shipping items back to them is also not an environmental friendly option. Recycling is great but not for the sake of it. That's the point.

Uh, since when is recycling a bad thing?  Also, if you don't want them recycled, don't participate in the program.  You do have a choice.

My previous post was only a few sentences long so not sure how you still missed my point. I'll try and reword it for clarity.

1) Recycling is a good thing. Recycling things that don't need recycling is a bad thing.

2) To add to that, people do have a choice but Sonos is encouraging bad practice (see point 1)

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Exactly. When it comes to sustainability, re-use trumps recycling.

A Sonos speaker needs recycling when it no longer functions. At that point Sonos will likely not be able to remotely disable it, so you will lose out on 30% discount.

Bricking a perfectly re-usable Sonos just to recycle it is not a sustainability practice. It is a practice to sell more units. Saying that you would like to make sure that people new to Sonos get “the best possible experience” is also a thinly veiled way of saying “we prefer to sell new units”. I have no problem with for-profit, publicly traded companies trying to maximize their profit, but I'd rather they be upfront about it instead of disguising it as some sort of noble gesture.

Regarding the “shipping has an even bigger impact”, true, but I doubt many people are actually going to take the trouble of taking their old equipment to be responsibly recycled. Most of them will end up as landfill. So in that case, yes, I'd rather have some way to guarantee local recycling, or pay to ship it to Sonos.

The only real benefit I can see here is when Sonos inevitably comes to the point where they can no longer support the older devices because their hardware will not support any further developments in the firmware. Then, if and when the functionality of the ecosystem is has evolved to a point where my gen1 Play 5s have become effectively useless, I might consider having them disabled to buy newer units at a discount.

So indeed, I have a choice, and for the reasons mentioned above I will not participate in it, until there is no other viable option for my hardware. This is my personal use case of course. I do agree that if an older player ends up in a closet for years (but why?), only to be thrown out later, then it is better to recycle it and trade up.

These units are more than a decade old in some cases.  People are going to buy new stuff anyway. Encouraging them to recycle 10+ year old devices rather than pitch them out is far better than Apple encouraging you to toss your phone and buy the new model once every year.    As to “recycling things that do not need recycling”, let’s face it: These decade old devices aren’t going to run forever, and a recycling offer is more than most electronics companies offer for near end-of-life units.  Good of Sonos to get out ahead of it. 

@Ryan S 

The insert shows products that are eligible for the 30% discount coupon through BestBuy. I find it odd that the Play 3 and Play 1 (especially the Play 1) are missing from the BB list of eligible products.

Question (I realize you may not be able to comment on anything):

1. Why would Sonos leave those products off the list?
2. Did retailers decide (with Sonos blessing)  which products they will accept?
3. Did retailers decide (with Sonos blessing) not to include products for which they still have inventory to sell 

Note: Just an observation...there seems to be several threads on this topic. Why not combine into one?

Cheers!

Eventually people will buy new stuff but not necessarily yet. My Play 5 gen 1 works just fine and I'd like to think it's supported for a few good years yet. Encouraging me to "trade up" under the guise of it being environmentally friendly is just a contradiction in itself.

Also, I don't want to compare Sonos to Apple or any other company.  Judging bad practise against worse bad practise gets you nowhere.

I still think there's a better solution that they can come up with.

You do know “encouraging” is not a gun to the head, right? Of all the policies to complain about, you pick one that encourages recycling?  First world problems indeed. 

You see it as encouraging recycling and I see it as encouraging waste. So I guess we'll agree to disagree.

Sadly though it's not a first world problem. Just a world problem.

I don’t seen how the Sonos tradeup program is a problem for the world.  Are you saying the volume of Sonos speakers that are recycled instead of used is going to have a significant impact on the environment?  Or maybe suggesting that the program is going to encourage people to recycle instead of reuse in general...and that’s going to damage the environment in a noticeable way?

Hey AjTrek1, the same units are eligible through us as through all of the other retailers who are participating in the Sonos Trade Up offer. I can’t speak specifically to why certain devices were picked for the program, though the determination was made to start with the Play:5 gen1, Connect, and Connect:Amp. For ease, the ZP80 and ZP100 are included in the Connect and Connect:Amp product family. These are all devices that were originally designed around or longer than 10 years ago.