As a Sonos owner who owns thousands of dollars worth of their stuff, I strongly discourage anyone else from buying their stuff anymore.
They released a major new app version this year that's really unstable. And even when it works, it has terrible usability. The feedback has been overwhelmingly negative but the company doesn't care.
They turned off all the async customer service options (like email) and the phone wait time was 5 hours last time I tried to call for help. Their CEO's email is posted on their website but messages there just get ignored too.
Now with this clause removed, and their patent war with Google lost, maybe they're dying and desperate for new revenue sources? Who knows.
The company has really gone downhill and doesn't deserve your money. I've never had such poor experiences with a luxury company. Usually products this expensive come from companies that generally give a fuck about their customers. Not so with Sonos. Stay far far away.
> They released a major new app version this year that's really unstable. And even when it works, it has terrible usability. The feedback has been overwhelmingly negative but the company doesn't care.
As I understand it, the exact same version also removed all accessibility for blind people, leaving many unable to use their Sonos devices at all.
I like the Sonos speaker. But the app is absolutely terrible and buggy. It takes quite literally a full minute to play a song initially and often times failed to load /play altogether. Oddly the app worked much better with my Apple Music subscription years ago and has been just getting progressively worse. Someone needs to provide a hack so I can just use Sonos like a regular dumb Bluetooth speaker tbh.
I'm in a similar boat... my speakers got so much worse after the app update. The old version was still buggy, but wasn't THIS bad.
Anyway, I think there might be some third-party firmware (or at least frontends) for Sonos speakers? I haven't tried them out yet (too lazy), but if you're the tinkering type, might be worth looking into? And if you find a good one, please do report back :)
Someone like the EFF needs to take this to court. Surely it cannot be legal to make a one-sided change to an agreement about an already-purchased product!
In a cooler alternate reality, you'd simply request your money back, online. The business would be required to come to your place at a convenient time of your choosing to collect the remains of the device.
Honestly, based on the description in the article, I don't think there would be anything to sue over:
> The new T&Cs state that data may be shared with "vendors or agents working on our behalf for the purposes described in this statement".
This may well be the first step in changing the agreement on new sales. I'm guessing there is no shortage of attorneys that would be happy to sue them if they tried to change it on previous purchases.
I have a Sonos portable speaker that works via bluetooth. I bought it because I couldn't find anything else on the market with a replaceable battery. Having to connect to the Internet to set it up in the Sonos app irritated me, but that was something I could live with, and I can play music directly from the Spotify app without having to use the app from Sonos. I'm happy with the sound quality and was thinking about getting a Sonos sound bar, but with the T&C changes I don't think I'll be doing that anymore.
IMHO, their sound bars aren't great to begin with. I had/have a Beam, Arc, Sub, & Sub Mini, among others. You're not missing much. I actually prefer the sound coming out of my $50 Vizio soundbar from Target.
Not all their products are poor. I also have a Sonos Move portable speaker that I like a LOT and bring on all my road trips. It's just their soundbars that are really underwhelming, even after their app-based Trueplay tuning or whatever it's called. In my experience, even a One or a pair of Ones sound better than an Arc + Sub, IMO.
In addition, Sonos's software is pretty janky and brings their whole ecosystem down. And if they ever go bankrupt, all the hardware will be bricked :( My dream setup would be decent speakers that have no proprietary app, just open firmware/APIs, that support Spotify Connect out-of-the-box but can have other integrations added later.
The only reason I still keep my Sonos stuff these days is because it's a sunk cost :( Otherwise I kinda regret purchasing them... (except for the Move, which I still and probably always will dearly love).
Well, I was considering getting some Sonos speakers for my new home, but now probably not.
Any recommendations for multi-room alternatives? I have a pretty substantial personal collection of ripped music, so I suppose Bluetooth would be sufficient to cast from my phone or HTPC, but something with Tidal support would be ideal, since I'm paying for it.
Debian is rock solid platform, I never have to tinker once they are setup. Depending on the speakers and what location I use USB dacs and speaker amps(these have gotten SO good in the last 5 years, topping, smsl etc). All of the pieces are interchangeable , flexible, and reusable.
It really feels like companies' Terms & Conditions just serve as canaries at this point, only indicating to users when they begin to be taken advantage of.
Like, why even say something as clear-cut as "Sonos does not and will not sell personal information about our customers" – a future tense phrase, promising they won't change? Well, because it's completely toothless. Clearly. You lure the customers on false promises and unilaterally change it later.
Figures. After 20 years of positive recommendations from friends and family, and years of hemming and hawing, I finally bit the bullet and decked out my home with Sonos.
Six months later they redesign the app and hugely cripple the experience. And now they're going to sell my data. What is our recourse? These are expensive pieces of equipment installed everywhere in our home, and some of them have microphones. This can't be legal, can it? Can we form a class action? Because they never would have gotten a dime from me if I considered it possible that they would be able to start selling my data (some of these things have microphones in them, ffs)
Can you backdate the app? I've taken to even turning off auto updates from Google Play (would be nice to leave some on for anything I care about security but whatever). No more random "yeah we redesigned everything and now it sucks" surprises. But, some apps phone home and require updates.
Maybe there's some way to do it manually, but not an official way that I know of. I tried to contact the company many times to do just that and all were ignored.
FYI, a very similar thing happened less than a decade ago, when they moved from software version "S1" to "S2" and stopped providing support (which is pretty much bricking, because they're all app-based) to their older devices. They eventually relented and changed course after a huge uproar from their earliest customers.
This time around, they did the same thing but without the major version rebrand. It's not an "S3", just a stealth forced update.
I really hope someone hacks in third-party firmware for these things. The hardware is fine, but their software and support are just atrocious.
If you're on Android, it's quite simple really. You have to uninstall the app completely from the phone (any other accounts or work profiles or anything will interfere) or use an app cloner that can change the metadata. Anyway, you get the apk from the Internet and hope it's trustworthy then install and disable updates in the play store. I've done this countless times. Only downside is losing any data not able to be exported/imported/clouded.
Well, the app is also tied to specific firmware versions, and both communicate to the Sonos cloud. It's not clear to me whether downgrading the app will make it lose connection with the speakers (which itself is quite a hassle to re-setup), and whether the two combined would be able to talk to the cloud for very long after that.
Well I was considering Sonos for a future upgrade but that’s now out.
I hate that these types of changes are the norm. I remember reading that Subarus sell your location data, including to Sirius XM, who everyone knows is responsible for those annoying radio trials no one asked for and tons of junk mail begging you to subscribe. And then there’s forced acceptance of terms from using Apple’s App Store or Blizzard’s Battle.net or Rokus or TP Link updates for routers and so on, which means consumers can’t avoid accepting such changes because they already paid for a bunch of things.
All of this should be illegal and there needs to be retroactive fines and jail time. But there’s no organization or movement for it.
Where does this leave people who bought the IKEA Symfonisk range, which are effectively low spec Sonos devices made in partnership? I wonder if IKEA would honour returns on the basis of this change?
This is the company that had a "recycling mode" that did nothing except brick the hardware, ensuring that the speakers could not be used second hand, then encouraging people to bring the bricked machines to recycling centers who could do nothing with them.
No one should be surprised that Sonos is a scummy company, if you are you only have yourself to blame.
They released a major new app version this year that's really unstable. And even when it works, it has terrible usability. The feedback has been overwhelmingly negative but the company doesn't care.
They turned off all the async customer service options (like email) and the phone wait time was 5 hours last time I tried to call for help. Their CEO's email is posted on their website but messages there just get ignored too.
Now with this clause removed, and their patent war with Google lost, maybe they're dying and desperate for new revenue sources? Who knows.
The company has really gone downhill and doesn't deserve your money. I've never had such poor experiences with a luxury company. Usually products this expensive come from companies that generally give a fuck about their customers. Not so with Sonos. Stay far far away.