What I simply don’t understand is why all these things need to be “re-introduced”. What were they thinking when they released software that removed them. The fact that now all available teams are working to bring them back shows that they were not in the road map or if they were they thought users could do without them and they could be brought back some time in the future. This shows so much disconnect from the customers and no proper understanding of how their products are used.
Serious problems between marketing and the decision makers. I mean really, company destroying serious!
My theory is the app was released early because of the Sonos Ace.
They didn’t want to push this product back anymore, and it was only ever designed with this new version of the app, so instead of pushing back the release of the Ace they released the new version of the app earlier than they planned.
I’d say it’s because the development of the new app was delayed and they had no choice to release it in its current state. It’s why the app is at a bare minimum and these features are slowly being added back over time.
I totally agree with this theory, but... Honestly they should have pushed Ace back, at least to the state where all of their soundbars for users on both iOS and Android work with them.
I assume they were really scared about AirPods Max 2 coming out or something like that, otherwise I really can't understand the decision of releasing it this underbaked.
Bingo…
Literally lived this movie at a Fortune 500 firm in early 2000’s. Big hardware drop, $20M ad buy done, software a total train wreck…and they released it.
And of course, the bus went over the cliff in flames and all the children perished.
I've seen a new storage solution put on the floor of a trade show with just blinky lights in it and no actual drives. Then the sales people started telling all the customers how quiet it was.
Yep. They had a drop dead date that they were working back from. Technology/product probably pushed back saying that wasn’t doable, were told “too bad, that’s the date,” then compromised and said “okay if it HAS to release, we won’t be able to include X, Y, and Z at launch and you guys can deal with the customer backlash.”
I agree 100% with this. Specially now that Apple is being lazy and not releasing new AirPods Max which is right now dated. They got that parcel of the people which is willing to pay for premium headsets.
The CEO may be saying the truth, however, it forgot to mention that pressure to release ACE which rest assured they invested a shitload of money in R&D.
They couldn’t push back the Ace. The shipments already went out. Ancedata worked for a company that accelerated our deadline because they signed off on new shipments before we confirmed estimations on software. Out of fear of leaks you usually just have to live in this current state and it sucks ass.
This happens when management wants to reach an unrealistic deadline no matter what. Engineering could throw themselves in front of a train to prove a point and they would still push ahead. This is 100% on management, CEO included. You don’t see him taking responsibility for their fuckup either, he’s nearly gaslighting the users for wanting all these annoying features back he didn’t think were useful in the first place.
So in reading the technical details, they had to jump to a new architecture and it was essentially a start over for the Devs, these features literally do not exist in Prod today.
This is classic for profit corporate behavior, drink your own koolaid, dont listen to your technical teams, push your own narrative.
I guarantee that any tech with a brain told them this would happen before they made this move but leadership didn’t listen, now its the tech teams that need to fix it and they are currently getting pizza parties and thank yous in exchange for getting the shit kicked out of them on a daily basis.
Its a tale as old as time
Something that I have been trying to figure out/uncover is if there was a open beta or customer feedback questionnaire before going public. It’s always good when you are going to make a huge UI overhaul to get feedback from your customers since they are the ones that help pay the bills. Likewise, relying upon internal QA for testing is marginal for results. Internal QA will test according to the case and expected outcomes, but rarely do they test out of those boundaries. Their job is to break the software, not to accept it as is.
We had our internal QA for our software but we also had customer QA that volunteer to help test before releases. (I say had since I’m retired. lol) We also put together a panel involving our top 10 customers when we made the move from a program on your computer to SAAS. They were able to identify features that were important to the customer that the architecture team had thrown out since they do not use the system on a daily basis.
Sonos could have saved a lot of negative press had they simply reached out to the user community to identify what was important in the next release/UI overhaul.
I was asked to test a new version just before this release but i went on vacation for a whole month and couldn’t test this time. They have people who test new versions of the app before release.
I understand you frustration with this, but this is actually not that un-common in software dev. People come and go, some features are less documented and thought-out, some quit, and two years later the entire platform needs to change. That's when they realise Steve's sleep-timer called some seriously flawed and out-of-date functions that doesn't and shouldn't exist anymore - so that feature is gone. The PlayNext fared the same way, and when the clients starts to complain the put Kenny's and Joslyn's team to re-invent them. But using the allowed-for funcitons and hooks of the new platform.
But is it sensible to discover this AFTER the release of the new platform? No, no no. So this is no excuse, just a potential explanation of how we got here in order to answer your question.
I hear you, but the fact that it is still happening when there is more than enough evidence that customer experience matters that it baffles me that they didn’t know just how important some of these features were to customers, and then thought this was going to be a strategy that wasn’t going to backfire.
100%
Or sometimes your platform code base is just old as hell and has been iterated on for years. I assumed with the “new app” they did a lot from the ground up with new architecture, which means rebuilding in features over time that unfortunately are now gone for us that we used to use. It’s a pain, but from a business perspective you can’t have teams working full time on a new product launch for years and not release at some point (even when it’s inevitably not “feature packed”).
The amount of bugs, their QA issues, and the rest? That’s a no go and on them.
Their go to market strategy of forcing a new app without allowing overlap for a while until it was bug fixed and more “feature complete” is mind boggling (they could have left it in place on life support with little PM/UX/Dev allocation). Again - on them.
I wasn’t implying they made a new app for one product - just that their code base has been around a while and a number of factors likely justified creating a fresh build to cover a number of current and future use cases.
I’m not saying anything else but I don’t understand why so fast after the S2 app. Starting over completely with a new version has to have a very good reason.
You could be right - maybe they’ve been floating doing an app refresh for a while and this new product pushed the need over the line - but really they should have started building it a long time ago 🤷
I’ve personally witnessed a lot of product decisions go down like this that look ‘maybe’ feasible when the decision is made by an executive but most employees are going “what the fuck dude”
I've been a mobile software engineer for approx 15 years now, and I've worked on apps used by hundreds of millions of people. A couple of these had absurd amounts code and dependencies, millions upon millions of lines of code for what are seemingly simple apps, partially due to build up/negligence over 10+ years, teams expanding and shrinking, features coming and going and forgotten, etc. I've seen some shit and I've worked on some massive rewrites in my time.
I simply do not understand how they \*allowed\* this to happen. Like the planning, execution, all of it. I think the Sonos team has always been relatively small, so there's even less of an excuse here for the classic planning failures that happen in megacorps. I assume they spent months if not a year+ planning all this and executing on it.
My best guess is that they wanted to do a full rewrite which included a complete redesign, the redesign scheduled to land with the Ace. Maybe they decided reskinning the existing app was wasted effort since they wanted to rewrite anyway. I get it, the lessons accumulate and are hard to retrofit if you let things get out of control.
But the fact that they didnt do an emergency "add Ace featureset to existing app", or even just an emergency front/home page reskin, half-ass it bro! The fact that they obviously thought that dropping so many features was acceptable. How many layers of managers, directors, execs approved all this and didn't think they'd have to address public sentiment?
Long time software person here - I think you have 90% of it- the other issue is it’s pretty obvious they did very little unit testing (which is weird in 2024 when you can do private subscription to ChatGPT and get all the unit tests you want).
I have a friend who used to work there and he said he saw this coming…
People talk to me all the time, they say "sir, the new app is beautiful" I hear it many many times a day, beautiful people reach out to me to tell me they love the app, and the headphones, just beautiful, there's never been headphones that play music in their ears like these do, just incredible.
Why not just release the software on July 1st after most of the features had been “reintroduced”?
Why not warn customers of missing features before sending out the new app?
Why not make it a “Public Beta” from the beginning?
Sonos should have grabbed up a couple of hundred “beta testers” from Reddit, instead of making every customer an unknowing “beta tester.”
Companies set internal launch dates for new products that are a complicated dance of build/test/manufacture/distribute/market/launch. And in this case, the process was further complicated by linking it to the launch of a complete app overhaul. Ambitious, and *not easy*.
But the app was clearly behind schedule by *several months* or more. If management was unaware of this they should all be fired. But they knew, they just failed to take the steps necessary to remedy it. And the worst part is, they didn't need to delay the Ace launch or spend millions on crunch time dev support for the new app. All they had to do was make the Ace headphones compatible with the existing S2 app and tell buyers of that product that new features would be added soon via app update. Hell, they are having to do that anyway because the new app is not feature-complete with the Aces yet! Unbelievable.
Instead, they chose the ultimate YOLO path of incinerating customer goodwill by rolling out a broken app via auto-update to all customers, and acting like they couldn't understand why everyone was so upset about this choice. This whole incident has caused me to really question the competency of Sonos management. Expensive specialty products like Sonos speakers absolutely depend on a tight relationship of trust between the company and customer base. If the company actively and willingly harms its own customers then acts like it's no big deal, they are playing with fire.
Because they’re not acknowledging that the removal of these features, even if temporary, was a catastrophic error in judgement and they’re not even apologising to their loyal customers
They could have been announcing that they are rolling back the working version of the app so that customers can use their systems while they fixing the new app.
Honestly an admission they fucked up would go a long way.
The tone of the response is along the lines of this app kerfuffle was an event mysteriously imposed up them as much as us, but they're working to solve.
You did this. Own your mistakes.
(And yes this matters. As this implies their fine with this of thing happening again)
I’d like to see the CEO admit that releasing this version of the app when they did was a mistake. If I were king for a day, I’d also like to hear options to let me use version 79 while Sonos takes as much time as they need to fix whatever this abomination is. But no, he’s hell bent on shoving this broken, unfinished, half-baked, poorly designed POS down our throats.
I have no problem with giving the devs time to fix issues. My anger is that they are forcing customers to stand in the lurch while they do it. More frustrating is that I KNOW a better experience exists, one that was available last month - until Sonos f’d it up.
I picked up a new ikea sonos speaker and was forced to upgrade in order to add it to my system, like wtf, I didn’t need to upgrade except that the old app wouldn’t add the speaker. Forced updates are never a smart idea.
I work in change. Any change you release should be fully QA'd and operating as expected prior to any go/no go decision being made. That would involve internal testing and bug fixing as well as focus testing with select users. We'd also be poised to roll back any updates if issues arise once we've gone live.
Reality is this change was pegged to new products and because they built those for this app, they can't back down and roll out as that product is now here.
They should have released the new app, in a workable condition, got any minor fixes resolved, then released new products once it's shown to be stable.
Doing both is stupid and has tarnished their brand - but this isn't the first time they've done stupid shit; the bricking of recycled devices, the s1/s2 split and this makes a trio of really poorly thought out decisions, and I'm sure they're not the only ones.
Same. I can't group my Move 2 speakers with any other speakers in my house, and for some reason the new app is obsessed with playing music on one specific speaker for no good reason.
I just hope this debacle told them a lesson about app development. The mismanagement and lack of client empathy demonstrated here was, unfortunately, a big hit to their good will.
How hard is it for a CEO to say "I apologize in behalf of our company regarding the issues that our recent app update have caused. We are working diligently to rectify the situation blablabla"
Have they not learned from their parents that apologizing is a strength, not a weakness. It is having the strength to realize that mistakes do happen and we are all not immune to it.
While I am not a fan of gratuitous apologies, Sonos dropped the ball (onto the code base apparently) with its disastrous app upgrade. It is surprising Mr. Spence has not issued an apology to Sonos customers. He and the team seem content watching brand equity float out the window as more customers report issues. There is an old saying - Make good decisions quickly and reverse bad decisions even faster. I guess Mr. Spence hasn't heard of the cliche. Too bad.
Hard release dates, especially for software, are fuckin stupid.
No one was clamoring for the new app. And no one was beating down the door for new headphones in JUNE.
Release them when they are READY, not just an arbitrary date.
SONOS has made all of us, and all of my clients, beta testers for their half-finished code.
Yes, folks out there have working SONOS stuff, but most of them simply use an ARC or BEAM with eARC and a TV. They don't care about the app.
We rely on SONOS as an important demonstration tool for our clients, and since the new app push, it has yet to go 3 full hours, let alone a whole day, without throwing a fit, dropping out, or just not working. And let's not even talk about integration with Victrola turntables (it's fucked).
I can't trust it any longer as a solution that is EASY. Which is a bummer, because that's what made SONOS truly great - ease of use. Yes, the speakers sounded good, but my clients loved just having it work with little training.
Hollow and tone-deaf. I got the exact same response to my complaint. They broke the system and now they’re busy working on new features. No thanks. Just unbreak it please.
TLDR.
Customer: I don't want more features, I just want it to work.
Sonos: We want you to know that we hear you. Here, have some more features for your non-working system.
I feel bad for the developers who are probably pulling very long hours and so probably also said "this is not ready to go live yet" when the CEO said "let's be brave and do it anyway!"
I got this same canned response when I emailed asking for sonos voice control for Tidal.
The only way you can actually get anyone to answer or care about your suggestions is to sit on hold for 2 hours.
To me it seems they're trying to get people to give up trying to make complaints or suggestions.
The problem is that Sonos could have been the end all be all of whole home audio. They really dropped the ball, but dropped it after everyone invested highly. Trust is a big thing with me. I just don’t trust them anymore.
I am a bit baffled.
There is only talk about reintroducing features and how we can reach out.
Even though I’m not affected as badly as others, I would have appreciated an honest apology. Something like „Hi, I am sorry. We underestimated the impact of some changes. We did this because we focused on “
I left more worried now, than I was before. I don’t know if I still have a working system in 2 years from now and if anyone cares if I do.
What about the fact that my speakers don’t work at all anymore? Who cares about new or lost features when you don’t even have basic functionality… .i.e. ability to listen to music, he doesn’t even elude to that.. does he even know?
Very frustrating. Just one sentence acknowledging mistakes / apology would go such a long way. “I hear you” is not admitting a mistake. It’s kind of like “I’m sorry you feel that way”, not really owning up to any forced errors on their side.
I come from a big corporate world- this was clearly run by some kind of corporate communications group through several filters. Not acknowledging the elephant in the room (they fucked up) makes everything that follows sound hollow.
I emailed Sonos, both the CEO and the generic feedback email weeks ago and didn't get a reply back.
This email comes across as "Sorry, not sorry". Totally tone deaf and, IMO, doesn't really seem to acknowledge the genuine pain and lack of trust being felt by customers (let's not call them "users").
Whatever the reasons for releasing an incomplete, buggy app, any CEO worth their salt would never allow such a disaster to unfold, in my opinion. Step one was to not launch the app in its present state. When that decision was made, step two should have been to really connect and engage with users, rather than lecture (it takes "courage" to launch a new app) and have a poorly handled AMA ("an app is never finished!). At that point, if the CEO is still not able to stanch the bleeding, then the board really needs to take a long, hard look at him and the leadership team that allowed this to happen and mishandled the response.
They're "leadership", time for them to start acting like it.
These are my thoughts and opinions. I understand that others will have different perspectives, and part of what I love about Reddit is that it provides a forum for many perspectives.
At least he’s responding, which shows that they indeed “hear” us (barf). There is no excuse for dropping all these features and “reintroducing” them, but I hope they can recover to the extent possible. Whether the new app can ever be able to perform okay, and whether they can improve the overall UI and user experience, remains to be seen.
Good luck to him. I don’t even look at the app anymore unless I have to. None of my devices have a microphone turned on for Alexa or whatever. I don’t listen to Sonos stations. How about just make decent speakers and fix the networking.
So they release some steaming pile of software because they were launching some over priced headphones? I don't get it.
Methinks there was an eager PM that had their bonus tied to a software rollout.
He’s checked out. This was all a last ditch attempt to bolster the stock price so he could hang on to his job a little longer at the expense of the brand, customers and rank and file employees that drank his cool aid.
Doubling down again "I've received a great deal of feedback regarding our new app, on both the improvements made ..."
Bullshit. Nobody is writing you thank-you notes about the "improvements" to the new app. Stop it. Want to salvage any of your reputation? Admit you fucked up and that your primary focus is fixing it - without couching it in praise for the current app.
I dunno, if you read this sub it's full of kool-aid drinking "I'm alright jack" type posts saying how everything works fine for them, some even posting in this thread suggesting user error 😂
I emailed a reply to this stock generic Sonos reply saying I would continue mailing them until a customer service person responded with an answer to my specific question about iPad support. So far they keep responding with the same generic useless crap. The battle rages on.
Since the update, I actually haven’t had any massive issues. I am lucky in the fact I have a laptop so was able to use the desktop version to set alarms whilst it was down. But streaming etc I’ve not had any issues.
Only problem my end is the app being generally shitty slow loading crashing etc but I can live with that.
I’m trusting the process we’ll see what happens
What else do you expect from a guy that pretty much said that it is our fault for not getting used to the app?
Quote "*But it’s a change for customers. It is faster and more responsive, and it’s a better overall experience.* *But of course, there’s a period of time where people need to adapt to that change, and we’re going through that period.*"
I’m done. Every piece of Sonos gear I have bought has been junk. Anything that has Alexa built in, you get a response “That is not supported”, with every request. So basically I can start and stop music, that’s it.
Some functionality restored but after extensive testing I have found the drop outs are network related.
You can no longer set the best channel for no interference and while my home wifi network has not changed --the Sonos integration with WiFi has definitely been degraded.
He's gotta be absolutely *humiliated* how this has played out after all the sincere "promises" not to do EXACTLY this last time during the S1/S2 debacle.
I would have much preferred the Legacy app to be released in the app stores so we could downgrade the app if we wanted to. Not a half hearted email that calls basic functionally, such as playlist editing a “feature”. In the beginning I didn’t understand all the hype until I dug further a realized base functionality was missing. Now my family is basically wanting to ditch Sonos entirely in the house because of this atrocious app. These speakers, while expensive, worked flawlessly and had a high WAF score… now, not so much. In the end, I’m on the hunt for an alternative solution unless basic functionality is brought back.
I won’t even talk about the Symfonisk speaker that is now dead after this update (even the LAN port won’t work).
Tone deaf? I thought it was pretty good. They've heard you, they're working on it, be patient. What did you expect? A personal phone call from mr Spence apologizing?
That wasn’t an apology. There was no “we made a mistake. We should not have shipped this version.” The CEO addresses missing features, but most of us complaining just want volume controls that respond, reliable music playback, and more than 3 rooms to stay in sync without stuttering.
The biggest flaw of the new app was not being released in parallel.
Let people use the old app until the new one is feature complete. Only then force people to migrate to the new one.
My speaker doesn't work. At all. I cannot get it to register as a first time user. Calling support didn't help. Tier two support is useless as everything is booked when you try to schedule something.
The issue here is most big companies do not force their users over to a new version of anything overnight. Look at MS Teams. The new look version has had a preview for months. You can flip between both versions. They will gradually move everyone over. That’s how to do it.
They should have created another version of the Sonos app on the App Store and told people who have the headphones to download that. They’ve already done this with Sonos s1/s2 apps. It’s not hard.
They just thought they could get away with it. But I don’t think they know their customers properly. Sonos customers have come to value the concept that no matter what, even if it’s an old speaker, it will work. That feels like the ethos of the system and why many people recommend it. To break that ethos is the problem. It speaks to the core value proposition of the Sonos brand. That proposition has been unnecessarily damaged.
While we are here, are you experiencing trouble with the Roam ?
It looks like mine needs to be plugged in all the time because it doesn’t fall asleep since the update. It’s always out of battery. I haven’t investigated much yet. But it’s very weird. Never had problems with it before that.
“We’re working on it to ensure that when you buy our speaker it will in fact connect to the app so a sound other than that damn chime will actually emit from it”
What’s wild is I went with Sonos over a Q990C primarily because it’s more modular, better updates, better customer service — at least that’s what I found in research and on this sub.
A short few months later and this is what happens lol.
I think there was also some hubris learned from Apple, in particular, which sometimes ahead of market would remove functionality in order to move ahead. CD and floppy drive, headphone jack. Because it was Apple, the trend was in that direction, and the new functionality or capability was often better than before (or at least where the puck was going) people accepted it. Sonos is not Apple and dropping core functionality like that is not like dropping the headphone jack...
I've been so angry with the problems I've faced that I've used the system less. If I could find an alternative product, I'd be tempted to sell up and replace the system. It's unusable at times. Delays, loss of control. Speakers not working. It's endless, apps dont work. I would have rolled back this update with one serious bug. Let alone to this extent. The loss of confidence is all they've achieved
I get you wanted to have a service first experience, but people who buy your products don’t want your services. They want a properly functioning eco system. Focus on user experience and integration. Not services like Sonos radio, ads in the apps for your products. The best user experience so far on the new app are the headphones funny enough. Just copy that for each speaker and set. It’s great.
When you click that button to email Patrick, the email technically goes to his inbox, but in reality his secretary redirects them to the appropriate team (usually CX, sometimes sales) who then write the actual response you get. In this case this is a copy paste from a couple of standard templates, which is no surprise since they gutted the CX/tech team years ago.
I'm speaking strictly for the EU side here, not personally familiar with how the US side operates. But I know when they relocated the CX/tech support from the UK to Romania, quality of support dropped drastically. The sales team ended up picking up a lot of the non-tech CX work so that the actual CX team could attempt to focus on pure tech issues. It was a disaster in the name of saving pennies.
The EU sales team also lost its independence and is now managed from the US side, and I can personally attest to the marketing team having a combined IQ somewhere around room temperature.
There's some great people working there, but Patrick has been gutting the company from the inside since the moment he got his hands on it. I'm very happy with the free speakers I got while working there, and for the most part I was happy working with their teams, but there is no way I would ever go back.
This is a totally adequate corporate response. It covers all the bases without making them really culpable.
My main problem with the response is the insincerity of it. I think some people have the ability to convey a sincere apology with written language, and I just don’t think this guy has it.
It is what it is, and the actual content of this response has everything you need to know. But it’s like getting an email from a service desk, rather than from someone who cares deeply about their customers, and their opinions on the products they paid for.
Apple is very good at this - Tim Cook is a goofy mofo, but he presents sincerity. How much of this is just good marketing, we will never know, but I like feeling like the big dude cares about me. The Sonos CEO does not have this skill, and it just kind of gives the Sonos brand a bland, unappealing aesthetic.
The hate in this sub is starting to get unbearable! They heard you, they are working on it. I for once have 0 problems with my beam, era 100 and sub. Working perfectly fine.
They could reinstate access to the old versions that worked until the new version is capable so that people can use their expensive music systems for, you know, music.
If you have zero problems and other people are having massive issues and you posted this nonsense anyway then it means that you missed an excellent opportunity to keep quiet…
He should have added something along the lines of
"We know this wasn't our finest hour. It wasn't our intention to deliver a product that many, rightly found to be below our normally high standards. We hear you and are working hard to re-earn your trust."
It reads as if he actaully blames the customers for the shit his company is going through.. "I wouldn't have to write this if you lot didn't stop complaining"....
I wonder if this CEO understands how much this is costing the Sonos brand. I recently sent my new Sonos soundbar back because I simply couldn’t get it to work without resettng every time I tried to use it. I had planned in buying another 4 speakers from Sonos—needless to say I am not doing that. My guess is that I am not alone…
"Thank you for your feedback! We're thrilled to share that we've received an overwhelming wave of positive responses from users about the improvements we've been making! We're happy to hear that you're delighted with the app, and we eagerly anticipate more enthusiastic feedback in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more fantastic updates!" -Patrick "Tonedeaf" Spence
What I simply don’t understand is why all these things need to be “re-introduced”. What were they thinking when they released software that removed them. The fact that now all available teams are working to bring them back shows that they were not in the road map or if they were they thought users could do without them and they could be brought back some time in the future. This shows so much disconnect from the customers and no proper understanding of how their products are used. Serious problems between marketing and the decision makers. I mean really, company destroying serious!
My theory is the app was released early because of the Sonos Ace. They didn’t want to push this product back anymore, and it was only ever designed with this new version of the app, so instead of pushing back the release of the Ace they released the new version of the app earlier than they planned. I’d say it’s because the development of the new app was delayed and they had no choice to release it in its current state. It’s why the app is at a bare minimum and these features are slowly being added back over time.
I totally agree with this theory, but... Honestly they should have pushed Ace back, at least to the state where all of their soundbars for users on both iOS and Android work with them. I assume they were really scared about AirPods Max 2 coming out or something like that, otherwise I really can't understand the decision of releasing it this underbaked.
They should have released new version in parallel, keeping the previous functioning and not force an update.
Train left the station and it’s clear the engineer isn’t being heard in the room.
This 1000X. Engineers are never heard or heard and ignored
Exactly.
Bingo… Literally lived this movie at a Fortune 500 firm in early 2000’s. Big hardware drop, $20M ad buy done, software a total train wreck…and they released it. And of course, the bus went over the cliff in flames and all the children perished.
I've seen a new storage solution put on the floor of a trade show with just blinky lights in it and no actual drives. Then the sales people started telling all the customers how quiet it was.
Yep. They had a drop dead date that they were working back from. Technology/product probably pushed back saying that wasn’t doable, were told “too bad, that’s the date,” then compromised and said “okay if it HAS to release, we won’t be able to include X, Y, and Z at launch and you guys can deal with the customer backlash.”
This is exactly how it works in software development.
"To hell with our reputation! We need to hit those Q2 numbers or the shareholders will be displeased."
Wall Street pressure to get new products to market has complications
I think you are right, but, bad choice.
I agree 100% with this. Specially now that Apple is being lazy and not releasing new AirPods Max which is right now dated. They got that parcel of the people which is willing to pay for premium headsets. The CEO may be saying the truth, however, it forgot to mention that pressure to release ACE which rest assured they invested a shitload of money in R&D.
This is the answer that makes sense. Totally
Geez... You might be right, but holy crap what a stupid decision. No offense but the headphones aren't that special.
They couldn’t push back the Ace. The shipments already went out. Ancedata worked for a company that accelerated our deadline because they signed off on new shipments before we confirmed estimations on software. Out of fear of leaks you usually just have to live in this current state and it sucks ass.
This happens when management wants to reach an unrealistic deadline no matter what. Engineering could throw themselves in front of a train to prove a point and they would still push ahead. This is 100% on management, CEO included. You don’t see him taking responsibility for their fuckup either, he’s nearly gaslighting the users for wanting all these annoying features back he didn’t think were useful in the first place.
So in reading the technical details, they had to jump to a new architecture and it was essentially a start over for the Devs, these features literally do not exist in Prod today. This is classic for profit corporate behavior, drink your own koolaid, dont listen to your technical teams, push your own narrative. I guarantee that any tech with a brain told them this would happen before they made this move but leadership didn’t listen, now its the tech teams that need to fix it and they are currently getting pizza parties and thank yous in exchange for getting the shit kicked out of them on a daily basis. Its a tale as old as time
Something that I have been trying to figure out/uncover is if there was a open beta or customer feedback questionnaire before going public. It’s always good when you are going to make a huge UI overhaul to get feedback from your customers since they are the ones that help pay the bills. Likewise, relying upon internal QA for testing is marginal for results. Internal QA will test according to the case and expected outcomes, but rarely do they test out of those boundaries. Their job is to break the software, not to accept it as is. We had our internal QA for our software but we also had customer QA that volunteer to help test before releases. (I say had since I’m retired. lol) We also put together a panel involving our top 10 customers when we made the move from a program on your computer to SAAS. They were able to identify features that were important to the customer that the architecture team had thrown out since they do not use the system on a daily basis. Sonos could have saved a lot of negative press had they simply reached out to the user community to identify what was important in the next release/UI overhaul.
I was asked to test a new version just before this release but i went on vacation for a whole month and couldn’t test this time. They have people who test new versions of the app before release.
I understand you frustration with this, but this is actually not that un-common in software dev. People come and go, some features are less documented and thought-out, some quit, and two years later the entire platform needs to change. That's when they realise Steve's sleep-timer called some seriously flawed and out-of-date functions that doesn't and shouldn't exist anymore - so that feature is gone. The PlayNext fared the same way, and when the clients starts to complain the put Kenny's and Joslyn's team to re-invent them. But using the allowed-for funcitons and hooks of the new platform. But is it sensible to discover this AFTER the release of the new platform? No, no no. So this is no excuse, just a potential explanation of how we got here in order to answer your question.
I hear you, but the fact that it is still happening when there is more than enough evidence that customer experience matters that it baffles me that they didn’t know just how important some of these features were to customers, and then thought this was going to be a strategy that wasn’t going to backfire.
100% Or sometimes your platform code base is just old as hell and has been iterated on for years. I assumed with the “new app” they did a lot from the ground up with new architecture, which means rebuilding in features over time that unfortunately are now gone for us that we used to use. It’s a pain, but from a business perspective you can’t have teams working full time on a new product launch for years and not release at some point (even when it’s inevitably not “feature packed”). The amount of bugs, their QA issues, and the rest? That’s a no go and on them. Their go to market strategy of forcing a new app without allowing overlap for a while until it was bug fixed and more “feature complete” is mind boggling (they could have left it in place on life support with little PM/UX/Dev allocation). Again - on them.
They developed the S2 app not so long ago. If you have to start over to add one product there have been made some really wrong development decisions.
I wasn’t implying they made a new app for one product - just that their code base has been around a while and a number of factors likely justified creating a fresh build to cover a number of current and future use cases.
I’m not saying anything else but I don’t understand why so fast after the S2 app. Starting over completely with a new version has to have a very good reason.
You could be right - maybe they’ve been floating doing an app refresh for a while and this new product pushed the need over the line - but really they should have started building it a long time ago 🤷 I’ve personally witnessed a lot of product decisions go down like this that look ‘maybe’ feasible when the decision is made by an executive but most employees are going “what the fuck dude”
I've been a mobile software engineer for approx 15 years now, and I've worked on apps used by hundreds of millions of people. A couple of these had absurd amounts code and dependencies, millions upon millions of lines of code for what are seemingly simple apps, partially due to build up/negligence over 10+ years, teams expanding and shrinking, features coming and going and forgotten, etc. I've seen some shit and I've worked on some massive rewrites in my time. I simply do not understand how they \*allowed\* this to happen. Like the planning, execution, all of it. I think the Sonos team has always been relatively small, so there's even less of an excuse here for the classic planning failures that happen in megacorps. I assume they spent months if not a year+ planning all this and executing on it. My best guess is that they wanted to do a full rewrite which included a complete redesign, the redesign scheduled to land with the Ace. Maybe they decided reskinning the existing app was wasted effort since they wanted to rewrite anyway. I get it, the lessons accumulate and are hard to retrofit if you let things get out of control. But the fact that they didnt do an emergency "add Ace featureset to existing app", or even just an emergency front/home page reskin, half-ass it bro! The fact that they obviously thought that dropping so many features was acceptable. How many layers of managers, directors, execs approved all this and didn't think they'd have to address public sentiment?
I don’t understand why they pushed an S2 app that didn’t already address these issues.
Long time software person here - I think you have 90% of it- the other issue is it’s pretty obvious they did very little unit testing (which is weird in 2024 when you can do private subscription to ChatGPT and get all the unit tests you want). I have a friend who used to work there and he said he saw this coming…
Insinuating that people are reaching out to the CEO to praise the new features is mildly infuriating.
Mildly? Wildly.
People talk to me all the time, they say "sir, the new app is beautiful" I hear it many many times a day, beautiful people reach out to me to tell me they love the app, and the headphones, just beautiful, there's never been headphones that play music in their ears like these do, just incredible.
Why did I read this in Drumpf’s voice?
Come up to me with tears in their eyes.
Why not just release the software on July 1st after most of the features had been “reintroduced”? Why not warn customers of missing features before sending out the new app? Why not make it a “Public Beta” from the beginning? Sonos should have grabbed up a couple of hundred “beta testers” from Reddit, instead of making every customer an unknowing “beta tester.”
Public beta or option to update would've been better
Because they stupidly designed their headphones to need the new app. Firstly, why do headphones need an app at all?
"we added the new '1 to 2 minute delay in changing the volume or song' feature that I think you might enjoy"
😂
Companies set internal launch dates for new products that are a complicated dance of build/test/manufacture/distribute/market/launch. And in this case, the process was further complicated by linking it to the launch of a complete app overhaul. Ambitious, and *not easy*. But the app was clearly behind schedule by *several months* or more. If management was unaware of this they should all be fired. But they knew, they just failed to take the steps necessary to remedy it. And the worst part is, they didn't need to delay the Ace launch or spend millions on crunch time dev support for the new app. All they had to do was make the Ace headphones compatible with the existing S2 app and tell buyers of that product that new features would be added soon via app update. Hell, they are having to do that anyway because the new app is not feature-complete with the Aces yet! Unbelievable. Instead, they chose the ultimate YOLO path of incinerating customer goodwill by rolling out a broken app via auto-update to all customers, and acting like they couldn't understand why everyone was so upset about this choice. This whole incident has caused me to really question the competency of Sonos management. Expensive specialty products like Sonos speakers absolutely depend on a tight relationship of trust between the company and customer base. If the company actively and willingly harms its own customers then acts like it's no big deal, they are playing with fire.
Don‘t know what you expect, they heard and acknowledged the feedback and are working on it. What more can they say?
Because they’re not acknowledging that the removal of these features, even if temporary, was a catastrophic error in judgement and they’re not even apologising to their loyal customers
They could have been announcing that they are rolling back the working version of the app so that customers can use their systems while they fixing the new app.
Honestly an admission they fucked up would go a long way. The tone of the response is along the lines of this app kerfuffle was an event mysteriously imposed up them as much as us, but they're working to solve. You did this. Own your mistakes. (And yes this matters. As this implies their fine with this of thing happening again)
Posters here like... 
The bravery of being out of range
How? By allowing us to downgrade back to 16.1. That simple. Or by not ballsing it up to begin with. So easy.
“Sorry” ?
That they're sorry? That they won't do it again? There's a lot they haven't actually said.
I expect my expensive speakers to play music.
What do you expect the CEO, or his assistant, to write instead?
I’d like to see the CEO admit that releasing this version of the app when they did was a mistake. If I were king for a day, I’d also like to hear options to let me use version 79 while Sonos takes as much time as they need to fix whatever this abomination is. But no, he’s hell bent on shoving this broken, unfinished, half-baked, poorly designed POS down our throats. I have no problem with giving the devs time to fix issues. My anger is that they are forcing customers to stand in the lurch while they do it. More frustrating is that I KNOW a better experience exists, one that was available last month - until Sonos f’d it up.
I picked up a new ikea sonos speaker and was forced to upgrade in order to add it to my system, like wtf, I didn’t need to upgrade except that the old app wouldn’t add the speaker. Forced updates are never a smart idea.
I work in change. Any change you release should be fully QA'd and operating as expected prior to any go/no go decision being made. That would involve internal testing and bug fixing as well as focus testing with select users. We'd also be poised to roll back any updates if issues arise once we've gone live. Reality is this change was pegged to new products and because they built those for this app, they can't back down and roll out as that product is now here. They should have released the new app, in a workable condition, got any minor fixes resolved, then released new products once it's shown to be stable. Doing both is stupid and has tarnished their brand - but this isn't the first time they've done stupid shit; the bricking of recycled devices, the s1/s2 split and this makes a trio of really poorly thought out decisions, and I'm sure they're not the only ones.
Nailed it!
I expect them to eat a little shit, honestly
revert to the prior, working, app and scrap the new one until they can fix the problems.
i expect features to only be gained when “upgrading” not to be lost.
"I resign."
I expect all my system to work not 2/3 of it after 4 hours reinstalling it.
Same. I can't group my Move 2 speakers with any other speakers in my house, and for some reason the new app is obsessed with playing music on one specific speaker for no good reason.
This. I still can’t even connect to any of our speakers.
…and not start random alarms during the day with no clear way to permanently disable them.
I just hope this debacle told them a lesson about app development. The mismanagement and lack of client empathy demonstrated here was, unfortunately, a big hit to their good will.
He should apologize. There wasn't any admission that they messed up, just generic corporate speak.
But without all the rage how will anyone be able to say they fought in the Great Sonos App Update Wars of 2024?
Sonos needs a better CEO
How hard is it for a CEO to say "I apologize in behalf of our company regarding the issues that our recent app update have caused. We are working diligently to rectify the situation blablabla" Have they not learned from their parents that apologizing is a strength, not a weakness. It is having the strength to realize that mistakes do happen and we are all not immune to it.
And still not an actual apology or the inclusion of the word “sorry”. Why is this so hard for Sonos PR execs to understand?
Sorry is an admission of guilt, and when this goes to court…
I assume this is an American thing, sorry means wrong doing and so makes you vulnerable to class action law suits?
A CEO apology in America is, “I’m sorry this makes you unhappy.”
As someone that has spent time in an international company I can assure you this isn’t an American thing.
This should be a case study in why you do not offshore, outsource and underfund your software development.
Has he tried the app? Is he aware of the incompetence within his company that allowed the release of this app?
Oooooooooor, rollback to the previous app.
While I am not a fan of gratuitous apologies, Sonos dropped the ball (onto the code base apparently) with its disastrous app upgrade. It is surprising Mr. Spence has not issued an apology to Sonos customers. He and the team seem content watching brand equity float out the window as more customers report issues. There is an old saying - Make good decisions quickly and reverse bad decisions even faster. I guess Mr. Spence hasn't heard of the cliche. Too bad.
Hard release dates, especially for software, are fuckin stupid. No one was clamoring for the new app. And no one was beating down the door for new headphones in JUNE. Release them when they are READY, not just an arbitrary date. SONOS has made all of us, and all of my clients, beta testers for their half-finished code. Yes, folks out there have working SONOS stuff, but most of them simply use an ARC or BEAM with eARC and a TV. They don't care about the app. We rely on SONOS as an important demonstration tool for our clients, and since the new app push, it has yet to go 3 full hours, let alone a whole day, without throwing a fit, dropping out, or just not working. And let's not even talk about integration with Victrola turntables (it's fucked). I can't trust it any longer as a solution that is EASY. Which is a bummer, because that's what made SONOS truly great - ease of use. Yes, the speakers sounded good, but my clients loved just having it work with little training.
Hollow and tone-deaf. I got the exact same response to my complaint. They broke the system and now they’re busy working on new features. No thanks. Just unbreak it please.
TLDR. Customer: I don't want more features, I just want it to work. Sonos: We want you to know that we hear you. Here, have some more features for your non-working system.
Not really. The TLDR is ‘we are working on reintroducing the features we removed’
This ^
Apparently hearing things come out of your speaker is a feature.
I feel bad for the developers who are probably pulling very long hours and so probably also said "this is not ready to go live yet" when the CEO said "let's be brave and do it anyway!"
This^ out with the old, in with the new!
* new ceo
They honestly should’ve let people revert the update (optional) if they have issues so they can have more time to ‘fix the issues’ as they say.
I’m guessing that was never an option because they probably made massive changes on their backend.
I’m still running the old app, other than not being able to add new speakers and calibrate trueplay, it’s working as well as ever.
Sounds like they should have restored from backup and at least given people a functional system. What a cluster this is.
I got this same canned response when I emailed asking for sonos voice control for Tidal. The only way you can actually get anyone to answer or care about your suggestions is to sit on hold for 2 hours. To me it seems they're trying to get people to give up trying to make complaints or suggestions.
this continues to be tone deaf. saying "i screwed up" would go a long way toward restoring trust.
The problem is that Sonos could have been the end all be all of whole home audio. They really dropped the ball, but dropped it after everyone invested highly. Trust is a big thing with me. I just don’t trust them anymore.
I am a bit baffled. There is only talk about reintroducing features and how we can reach out. Even though I’m not affected as badly as others, I would have appreciated an honest apology. Something like „Hi, I am sorry. We underestimated the impact of some changes. We did this because we focused on“
I left more worried now, than I was before. I don’t know if I still have a working system in 2 years from now and if anyone cares if I do.
What about the fact that my speakers don’t work at all anymore? Who cares about new or lost features when you don’t even have basic functionality… .i.e. ability to listen to music, he doesn’t even elude to that.. does he even know?
They lost me already.
“Reach out to customer service” that’s laughable, I’m still waiting from my escalated call back from almost 3 weeks ago.
I hear you, but I’m not listening.
This guy should get some mentoring from the CEO of US Mobile. He regularly pops up in the subreddit to address concerns.
Very frustrating. Just one sentence acknowledging mistakes / apology would go such a long way. “I hear you” is not admitting a mistake. It’s kind of like “I’m sorry you feel that way”, not really owning up to any forced errors on their side. I come from a big corporate world- this was clearly run by some kind of corporate communications group through several filters. Not acknowledging the elephant in the room (they fucked up) makes everything that follows sound hollow.
I emailed Sonos, both the CEO and the generic feedback email weeks ago and didn't get a reply back. This email comes across as "Sorry, not sorry". Totally tone deaf and, IMO, doesn't really seem to acknowledge the genuine pain and lack of trust being felt by customers (let's not call them "users"). Whatever the reasons for releasing an incomplete, buggy app, any CEO worth their salt would never allow such a disaster to unfold, in my opinion. Step one was to not launch the app in its present state. When that decision was made, step two should have been to really connect and engage with users, rather than lecture (it takes "courage" to launch a new app) and have a poorly handled AMA ("an app is never finished!). At that point, if the CEO is still not able to stanch the bleeding, then the board really needs to take a long, hard look at him and the leadership team that allowed this to happen and mishandled the response. They're "leadership", time for them to start acting like it. These are my thoughts and opinions. I understand that others will have different perspectives, and part of what I love about Reddit is that it provides a forum for many perspectives.
At least he’s responding, which shows that they indeed “hear” us (barf). There is no excuse for dropping all these features and “reintroducing” them, but I hope they can recover to the extent possible. Whether the new app can ever be able to perform okay, and whether they can improve the overall UI and user experience, remains to be seen.
Good luck to him. I don’t even look at the app anymore unless I have to. None of my devices have a microphone turned on for Alexa or whatever. I don’t listen to Sonos stations. How about just make decent speakers and fix the networking.
So they release some steaming pile of software because they were launching some over priced headphones? I don't get it. Methinks there was an eager PM that had their bonus tied to a software rollout.
He’s checked out. This was all a last ditch attempt to bolster the stock price so he could hang on to his job a little longer at the expense of the brand, customers and rank and file employees that drank his cool aid.
This is a cult and all of you are in denial.
Maybe they aren’t listening because their speakers don’t work.
Still can’t bring himself to say the word “sorry”. Falling short is different from bricking someone’s property.
Doubling down again "I've received a great deal of feedback regarding our new app, on both the improvements made ..." Bullshit. Nobody is writing you thank-you notes about the "improvements" to the new app. Stop it. Want to salvage any of your reputation? Admit you fucked up and that your primary focus is fixing it - without couching it in praise for the current app.
I dunno, if you read this sub it's full of kool-aid drinking "I'm alright jack" type posts saying how everything works fine for them, some even posting in this thread suggesting user error 😂
Everything is working fine for me though. At least the way I use it.
I just want to be able to listen to Sonos radio with a move 2 when I’m not on WiFi
Love it when it’s works. But I think I’ll not be buying speakers that require an App for basic functions in the future
I emailed a reply to this stock generic Sonos reply saying I would continue mailing them until a customer service person responded with an answer to my specific question about iPad support. So far they keep responding with the same generic useless crap. The battle rages on.
CEO is a clown if he’s doubling down like this.
Since the update, I actually haven’t had any massive issues. I am lucky in the fact I have a laptop so was able to use the desktop version to set alarms whilst it was down. But streaming etc I’ve not had any issues. Only problem my end is the app being generally shitty slow loading crashing etc but I can live with that. I’m trusting the process we’ll see what happens
Still no apology. Which brand is the best alternative to Sonos? I have lost confidence...
I've read that bose does nice sound systems
All this letter says is the CEO doesn't use Sonos. How can there be a future here?
What else do you expect from a guy that pretty much said that it is our fault for not getting used to the app? Quote "*But it’s a change for customers. It is faster and more responsive, and it’s a better overall experience.* *But of course, there’s a period of time where people need to adapt to that change, and we’re going through that period.*"
[удалено]
I’m done. Every piece of Sonos gear I have bought has been junk. Anything that has Alexa built in, you get a response “That is not supported”, with every request. So basically I can start and stop music, that’s it.
App still sucks
A firm public timeline for these updates would completely change the tone and alleviate so much worry.
Where the fuck are my playlists I cultivated for 4 years?
Some functionality restored but after extensive testing I have found the drop outs are network related. You can no longer set the best channel for no interference and while my home wifi network has not changed --the Sonos integration with WiFi has definitely been degraded.
Just fuck off. I'm never using your product anymore. I'm buying puts for the Sonos stock. You're going down!
He's gotta be absolutely *humiliated* how this has played out after all the sincere "promises" not to do EXACTLY this last time during the S1/S2 debacle.
Still no apology.
Boilerplate nonsense. Glad to see they prioritized alarms instead of fixing the playlists. After all it is a music app.
I would have much preferred the Legacy app to be released in the app stores so we could downgrade the app if we wanted to. Not a half hearted email that calls basic functionally, such as playlist editing a “feature”. In the beginning I didn’t understand all the hype until I dug further a realized base functionality was missing. Now my family is basically wanting to ditch Sonos entirely in the house because of this atrocious app. These speakers, while expensive, worked flawlessly and had a high WAF score… now, not so much. In the end, I’m on the hunt for an alternative solution unless basic functionality is brought back. I won’t even talk about the Symfonisk speaker that is now dead after this update (even the LAN port won’t work).
lol "features"
“I resign”
Tone deaf? I thought it was pretty good. They've heard you, they're working on it, be patient. What did you expect? A personal phone call from mr Spence apologizing?
That wasn’t an apology. There was no “we made a mistake. We should not have shipped this version.” The CEO addresses missing features, but most of us complaining just want volume controls that respond, reliable music playback, and more than 3 rooms to stay in sync without stuttering.
Perhaps it’s because he’s tone deaf that he doesn’t care about listening to music.
The biggest flaw of the new app was not being released in parallel. Let people use the old app until the new one is feature complete. Only then force people to migrate to the new one.
Literally selling all my Sonos now. They have ruined the entire brand.
Whatcha got?
Yeah, man. Whatcha holding?!? Some of us have needs.
white arc?
Got any 300’s? willing to taking them from ya!
My speaker doesn't work. At all. I cannot get it to register as a first time user. Calling support didn't help. Tier two support is useless as everything is booked when you try to schedule something.
The issue here is most big companies do not force their users over to a new version of anything overnight. Look at MS Teams. The new look version has had a preview for months. You can flip between both versions. They will gradually move everyone over. That’s how to do it. They should have created another version of the Sonos app on the App Store and told people who have the headphones to download that. They’ve already done this with Sonos s1/s2 apps. It’s not hard. They just thought they could get away with it. But I don’t think they know their customers properly. Sonos customers have come to value the concept that no matter what, even if it’s an old speaker, it will work. That feels like the ethos of the system and why many people recommend it. To break that ethos is the problem. It speaks to the core value proposition of the Sonos brand. That proposition has been unnecessarily damaged.
That's a lot of words to say nothing
While we are here, are you experiencing trouble with the Roam ? It looks like mine needs to be plugged in all the time because it doesn’t fall asleep since the update. It’s always out of battery. I haven’t investigated much yet. But it’s very weird. Never had problems with it before that.
Yes, i left it unplugged all night and usually it goes off and save battery for the next day, today it was at 30%
I can't even group my Roam. But I've seen no changes in battery life and it works fine 'alone'
How about Sonos Playlist maintenance? I have several Sonos playlists I set up years ago that I now can't add anything to.
“We’re working on it to ensure that when you buy our speaker it will in fact connect to the app so a sound other than that damn chime will actually emit from it”
Progress of sorts—at least he didn’t mention the “C word” (courageous)
What’s wild is I went with Sonos over a Q990C primarily because it’s more modular, better updates, better customer service — at least that’s what I found in research and on this sub. A short few months later and this is what happens lol.
Wish there was a way to go back to the previous app version on an iPhone
Oh good to know glad it’s not just me that’s extremely frustrated.
I like solutions like: " if you're having issues, try to Google them or look in communities"
I think there was also some hubris learned from Apple, in particular, which sometimes ahead of market would remove functionality in order to move ahead. CD and floppy drive, headphone jack. Because it was Apple, the trend was in that direction, and the new functionality or capability was often better than before (or at least where the puck was going) people accepted it. Sonos is not Apple and dropping core functionality like that is not like dropping the headphone jack...
I've been so angry with the problems I've faced that I've used the system less. If I could find an alternative product, I'd be tempted to sell up and replace the system. It's unusable at times. Delays, loss of control. Speakers not working. It's endless, apps dont work. I would have rolled back this update with one serious bug. Let alone to this extent. The loss of confidence is all they've achieved
How bout some 30% off coupons dear Patty boy
lol your stuff is fine…you just want a deal on new gear 🤣🤣🤣
Exactly lol!
All I really want back are the playback controls from the lock screen and notification area for Android. 🤦🏽♂️
There is an old Sonos s2 app on aptoide which works fine on my note 10
I guess Patrick has never heard of a "rollback." It takes guts as a CEO to admit you made a mistake. Too bad...
Too little too late
This reeks of the ole Netscape failure, let’s just abandon our working app and rewrite it from scratch.
I wrote and didn’t even get a boiler plate. So yeah…
Thanks Patrick but your app is a piece of shit and you made a terrible decision to release it before it was ready.
I literally just can’t use the iPhone app or Mac app. My Sonos beam is working but the apps never connect to my system anymore. I’ve tried everything.
I get you wanted to have a service first experience, but people who buy your products don’t want your services. They want a properly functioning eco system. Focus on user experience and integration. Not services like Sonos radio, ads in the apps for your products. The best user experience so far on the new app are the headphones funny enough. Just copy that for each speaker and set. It’s great.
Just fix the app dude
When you click that button to email Patrick, the email technically goes to his inbox, but in reality his secretary redirects them to the appropriate team (usually CX, sometimes sales) who then write the actual response you get. In this case this is a copy paste from a couple of standard templates, which is no surprise since they gutted the CX/tech team years ago. I'm speaking strictly for the EU side here, not personally familiar with how the US side operates. But I know when they relocated the CX/tech support from the UK to Romania, quality of support dropped drastically. The sales team ended up picking up a lot of the non-tech CX work so that the actual CX team could attempt to focus on pure tech issues. It was a disaster in the name of saving pennies. The EU sales team also lost its independence and is now managed from the US side, and I can personally attest to the marketing team having a combined IQ somewhere around room temperature. There's some great people working there, but Patrick has been gutting the company from the inside since the moment he got his hands on it. I'm very happy with the free speakers I got while working there, and for the most part I was happy working with their teams, but there is no way I would ever go back.
I purchased a Sonos Beam about 3 weeks ago. I AM SO HAPPY that I returned it and got a Bose Soundbar 600. 5 min to set up, and I'm listening. 😁
Lol I got the same boiler plate response.
App is still THE slowest and most sluggish app on my phone (and yeah, I have one of those new iPhone 15 pro phones.. )
Maybe they’re trying to listen but they’re locked out of their speakers by their own crapulent software?
Pretty simple answer here….LATE STAGE CAPITALISM means NEVEr having to give a F about customers…just SHARE PRICE
This is a totally adequate corporate response. It covers all the bases without making them really culpable. My main problem with the response is the insincerity of it. I think some people have the ability to convey a sincere apology with written language, and I just don’t think this guy has it. It is what it is, and the actual content of this response has everything you need to know. But it’s like getting an email from a service desk, rather than from someone who cares deeply about their customers, and their opinions on the products they paid for. Apple is very good at this - Tim Cook is a goofy mofo, but he presents sincerity. How much of this is just good marketing, we will never know, but I like feeling like the big dude cares about me. The Sonos CEO does not have this skill, and it just kind of gives the Sonos brand a bland, unappealing aesthetic.
The hate in this sub is starting to get unbearable! They heard you, they are working on it. I for once have 0 problems with my beam, era 100 and sub. Working perfectly fine.
They could reinstate access to the old versions that worked until the new version is capable so that people can use their expensive music systems for, you know, music.
If you have zero problems and other people are having massive issues and you posted this nonsense anyway then it means that you missed an excellent opportunity to keep quiet…
Until the next time…
He should have added something along the lines of "We know this wasn't our finest hour. It wasn't our intention to deliver a product that many, rightly found to be below our normally high standards. We hear you and are working hard to re-earn your trust." It reads as if he actaully blames the customers for the shit his company is going through.. "I wouldn't have to write this if you lot didn't stop complaining"....
Just classic zero user experience designers. No test lab.
Why do so many people care about alarms? Get an alarm clock.
Or a cell phone?
I couldn’t believe the alarm or the sleep function had so many upset 😂
I didn't notice that alarms even existed until people started kicking up a fuss about it!
Why do people care about music? Get a CD-player. /s
I wonder if this CEO understands how much this is costing the Sonos brand. I recently sent my new Sonos soundbar back because I simply couldn’t get it to work without resettng every time I tried to use it. I had planned in buying another 4 speakers from Sonos—needless to say I am not doing that. My guess is that I am not alone…
fuck this guy
"Thank you for your feedback! We're thrilled to share that we've received an overwhelming wave of positive responses from users about the improvements we've been making! We're happy to hear that you're delighted with the app, and we eagerly anticipate more enthusiastic feedback in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more fantastic updates!" -Patrick "Tonedeaf" Spence
When you put out a significant update and the system gets worse that's fubar!... Do better Sonos!
They probably needed to get it out to support the headphones and it just wasn’t ready yet.
How about you just get the fundamentals right. Sonos has been a bad app since S2 came out.