Sonos changes terms and conditions and may now pass on data to third parties

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.

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.

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!

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.

It seems that any company that both A) stores user data and B) is sufficiently successful will predictability sell that data for profit.

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.

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)

20 years of good will undone.

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.

I’m surprised ikea puts up with these shenanigans.