Sonos is punting on consumers paying up to 33% more for a new and yet to be launched soundbar, despite several brands such as JBL offering seriously value for money soundbars at a significantly cheaper price that what the new Sonos offering is expected to be priced at.
The US audio Company who is battling a wave of complaints about their software in particular their latest app with some customers so angry they are calling for a class action against the Company.
claims that their next-generation home cinema product currently code-named Lasso is “ultra-premium” and that the key difference is, the new offering will contain technology from Mayht, a Dutch startup Sonos acquired last year for $$190M.
Sonos who deliberately leaks new products in an effort to divert attention away from the problems the loss-making Company is currently developing a sound bar that is tipped to be over $2,000 despite custom installers in Australia dropping the use of Sonos in custom install homes.
We initially reported a price of $1,900 but this appears to be on the shy side.
On the Sonos Community social media pages Matty Jake wrote of the company’s latest problems “If ever a situation called for a class action lawsuit, this is it”.
Company sells customers expensive, multi-unit hardware systems, tethers customers to a software ecosystem to use them effectively then dramatically changes software into an auto-update environment”.
For the record ChannelNews has a box of expensive Sono’s speakers including their much-heralded Play 5 speakers that are totally useless now as a network speaker. The only sound is if you attach a record player or external source to play music.
We seem to have missed the message that Sonos has the right to make these speakers totally redundant when they were acquired.
At the time Sonos was spruiking their Play 5 speakers as “The best Network speakers” in the market.
Matty Jake went on to write with other Sono’s owners backing his call for a class action: “Unsuspecting customers lose access to extensive, core media sources and features that significantly diminish the value of their expensive hardware and/or make it untenable for usage they had every reason to believe they would continue to have”.
“(Sonos) Customers wishing to continue meeting these essential needs forced to sell Company hardware that they had no intention of doing at a loss and buy competitor hardware”.
Pattern of behaviour by this Company (Sonos) indicates that choices made to remove functionality were part of an intentional, plan to damage the product experience of many users in favour of other products”.
“This would be like selling someone a car and then updating the operating system so that the steering wheels was controlled by AI instead of manual because there’s more profit there for the company”.
He claims that if they resolve this issue with their awful new software release, how much in damages are deserved for every customer for their lost time and undue harm?
“The store value of my hardware suite, which I had no intention of replacing is probably $7,000 – $8,000. How much do others have invested who believe they need to leave SONOS?”.
As for their latest new soundbar offering its components and speaker drivers have been completely overhauled and redesigned” and that improvements will include inclusion Bluetooth connectivity, which is absent from the previous model currently on sale at JB Hi Fi.
Most soundbars and speakers have Bluetooth today.
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