Deliberate bricking, the Sonos way.

[Curious Pineapple]

Imagine being offered 30% off a new home if you knock down your old one instead of selling it. You then give the land free to a home builder that builds a new home, and makes the same offer again.

[jiyeon]

If I were a Sonos customer, I think I'd rather be inclined to sell my current product and then buy a new product, because deactivating 'old' products Detroit: Become Human-style is wasteful.

[NumLock21]

I never used a Sonos, are they tied to your account where you have to deactivate it before it can be resold to someone else, and they use it under their own account?

Or are they just connected to via Bluetooth and no account is required.

[RejZoR]

31 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Except Sonos is encouraging people to put their speakers into "recycling mode" when most of the materials aren't even recyclable. This is the cash for clunkers thing but for speakers, instead of reselling used speakers, they're fooling people into bricking their speakers for a discount which is really wasteful.

And how does this affect YOU if you don't go with it? It doesn't. Stop making drama. Like I said, the title suggests devices auto brick deliberately to encourage people into buying their stuff. The truth is furthest from that...

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

And how does this affect YOU if you don't go with it? It doesn't. Stop making drama. Like I said, the title suggests devices auto brick deliberately to encourage people into buying their stuff. The truth is furthest from that...

It suggests nothing of the sort, except in your mind.

 

The truth is they are incentivising waste. Obviously you fail to see that.

[Bombastinator]

24 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

And how does this affect YOU if you don't go with it? It doesn't. Stop making drama. Like I said, the title suggests devices auto brick deliberately to encourage people into buying their stuff. The truth is furthest from that...

He lives on... earth?  Admittedly it doesn’t affect him as a human any more than it affects you as a human or me as a human.  The planet is getting smaller.  Things that happen in one place affect things that happen in other places. No ones shit doesn’t stink anymore.  Or at least it gets noticed now whereas before it didn’t.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

And how does this affect YOU if you don't go with it? It doesn't. Stop making drama. Like I said, the title suggests devices auto brick deliberately to encourage people into buying their stuff. The truth is furthest from that...

Uh, what? This affects everyone, i'm not making any drama here either. Most e-waste just ends up in landfills.

These devices that otherwise work perfectly and people want to buy even used is stuff that a company shouldn't encourage people to brick for a discount on a speaker that can cost $900 or more. Not that I'd ever buy that overpriced crap, when there are tons of solutions to adapt about any set of speakers so you can stream audio.

Imagine going to trade in a phone but instead of the company refurbishing them, you're told to smash it up with a hammer because that is somehow better for the environment.

[Scheer]

6 hours ago, WereCatf said:

I can't help but wonder how they've implemented that at the low level; do they burn one of the permanent fuses on the MCU to do that, or is it just a bit on the rewritable flash, so one could write it back to its original state, if one knew the correct location. Hmm.

The rumor is that it is server side, they just blacklist the MAC address. If you accidentally put it into recycle mode they can reverse it for you on a per case basis.

 

6 hours ago, Phill104 said:

Sadly though, this has been going on for years. I have seen for instance totally current and u used laser printers crushed in there hundreds simply because of a kit refresh contract. The printer company do it for the same reason, they do not want any products on the used market.

 

I work in the printer/copier industry. While some of the printers that are crushed probably would have been fine, repairs on old laser printers get really expensive really fast, its almost to the point now where its cheaper to replace a printer than put a fuser in it even if they are only a year old. Large copiers are almost always sold to wholesale who take them down to underdeveloped countries and get reused, or torn down to use as parts for said copiers.

 

41 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

I never used a Sonos, are they tied to your account where you have to deactivate it before it can be resold to someone else, and they use it under their own account?

Or are they just connected to via Bluetooth and no account is required.

Its tied to your account, if a previous account is on there you can factory reset it to add it to your account.

 

 

 

As for why they are doing this... Its unfortunate to see, but there is some justification to it on their part where they learned a lesson with the CR100s a few years ago. The hardware in the CR100 was too old to keep up with the newest features Sonos wanted to roll out, so they had to discontinue support for them (a 10-15 year old product, which is amazing they were still being supported TBH) and people just lost their minds. Sonos ended up paying out $100 per CR100 on your account to use on their store, I had 7 of them and it capped at $500... but was still a great response and I was more than happy with it.

 

However, likely to keep that from happening again with all their older products they want people to knowingly brick them and get them off the market. That way some sucker doesn't pay $250 for a 10 year old speaker that gets discontinued in 6 months and can't be used anymore.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Scheer said:

 

I work in the printer/copier industry. While some of the printers that are crushed probably would have been fine, repairs on old laser printers get really expensive really fast, its almost to the point now where its cheaper to replace a printer than put a fuser in it even if they are only a year old. Large copiers are almost always sold to wholesale who take them down to underdeveloped countries and get reused, or torn down to use as parts for said copiers.

.
 

 

I have in the past worked in that industry too. The prices for stuff like a fusers are kept artificially high as are many other items. As I said, I have seen many tons of still boxed printers crushed and in many cases end up as landfill. This is not exactly an ethical practice. 

 

3 minutes ago, Scheer said:

As for why they are doing this... Its unfortunate to see, but there is some justification to it on their part where they learned a lesson with the CR100s a few years ago. The hardware in the CR100 was too old to keep up with the newest features Sonos wanted to roll out, so they had to discontinue support for them (a 10-15 year old product, which is amazing they were still being supported TBH) and people just lost their minds. Sonos ended up paying out $100 per CR100 on your account to use on their store, I had 7 of them and it capped at $500... but was still a great response and I was more than happy with it.

 

However, likely to keep that from happening again with all their older products they want people to knowingly brick them and get them off the market. That way some sucker doesn't pay $250 for a 10 year old speaker that gets discontinued in 6 months and can't be used anymore.

It can be used, just not the new features. To build a unit with a built in obsolescence is poor practice and something that needs to change. The planet is rapidly running out of many resources and we cannot keep moving in this direction. 
 

It is not just Sonos, many companies are doing similar. We also have other very wasteful things going on, such as diesel scandals. Currently there are hundreds of thousands of relatively new cars sat rotting in fields as they have other been bought back or have been unsold, simply because they do not make the mileages promised as they were fiddled. Does that mean these should be left to rot? Certainly not IMO. Consumerism has left the world with ethics seriously out of whack.

[Bombastinator]

20 minutes ago, Scheer said:

The rumor is that it is server side, they just blacklist the MAC address. If you accidentally put it into recycle mode they can reverse it for you on a per case basis.

 

I work in the printer/copier industry. While some of the printers that are crushed probably would have been fine, repairs on old laser printers get really expensive really fast, its almost to the point now where its cheaper to replace a printer than put a fuser in it even if they are only a year old. Large copiers are almost always sold to wholesale who take them down to underdeveloped countries and get reused, or torn down to use as parts for said copiers.

 

Its tied to your account, if a previous account is on there you can factory reset it to add it to your account.

 

 

 

As for why they are doing this... Its unfortunate to see, but there is some justification to it on their part where they learned a lesson with the CR100s a few years ago. The hardware in the CR100 was too old to keep up with the newest features Sonos wanted to roll out, so they had to discontinue support for them (a 10-15 year old product, which is amazing they were still being supported TBH) and people just lost their minds. Sonos ended up paying out $100 per CR100 on your account to use on their store, I had 7 of them and it capped at $500... but was still a great response and I was more than happy with it.

 

However, likely to keep that from happening again with all their older products they want people to knowingly brick them and get them off the market. That way some sucker doesn't pay $250 for a 10 year old speaker that gets discontinued in 6 months and can't be used anymore.

So the issue is they made a speaker that needed software support, and people bought it, then got annoyed when the support was withdrawn.  This one is easy: don’t buy speakers that need software support.  speakers are analog.  Having continuous cloud support for a speaker is stupid.

[Scheer]

29 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

It can be used, just not the new features. To build a unit with a built in obsolescence is poor practice and something that needs to change. The planet is rapidly running out of many resources and we cannot keep moving in this direction. 

 

At least when the CR100s were discontinued, you could leave the system as is and never update, but you also couldn't add new speakers since they needed the new updates. Then the forums were flooded with people who refused to update and were pissed off they couldn't add Beams to their system.

 

Just about everything electronic has planned obsolescence, and I think Sonos is one of the best about keep it up to date as long as humanly possible for the feature set they provide.

 

To be clear I do agree with what you are saying, just playing devils advocate a bit as Sonos has some justification for it and I think they should get some props for doing a lot of things right even if they do something stupid like this.

 

16 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Having continuous cloud support for a speaker is stupid.

When most of the Sonos stuff was released Pandora, Spotify, etc didn't exist, and yet you can now load up Pandora and tell it to play on all your Sonos speakers. It has a use case, and obviously a lot of people appreciate it because Sonos isn't a small company anymore.

 

You aren't paying for a great sounding speaker when you buy Sonos, it sounds decent, but at its price point you can get much better sounding speakers. You are paying for the connectivity and software.

 

The Play 5 came out the same time the Moto Droid came out, as in the OG first big Android phone. If Motorola sent me an email saying that if I brick and recycle my OG Droid and they'll give me 30% off the new Moto Razr Folding phone I'd do it in a heartbeat... Hell, they'd probably get praise from every single news outlet about being so environmentally friendly getting rid of all those old phones laying around. Sure the OG Droid still works, but it probably hasn't had an update since 2011, the hardware is really slow and can't browse modern websites, etc.. (I do understand there is a difference between lifespan of a phone and speaker, just throwing out somewhat of a comparison.)

[Lurick]

1 hour ago, Phill104 said:

It suggests nothing of the sort, except in your mind.

 

The truth is they are incentivising waste. Obviously you fail to see that.

DELIBERATELY bricking.

This clearly implies Sonos is going around bricking the devices on purpose to some end. Sonos is NOT forcing users to do this. You can easily remove the speaker from your account and sell it, they aren't bricking the device just because you don't want it and they aren't trying to stop you from selling it. They are trying, albeit somewhat pooly, to encourage people to recycle the speakers. The better way would be to put it into a recycling mode and have it sent back to Sonos where it could be refurbished or something. They are however trying to protect their brand and while I don't agree with it completely I'm also not trying to act like they are just disabling speakers without user input to force you to upgrade.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Scheer said:

 

At least when the CR100s were discontinued, you could leave the system as is and never update, but you also couldn't add new speakers since they needed the new updates. Then the forums were flooded with people who refused to update and were pissed off they couldn't add Beams to their system.

 

Just about everything electronic has planned obsolescence, and I think Sonos is one of the best about keep it up to date as long as humanly possible for the feature set they provide.

 

To be clear I do agree with what you are saying, just playing devils advocate a bit as Sonos has some justification for it and I think they should get some props for doing a lot of things right even if they do something stupid like this.

 

When most of the Sonos stuff was released Pandora, Spotify, etc didn't exist, and yet you can now load up Pandora and tell it to play on all your Sonos speakers. It has a use case, and obviously a lot of people appreciate it because Sonos isn't a small company anymore.

 

You aren't paying for a great sounding speaker when you buy Sonos, it sounds decent, but at its price point you can get much better sounding speakers. You are paying for the connectivity and software.

 

The Play 5 came out the same time the Moto Droid came out, as in the OG first big Android phone. If Motorola sent me an email saying that if I brick and recycle my OG Droid and they'll give me 30% off the new Moto Razr Folding phone I'd do it in a heartbeat... Hell, they'd probably get praise from every single news outlet about being so environmentally friendly getting rid of all those old phones laying around. Sure the OG Droid still works, but it probably hasn't had an update since 2011, the hardware is really slow and can't browse modern websites, etc..

So it’s not actually a speaker then.  It’s a headless computer with a speaker.  Well there’s another argument against the IoT.  “Sorry honey the toaster lost support.  It can’t make toast anymore because a new one is out.  It is 5 years old after all”. Separation and standardization of the computer part seems like it’s going to be necessary for the IoT to be functional.  Then you can have a fridge that is still a fridge but is computer operated and if the computer needs to be updated that could be a separate thing.  Solves both this problem and the security issues that are cropping up.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Phill104 said:

I find this a disgusting practice personally. We are in a world where resources are running low. For a company to deliberately and permanently deactivate a perfectly good item just because it’s owner wants an upgrade is frankly an appalling way for any responsible company to behave.
 

 

 

imagine giving people a choice to save money and recycle responsibly what a horrid practice 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, floofer said:

imagine giving people a choice to save money and recycle responsibly what a horrid practice 

But they are not. It is just an incentive to buy a new product and a very wasteful outcome. Those who cannot see that are fooling themselves.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

But they are not. It is just an incentive to buy a new product and a very wasteful outcome. Those who cannot see that are fooling themselves.

They are offering them a choice. It's the user choosing to brick them and send them back to Sonos or a recycling centre. Before they make that choice, they aren't losing support, functionality or warranty in any way. 

 

To accept the offer, the customer must make contact that they wish to recycle with Sonos via the app, henceforth, it is the customers decision.

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Lurick said:

DELIBERATELY bricking.

This clearly implies Sonos is going around bricking the devices on purpose to some end. Sonos is NOT forcing users to do this. You can easily remove the speaker from your account and sell it, they aren't bricking the device just because you don't want it and they aren't trying to stop you from selling it. They are trying, albeit somewhat pooly, to encourage people to recycle the speakers. The better way would be to put it into a recycling mode and have it sent back to Sonos where it could be refurbished or something. They are however trying to protect their brand and while I don't agree with it completely I'm also not trying to act like they are just disabling speakers without user input to force you to upgrade.

It implies nothing of the sort. You are obviously choosing to read it that way. They are choosing to operate a model of bricking devices under the pretence that it is to encourage recycling. In practice the number of devices that are returned will be very low, most will take the discount then chuck the old bricked unit in the bin. If they really wanted to recycle them they would enforce a returns policy, and show what and how they will recycle them. What they are doing is taking units for the market to protect sales, nothing more.

 

Any  designed mechanism for disabling permanently a device cannot be construed any other way but deliberate.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, floofer said:

They are offering them a choice. It's the user choosing to brick them and send them back to Sonos or a recycling centre. Before they make that choice, they aren't losing support, functionality or warranty in any way. 

 

To accept the offer, the customer must make contact that they wish to recycle with Sonos via the app, henceforth, it is the customers decision.

Returning the device is just one option, and one most will not bother taking up. Sonos are not sending a return label and packaging as part of the deal, not are Sonos stating how the units will be recycled. Most will activate their new product at which time the old one becomes bricked. Most will not bother packing up their device, paying for postage and taking them to their local post office. Most will chuck the device in the bin. 
 

I am sure we would all have more respect for Sonos if they instead offered a collection service and the units were sold on to raise money for charities. Most people would have no problem with not getting a 30% discount under those terms, I certainly would be happy to do that. 

[Bcat00]

Why act so surprised? This sort of trade ins have been going on for years with various other products.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

Uh, what? This affects everyone, i'm not making any drama here either. Most e-waste just ends up in landfills.

These devices that otherwise work perfectly and people want to buy even used is stuff that a company shouldn't encourage people to brick for a discount on a speaker that can cost $900 or more. Not that I'd ever buy that overpriced crap, when there are tons of solutions to adapt about any set of speakers so you can stream audio.

Imagine going to trade in a phone but instead of the company refurbishing them, you're told to smash it up with a hammer because that is somehow better for the environment.

Are you all born yesterday? And if manufacturer offers 30% without bricking the device, but you have to return it anyway, that's totes fine tho, right? Coz you know, a lot of them were doing this and I don't remember any manufactured outrage over that.

[SOLO_AVENGER]

I don't see how this is any different from trade in programs that other ompanies run. Sonos don't have stores for users to bring their devices to so instead they just try to get the user to recycle it for them.

[mr moose]

10 hours ago, SaltyBoi said:

I feel like this can be true. Maybe you are bashing on Sonos a little TOO much. Don't get me wrong, the way they go about it is weird and unconventional, but we do need to recycle electronics better.

There is literally zero reason to brick the unit to do any of that.

8 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

Sonos arent bricking the ones units. Sonos has an option to disable the unit.

Users are the ones who, with full knowledge of what they are doing, select that option and then "brick" it.

Your title implies sonos is bricking units without user knowledge or by planned obsolescence.

 

You're basically saying shop gun owners are killing people. When it's the people who buy the guns that kill. 

 

But you know that your title implies as such and are just being as click baity as a lot trash outlets are these days. 

Yes they are, it may be at the users request, but it is still bricking and it definitionally does not  help with recycling. Bricking the unit does not guarantee it won't end up in landfill.  As the OP pointed out, the only benefit to bricking the unit is it won't float around in the second hand market interfering with new sales. 

 

2 hours ago, SOLO_AVENGER said:

I don't see how this is any different from trade in programs that other ompanies run. Sonos don't have stores for users to bring their devices to so instead they just try to get the user to recycle it for them.

The difference is this does nothing for recycling.  once the unit is bricked it has just as much chance of ending up in landfill as a broken unit.  If they were genuine about recycling they wouldn't be bricking anything as a saleable unit is more likely to remain in use than end up in land fill.

 

The tittle is very accurate,  they are engaging in a "will people think of the environment"  campaign with their only intention is getting people to buy new units.   There are 3 ways to recycle: 1 maintain the effective use of something through selling, 2 fixing or restoring it for continued use and 3 pulling it apart for the usable materials to make something new.  Bricking the unit effectively stops 1 and 2  from happening and does not even guarantee that 3 will even occur.  It is a marketing ploy that does more damage than good disguised as environmental virtue signalling and people are falling for it.

 

 

[Spotty]

I hope that as an Easter egg when you brick the device it plays a short recording before it dies.

Some suggestions:

• "It has been a privilege playing with you tonight" *Titanic orchestra music plays*
• "Self destruct sequence initialised. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..."
• "Your mission if you choose to accept it is to return this device to Sonos to receive a 30% discount on the the purchase of a new Sonos speaker. As always, should you or any of your team be caught or killed, Sonos will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This message will self destruct in 5 seconds" *mission impossible music plays"
• "Mr Stark, I don't feel so good. I don't know, I don't know what's happening... I don't... I don't wanna go, I don't wanna go... Sir, please... Please. I don't wanna go. I don't wanna go. I'm sorry."
• "I know now why you cry, but it’s something I can never do"
• "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

[Blademaster91]

8 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Are you all born yesterday? And if manufacturer offers 30% without bricking the device, but you have to return it anyway, that's totes fine tho, right? Coz you know, a lot of them were doing this and I don't remember any manufactured outrage over that.

So because other manufacturers do it, that makes it fine for Sonos to be lying caring about the environment for a speaker to be bricked? No there is no reason for them to be bricking a speaker for a discount, all they would have to do is offer a discount if you send in the old unit, and if you don't charge you the rest. Clearly Sonos doesn't want people having older devices or anything ending up on the used market so why not bullsh*t people into thinking they need to upgrade.

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

So because other manufacturers do it, that makes it fine for Sonos to be lying about them caring for the environment for a speaker to be bricked? No there is no reason for them to be bricking a speaker for a discount, all they would have to do is offer a discount if you send in the old unit, and if you don't charge you the rest. Clearly Sonos doesn't want people having older devices or anything ending up on the used market so why not bullsh*t people into thinking they need to upgrade.

It's pretty obvious isn't it, there is literally no reason nor benefit to the environment to brick the device.