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Deliberate bricking, the Sonos way.

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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.
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50948868

 

Quote

Sonos is facing a backlash for encouraging customers to get rid of their old speakers when there may be nothing wrong with them. 

The US speaker giant offers customers a 30% discount on new products if they follow steps to recycle their old ones.

Following these puts the device in Recycle Mode, which means it will then be permanently deactivated.

Sonos said it wanted to encourage responsible disposal of electrical equipment.

 

So they want to encourage responsible recycling. Total bull, they don’t want old products stifling their market.

 

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.

 

Quote

But many took to Twitter saying it would be far better to allow people to resell them.

"Sonos's 'recycle mode' intentionally bricks good devices so they can't be reused," wrote Twitter user AtomicThumbs. 

He posted photos of five Sonos speakers which had been recycled through his company, Renew Computers. 

"Someone recycled five of these Sonos Play:5 speakers. They're worth $250 each, used, and these are in good condition. They could easily be reused."

 

Fine, users should re-sell their items rather than take the lazy option and just apply for the 30%

 

Quote

A Sonos spokeswoman told the BBC: "To participate in the Trade Up program and receive the 30% discount, a customer has to tell us in the app that they plan to recycle their old device. Customers can then redeem their discount at sonos.com or at a participating dealer. Once they have their new device, the customer will then be able to wipe their old device and deactivate it. Then it's up to them either to recycle it locally, or they can return it to Sonos and we'll recycle it. 

"As part of offering a great incentive for long-time loyal customers, we also want to encourage responsible disposal of older devices. The best way to do that is recycling locally which is much more environmentally friendly than packing up and shipping heavy devices back to Sonos. That said, our goal is to keep old players out of the landfill, so if local recycling isn't an option, customers are welcome to ship it back to Sonos at our expense with prepaid labels."


So how many will actually bother to send these items back to Sonos under this setup? I bet it is almost zero. Instead they will end up in the bin. They type of person that doesn’t want to waste time selling units second hand will probably be the same types of people who won’t recycle properly. Maybe these would have ended up in the bin anyway, but now there is an incentive to just scrap them.

 

Quote

According to the Electrical Waste Recycling Group, about 500,000 tonnes of electronic waste is recycled in the UK every year. But that is only a fraction of the "e-waste" that is piling up in landfill and in people's homes.

I bet that tonnage is mainly from industry too. At work we free send lorry loads of used kit that has reached end of sales life to our own internal recycling facility on behalf of our customers. A lot gets stripped down, parts reused for spares, metal recycled etc. It works but is still painful for me as often kit is still up to the task but is simply out of support. Industry can not afford to run critical infrastructure on EOSL kit, so it gets refreshed. However, that is totally different to consumer lines like the Sonos speakers being bricked for no other reason than to force sales.

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

Following these puts the device in Recycle Mode, which means it will then be permanently deactivated.

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.

Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.

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Clickbait title imo. It sounds like they do it on purpose. But it's after you get exchange rebates through their own program. That's not "deliberate bricking". You can use the speakers for 20 years if you want and they work that long. You can even sell it on your own to someone else or buy it from someone else for a certain value. So, this is a big weird "news"...

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Wouldn't the money you could get from selling these working devices second hand be more than the 30% savings that Sonos offers?

 

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Following these puts the device in Recycle Mode, which means it will then be permanently deactivated.

Quote

customers are welcome to ship it back to Sonos at our expense with prepaid labels."

Is there anything that would prevent Sonos from being unable to reverse the "recycle mode" and reactivate the device?

I'm not sure what they would do with them though. Maybe sell them in bulk to a third party seller as "refurbished"?

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2 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Is there anything that would prevent Sonos from being unable to reverse the "recycle mode" and reactivate the device?

Depends on how they do it, like I was just wondering in my own comment. If the firmware burns one of the one-time fuses, they'd need to replace the MCU itself with a new one to reactivate the device. That said, that's not hard and they have the firmware as well, so they certainly could do it and it wouldn't cost them much.

Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.

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This is very much on purpose, Sonos could still give you a trade in credit just asking to ship it back, and if you don't they could simply charge you the discounted amount like every other company does lol.

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Imagine if a car dealer told you they'd give you a good discount on a new car if you poured sugar in your fuel tank and slashed your tyres, saying it was for "environmental reasons"...

The whole thing just seems bizarre.

 

22 hours ago, WereCatf said:

Depends on how they do it, like I was just wondering in my own comment. If the firmware burns one of the one-time fuses, they'd need to replace the MCU itself with a new one to reactivate the device. That said, that's not hard and they have the firmware as well, so they certainly could do it and it wouldn't cost them much.

That seems a little extreme though, doesn't it? Is that a common practice? I would have assumed it would just be some form of firmware lock that they could

override or flash.

Edited by Spotty

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Just now, Spotty said:

That seems a little extreme though, doesn't it? Is that a common practice? I would have assumed it would just be some form of firmware lock that they could override or flash.

Actually, yes. Fuses are a rather common way of semi-permanently disabling a device, if the manufacturer has deemed such a thing necessary. It can be used to e.g. disable old authentication-devices -- someone tries to log in with an authentication-device that has been removed from service, the system detects this and tells the firmware to kill itself by burning some fuse/fuses on it, making the device completely inoperable.

 

4 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Imagine if a car dealer told you they'd give you a good discount on a new car if you poured sugar in your fuel tank and slashed your tyres, saying it was for "environmental reasons"...

The whole thing just seems bizarre

I don't disagree.

Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.

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51 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

As part of offering a great incentive for long-time loyal customers, we also want to encourage responsible disposal of older devices.

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.

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This reminds me a bit of a patriot act episode I recently watched about fast fashion.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Clickbait title imo. It sounds like they do it on purpose. But it's after you get exchange rebates through their own program. That's not "deliberate bricking". You can use the speakers for 20 years if you want and they work that long. You can even sell it on your own to someone else or buy it from someone else for a certain value. So, this is a big weird "news"...

The title definitely needs to be changed. 

Pretty sure LTT is better than allowing misinformation in titles 

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40 minutes 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.

It is not just them as I said, similar has been going on for years via contractual agreements. This seems a bit different but along the same lines. I can bet that the change in recycling of these products is non existent. To me deliberately destroying a perfectly good and wanted bit of kit is wrong.

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2 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

The title definitely needs to be changed. 

Pretty sure LTT is better than allowing misinformation in titles 

Please tell me what is misleading? Sonos are bricking the units as part of an incentive scheme. 

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1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Clickbait title imo. It sounds like they do it on purpose. But it's after you get exchange rebates through their own program. That's not "deliberate bricking". You can use the speakers for 20 years if you want and they work that long. You can even sell it on your own to someone else or buy it from someone else for a certain value. So, this is a big weird "news"...

Yes. It is deliberate bricking. As they brick the device to give you the discount.

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42 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

Please tell me what is misleading? Sonos are bricking the units as part of an incentive scheme. 

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. 

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2 hours ago, Spotty said:

That seems a little extreme though, doesn't it? Is that a common practice? I would have assumed it would just be some form of firmware lock that they could override or flash. 

 

Imagine if a car dealer told you they'd give you a good discount on a new car if you poured sugar in your fuel tank and slashed your tyres, saying it was for "environmental reasons"...

The whole thing just seems bizarre.

This was actually kind of a thing 13 years ago. Cash-For-Clunkers was pretty much exactly that.

My eyes see the past…

My camera lens sees the present…

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3 hours ago, Phill104 said:

We are in a world where resources are running low.

Have you been to a supermarket recently?

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Reuse is always better than recycling, especially with electronics. When you recycle a PCB at best you get about 20% of the materials back in a usable state. Reusing on the other hand wastes nothing. Recycling is only good when the device is broken beyond repair or too old and limited to be of any use to anyone.

1 hour 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. 

Dude, what are you on about? Sonos is offering discounts for people who brick their product. In your weird analogy, that would be gun vendors offering a discount for people who shot someone. Are they forcefully bricking your perfectly good and reusable product? No. Are they encouraging you to brick it? Yes. And it's deliberate in that the user deliberately bricks it to earn the incentive to do so.

Don't ask to ask, just ask... please 🤨

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This is the same as the car scrappage shite. Take a perfectly servicable car in part exchange, scrap it, then claim it's good for the environment. It's bullshit, in what nutters mind is destroying a functioning product to make another one saving resources?

 

34 minutes ago, RohPC said:

Have you been to a supermarket recently?

And the shelves upon shelves of utter crap is why we have a problem.

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2 hours ago, Phill104 said:

Please tell me what is misleading? Sonos are bricking the units as part of an incentive scheme. 

Well, they’re convincing customers to do it anyway.  I’m not saying it’s good.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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4 hours ago, Spotty said:

Wouldn't the money you could get from selling these working devices second hand be more than the 30% savings that Sonos offers?

Maybe but that would require a bit of effort and you know how people are

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2 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Yes. It is deliberate bricking. As they brick the device to give you the discount.

Which you voluntary decide to do and you don't own the device anymore at that point. The title suggests they brick it randomly or based on time or even remotely. Yet that isn't the case. You can sell the device to anyone like any other device. And you can buy one from anyone as well. Nothing gets bricked unless you opt for a discount from Sonos directly. So, you can "brick" it and use their 30%discount or sell it yourself to someone and buy a new one. Or something else.

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1 hour ago, RohPC said:

Have you been to a supermarket recently?

Yes, and I see so much waste on a daily basis.

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2 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. 

My title implies nothing of the sort, it is your choice to read it that way.

 

Sonos are incentivising a very wasteful attitude, one for the lazy consumers. Your gun analogy is way off as others have explained.

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15 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Which you voluntary decide to do and you don't own the device anymore at that point. The title suggests they brick it randomly or based on time or even remotely. Yet that isn't the case. You can sell the device to anyone like any other device. And you can buy one from anyone as well. Nothing gets bricked unless you opt for a discount from Sonos directly. So, you can "brick" it and use their 30%discount or sell it yourself to someone and buy a new one. Or something else.

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.

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