Apparel companies are starting to participate in the secondary market for their used gear, why can't Sonos do something similar?

Examples: - Patagonia Worn Wear (https://wornwear.patagonia.com) - REI Used Gear (https://www.rei.com/used/shop/gear) - Arc'teryx Rock Solid (https://rocksolid.arcteryx.com)

As it stands, Sonos is effectively buying their old speakers and then throwing them away. Could they not recoup their costs and avoid e-waste by simply selling the used Sonos devices into a market that can't afford the brand new ones? I thought this is how most phone trade-in programs worked, which seems like a mature process now.

If you want to sell, give away, or otherwise let someone else reuse your Sonos, then DON'T PUT IT IN RECYCLE MODE. Easy peasy.

Recycle mode exists for when you intentionally want to get a Sonos trade-in credit for recycling your speakers for materials. But because you don't send the speakers directly to Sonos (instead to a local recycler), they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it. So the recycle lock is a clever mechanism to ensure that. Otherwise you could "cheat" by getting the credit AND still using/selling your speakers.

So if you want your speakers to be reused... don't take the credit!! Donate or sell them instead! It's your choice.

It seems to me like overall it's a good set of incentives. The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right? But doesn't prevent people from otherwise selling or donating them. Since it gives the consumer all the choice, this seems like a win for all sides, no?

First gen Ipods were a prime example, but now everybody seem to want to do the same.

We recently had a prospective client who had an idea of very cheap internet connected Ipod clone, who of course had a "genius business model" of jacking the price n-fold after sale under a threat of remote bricking.

I'm very glad we refused.

Imagine a virus that looks for Sonos devices on a network and bricks them all via "recycle mode"!

The API probably isn't even locked down. I think it's unauthenticated SOAP/UPnP.

An even dumber attack: guests with your wifi credentials can download the Sonos app and break your gear. It's entirely unauthenticated.

I just don't understand why people keep buying such things...

But for the past year the system has been a mess. Music stutters, some units can't be found, some units fail to upgrade through multiple retries/reboots. I've wasted so many hours relocating them and connecting the misbehaving units to an ethernet cable trying to get them to update.

Eventually things get working again after hours of blind tinkering, but then a month or two later it happens again.

My wife looks to me as the tech guy to solve it, but it is far more opaque to debug then when PCs misbehave. Yes, I know about the secret diag menus and login, but they don't really help me.

The point is: my wife resents that the system doesn't work, and I resent that I've wasted so much time and my wife thinks I'm shirking because every time it comes up I groan and put off the pain of getting it working again.

I won't brick these -- I'll find some use case where they do work, but I'll get some other system to make my wife happy, even if it means spending another $1200+.

I would have bought a Sonos instead of an Apple Homepod because I thought they were more "open". But if the manufacturer can just make my device useless, I'm not interested.

Audio and Hifi gear is extremely versatile and virtually everything is compatible. High end devices easily last for decades. This feature makes it clear that Sonos has no intention of following that tradition.

There doesn't seem to be anything stopping users from selling their speakers on - they just forgo the Trade Up discount.

The poster's point that this cuts down on re-use of perfectly good products is true, but it doesn't seem that much different to other trade in programs, e.g. Apple's. The difference seems to be that Sonos leave the burden of actually recycling the product (or not) to the user, while Apple does it for you.

This reminds me of a related situation I've seen with electric toothbrushes --- they have instructions on how to remove the battery "for recycling", which is deliberately designed to make the unit self-destruct in the process (by e.g. making the plastic thin and fragile, and the wires brittle and easily broken), but others have figured out how to use those same instructions to open it up and replace the cells at a fraction of the cost of a new unit. The fact that nothing needs to be broken to replace them, and that it could be trivially designed to make that job much easier, clearly demonstrates planned obolescence.

I built my own spotify receiver using an rpi with a hifiberry add on which worked perfectly. If someone built even simpler custom made Sonos play:5 boards I’d be less reluctant to buy more of them as I fear they may be expensive bricks if Sonos fails.

A lot of luxury goods brands destroy their unsold merchandise, and some even go Apple style after their second hand market too.

The post was lacking some context at first but from how I understand this, you can render your sonos device unusable voluntarily and in turn get a new sonos device for a little cheaper. This happens by marking the serial number of your device on the sonos servers as "recycled" making reactivation impossible.

And they're somehow marketing this "feature" as environmentally friendly because it somehow in some twisted sense means you recycle your old device for a new one.

I'm speechless.

We recently read about Apple devices being bricked in the recycling process because of Find My, but that makes sense, because it’s a personal computer or phone where I intentionally store personal data. And I’d much rather err on the side of that data not getting out.

But seriously Sonos, this is dumb. To intentionally brick devices that could be perfectly functional for someone else is honestly bad for the planet and business.

Glad I’ve never bought a Sonos and now I never will.

This smells like some program cooked up by a hot shot MBA type that the executive team trusts to tweak the business because they don’t shut up about needing to focus on type of numbers investors care about. Never mind they don’t know the first thing about building a decent product. And to make it worse they’re probably actually convinced they’re helping the environment.

I adjusted to that by keeping bulb receipts. Then buying new ones to replace failing ones. Then coming 3 weeks later to get refund or credit for failed ones.

Putting pressure on retailers to stop carrying crappy products.

I know it's not exactly audio stuff but manufacturers engaging in misleading to the point of fraudulent practices need to be dealt with.

I always thought they were just wireless speakers that I used locally on my own network...

Apparently, this process would have been 10x easier if they had switched on "OEM unlocking" in the Developer Options setting (which you can't do from the boot menu, recovery menu or via adb), which is off by default for a very stupid reason. We were successful in the end, but it was a LOT of hassle.

So, when you switch on "OEM unlocking", you get a warning that it's "for protection against thieves". Like, a thief would steal your phone and it's encrypted and locked, but because "OEM unlocking" is off they can't simply wipe it and reinstall to re-sell, or something. So to them it's a brick and therefore they wouldn't have stolen your phone I guess. Except if they spend some effort they can totally cleanly reinstall the thing, it just takes more steps.

Maybe I'm missing some part here about how this "OEM unlocking" option supposedly protects against theft, but for me it was a simple sum. Number of times my phone got stuck in a boot loop: 3, number of times my phone got stolen: 0. So I set that to unlocked, now I'll have an easier time if I ever mess up my phone again.

The only real reason I can think of is that they WANT your phone to stay bricked/bootlooped when it's bricked, and be unable to fix and repair it. It has nothing to do with theft, it's just a way to make sure the device stays disabled when it's disabled, and to make you buy another new phone.

Additionally, I got nothing but happy comments about LineageOS from my friend. You can really tell in the feel of the entire system the difference between what it means to be a user (normal software) or to be the product (like in Android or any of the Google/Facebook/Apple systems). Just by what options you're given and the fact that applications actually behave at your service instead of nagging you while you're trying to accomplish a task. I'm not really happy about how Android 9 is running on my moto-g6, so I think I'm gonna make that switch soon as well. You don't even need to root the phone to do this, but it's a choice (I think I'm going to root it though).

People's ears have not changed, and the ability to reproduce sound has been nearly perfected. If you're not too picky/audiophillic, like most people, the requirements are even lower.

If you want good speakers, you don't buy a device that's 50% streaming audio circuitry, you buy a same-priced speaker that's actually a good speaker.

If you look at the S/N and distortion specs on a new affordably priced receiver, they won't be meaningfully better than a mid-range unit from the late 70s/early 80s. All the new HDMI and 20.7 Dolby Surround does nothing for two-channel MP3s or CDs.

Because the performance is equal, it's allowed build quality to shine. 15kg of heatsinks, capacitors the size of Coke cans, and big old TO-3 transistors are probably going to outlast propriatery digital doodads and amp-on-a-module designs built to minimize costs.

I'm more of a JVC fanboy myself, but I've been working on a Kenwood KR-6200 recently. 45 years old and one dead bulb. Unacceptable!

I retired many computers in the 80's and 90's in perfect working order. None of them will power up today.

Nothing I've bought in the last 25 years sounds remotely as good as them.

And plugging in a Chromecast audio has given it immortality.

A boutique outfit from Shenzhen makes that.

Yep. I picked up a massive old high-end Denon receiver with pre-amp inputs and use a cheap newer receiver to decode surround digital audio and pump it through that 40 pound beast. Sounds incredible.

First, the most environmental form of recycling is for an object to be reused as is. So, if any item is given to a recycling center, if the recycling center can just sell it directly to someone else, then it's much more environmentally friendly.

Second, the credit doesn't encourage people to recycle them at all instead of throwing it in the trash, there's no verification that they've given it to a recycling center. The only thing is that after the recycling mode is enable, the device becomes a useless paperweight.

So it's an extremely environmentally unfriendly policy from a company who pretends they care about the environment.

Recycling effectively is the same as throwing them in the trash in this case. There is no need for this. Sonos could just as easily offer an upgrade discount to people who bought their gear originally but they are scared that this would affect their ability to sell to other people so they create what is called artificial scarcity.

And that should not happen with things that are still serviceable, especially not for a company that claims to have sustainability as their motto.

"To add insult to injury, there are complaints on Sonos' support forums from people who've managed to accidentally put their devices into recycling mode, and been told by Sonos support that there's no way to stop the countdown, forcing them to buy new devices after 21 days."

and

"From what our eBay guy can tell, the bricking isn't even in hardware; you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers. There's nothing stopping these things from working except Sonos says they can't."

Madness.

There is literally no way for them to verify that you didn't just throw your device in the landfill after enabling recycling mode and pocketing the cash. So this "functionality" does no good at all, other than to recruit the customer into their planned obsolescence program while praising the company for their "green" policy.

And it worked like a charm. Just look at how many people upvoted this comment, signifying their praise of the company for this terrible program!

And to be clear, either keeping it or reselling it would be better for the environment than recycling the device. It's completely backwards to design an environmental program around making sure that people don't secretly do the right thing behind your back.

The fact that there are multiple highly-rated comments on HN looking at resellers and saying, "well, obviously they shouldn't get Sonos credits" shows how poor of a job our society is doing educating people about how reduce-reuse-recycle actually works. You don't have to check for people abusing the system. The people abusing the system are the environmental success stories. If a bunch of people participate in the trade-up program and then secretly resell their devices, that is a good thing that should be celebrated.

If anything, Sonos should be offering more credit to those people, not less.

A complete deception to sound green, with zero cost to Sonos with zero attempt to be green, and just causing a waste stream. Nice one Sonos.

As others have commented, the most environmentally friendly way to ‘recycle’ is to reuse.

The purpose of this recycle mode is not to encourage recycling, but to kill the second hand market.

We absolutely understand what the intention of the button is.

I do not understand the actual sane incentive for anybody in this transaction.

How would Sonos be worse off if those machines weren't wasted? You get a sale either way; you reward a loyal customer for an upgrade either way. If it weren't a large company, I'd say they do it out of spite - but in reality, it's just the bizarre, surreal method large corporations end up with ridiculous policies through a set of seemingly logical steps.

>>they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it

Why? What is the benefit to them (Sonos)? What is the harm if you DID keep it?

>>The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right?

There's absolutely positively nothing about this mode / button that prevents people from throwing it in the trash. In fact, by any logic I can see, it does the opposite and encourages them to chuck it in the garbage - since it's now a worthless non-functioning brick.

>>the recycle lock is a clever mechanism to ensure that.

Let us please NOT call this travesty "Clever". At least not outside of SV tech-bro blinders culture :O. It does NOTHING to ensure recycling.

>>Otherwise you could "cheat" by getting the credit AND still using/selling your speakers.

Oh noes! Wait.. HOW would Sonos be at all worse off? How would ANYbody be impacted for the worse?

>>this seems like a win for all sides

Sonos didn't get anything out of it. Recycling company got less out of it. Earth got less out of it. And there's no reason I can understand why consumer has to go through that hoop to get an upgrade credit. Seems like a lose-lose for all sides.

----

I'm not going to downvote, because you made a lucid argument and downvotes are for those who do not contribute to conversation, not for disagreements. I'd say your post contributed a lot to conversation, seeing the number of comments:). But I fail to understand the argument you're trying to make and the framework / world outlook where it makes sense. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise but need a lot more to even begin changing my mind :-/. Just because consumer "have choice", doesn't make one of the options automatically sane.

They literally get nothing, except to make their devices more rare by having old ones bricked. Which is WRONG, in this world of increasing waste.

Your idea that this somehow overall is a good set of incentives seems to be based on two things: One, that people would otherwise just throw them in the trash, which isn't true. Two, that it's somehow a good thing to give customers the choice to brick it for no other reason than Sonos credit.

This is purposeful marketing misinformation. The goal here is to incentivize a naive customer, apparently including you, to make their devices non-reusable and to buy new devices. This has nothing to do with recycling, yet Sonos purposefully uses this word, because in this way they achieve their goal.

This isn't even a new technique. Unfortunately, it's widespread. Yet another example of greenwashing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing

The second hand market is very good for the environment. By going after it, Sonos is actively hurting the environment.

That people have a choice doesn't exonerate Sonos. They are making it a lot easier for people to make the wrong choice.

Many things in this world is a win for both parties involved but still an awful thing to do (due to externalities).

Why?

This is exactly what Cisco has done in the small/medium sized business market with their acquisition of Meraki. Pay forever or your router and wifi stops working. It's abhorrent.

Unfortunately, you can also make a profit by following the environmentally destructive route of making the user buy themselves a brand new device and bricking it when they don't keep paying the separate subscription.

:(

That’s absolutely not what’s happening here. I paid £169 for my Play:1 five years ago, and it’s still working as well as the day I bought it. I haven’t paid them a penny since.

This eco trade in may be a bit sketchy but absolutely no one’s device is being bricked without their consent.

Eh what?

With my latest MacBook Pro, I already know that there are no upgrades, the keyboard is almost broken, and that its lifetime is determined through policy. Question is; will it be the hardware or software which determines end of life?

That's so 2019 :-P

Today it's "consumer as a product" -- you buy a product, they own YOU.

How could it? It's all server side. If such a virus existed, they'd just undo all the 'recycling' after the day it started circulating.

If your Sonos can access the API to mark a device as recycled, so can you. So if you can predict serial numbers or just bruteforce them (depending on how complex they are) you might be able to brick every single Sonos out there...

I highly doubt they assign unique keypairs etc. to every single device...

This would be an incredible public service. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to do it so I won't.

Reading up on it, this was achieved only after a community outcry because in the prior firmware versions the switch would have to connect to the Netgear Cloud on every bootup.

Needless to say I would not have bought the swiches if I had knew I needed to register them to Netgear Cloud to have access to the full functionality specified in the data sheet. If I had bought them as a consumer, not as a business, I would have returned them immediately.

Netgear are now on our purchasing blacklist.

⓪ - the switches are Netgear GS-108Tv3

For example, I was looking for a device that would (1) be placeable on my living room furniture[1], and let me use a couple of trusty Monitor Audio speakers both (2) for playing music (e.g. from my phone, computer or streaming sources like Spotify) and (3) for TV audio, as those speakers sound much better than a modern soundbar. And that (4) could be expandable to surround sound in the future.

I painstakingly examined alternatives in the market. There were many devices that covered the three latter points but the overwhelming majority were AV receivers, which looked great from the audio and flexibility standpoint but were at least 30 cm deep. Not useful for me, as the furniture in my living room is 28 cm deep (wasn't the point of flat screen TVs to no longer need deep furniture taking lots of space in the living room?). I found like 5 or 6 devices that would physically fit. But most of them had no flexibility for surround expansion AND no WiFi, only Bluetooth playback.

Finally, only two devices ticked my boxes and physically fit: HEOS AVR (around €1000, 27.4 cm deep) and Sonos Amp (around €600, 21.69 cm deep) which wasn't even out yet.

Since 27.4 cm deep was still quite dubious for my 28-cm-deep furniture, I finally waited for the Sonos to come out and bought it. Sonos wasn't especially on my radar, as a relatively traditional audio amateur it's not a brand I trusted, but there they were, the only ones offering the product I wanted. And indeed, it works well, it powers my speakers nicely enough and it's very convenient. I'm watching the TV, want to stream something from Spotify: TV audio is automatically muted. I stop listening to Spotify: TV audio comes back.

Why no one else has made a device that can provide good TV audio and good music playback in a shallow form factor still escapes me. I don't think my requirements were so weird, in freaking 2018.

[1] Sorry, I'm missing the specific English word for the specific piece of furniture in the living room where one has a bunch of books, CDs, mixed souvenirs and the TV, so I'll just call it "the living room furniture".

This recycle mode stuff is terrible, though.

You can't really tell if the device can be remotely bricked (that easily) or unless someone's already been burned. I miss when companies would advertise their products as "cloud-enabled" so you knew exactly what to avoid.

Since we’re here, does someone have a good opensource alternative? Plug and play multi room audio streaming from Spotify et al?

Besides that fact, yeah it sounds like you have some wifi issues instead and is blaming Sonos.

For high brand value goods, generally no. Goods are crushed to become unserviceable. It's important to do that to maintain brand image, otherwise floods of not-very-old iPhones end up on ebay for $10, and the image of an iPhone as something that lasts and has resale value is shattered.

High end clothing manufacturers will even destroy brand new, never worn clothes to maintain brand image, because they don't want them sitting in the bargain bin looking 'cheap'.

It isn't as bad for the environment as it sounds - the vast majority of the costs in a $1000 iPhone are engineering, IP, licensing, manufacturing, capital and marketing costs. The actual metal and plastic is worth hardly anything, so destroying it isn't a big loss. Even the manufacturing cost is near zero because after launch day of a specific model, the marginal cost to produce one more phone is pretty much zero because production lines are rarely still at capacity.

Of course, the recyclability of the resulting shredded mixed mess is near zero.

A lot of Bluetooth "beacons" are of such construction, and not so cheap at all medical devices will be coming second.

Dunno, if the ID works like an activation key it might not recognize ids that don’t pass some sort of cryptographic signature check. Then you would need the private key to generate new valid ids.

I eventually managed to track down the original owner and had them unlock the devices. If I hadn't, these phones would be ewaste.

What bothers me is the solution is simple, when a manual factory reset is done, have the phone ping google and start a 1 week countdown. Google can then email the original owner and ask if they have had their phone stolen. If they reply yes then the phone is locked. If they reply no or have no response then the phone unlocks.

The closest thing I can think of to a private non-capitalist business would be one that relies on other companies to do the actual work and haven’t invested in their own production facilities. There are plenty of these around today, but that doesn’t appear to be what you’re referring to.