You might remember that Sonos had a program earlier this year where a customer who leverages this nets a 30% discount off a new device. But the catch was that you had to put your existing Sonos speaker in what Sonos calls “Recycle Mode”. That starts a 21 day countdown that at the end of the 21 days, your existing Sonos device gets “bricked”. And by “bricked” I mean it no longer works. Forever. You can then take it to your local eWaste recycling center or send it back to them.
To nobody’s surprise, this was an #EpicFail. But according to The Verge, that’s changed:
The trade-up program still exists, and customers who own eligible legacy products can get the same discount, but they’re no longer required to permanently brick devices that might still work just fine.
With the change, Sonos is now giving customers full control over what happens with the older gadgets they’re “trading” up from. They can choose to keep it, give it to someone, recycle it at a local e-waste facility, or send it to Sonos and let the company handle the responsible recycling part. Sonos quietly removed Recycle Mode from its app last week and replaced it with language asking anyone seeking the discount to call customer service. Within the next few weeks, Sonos will update its website with a new flow for the trade-up program that no longer includes Recycle Mode, and you won’t have to call anybody.
Well, that’s a great change. But it’s a quiet change. They might have been better off saying to anyone who will listen that this change happened and they’ve learned from their mistake. But they didn’t do that and I guess that they were hoping that nobody would notice.
So much for that.
There’s one other thing. Sonos still isn’t going to bring new features to older speakers. I guess they have to give you an incentive to get a new speaker.