Sonos has made ‘corrections’ on its controversial recycling programme. It means you don’t have to put your old speaker in the garbage.
Owners of Sonos speakers have had a hard time the past few months. First there was the fact that Sonos indicated that it no longer supported older speakers of the brand. After a storm of protest, the company reversed that decision: safety updates will at least keep coming in. And now there is the problem – which has been going on for some time – of Sonos’ recycling programme. The manufacturer’s Trade Up programme is intended to persuade users of obsolete Sonos hardware to buy something new, with a hefty 30% discount on a new speaker. Sounds good, right?
Yet discount thanks to your old Sonos
Could have been, but before you get that discount you first need to install a firmware update on your old device. Which then makes that old device irreversibly unusable. That doesn’t really sound like recycling, but rather promoting the disposal of things that could have lasted for years ‘in the attic room’.
Again, a stream of complaints has made Sonos realise that this action may not have been such a brilliant plan after all. And so you don’t have to turn your old speaker into a brick before you get the discount on a new device. Instead, Sonos recommends that you resell your old speaker, give it away, take it to a recycling centre nearby or send it back to the factory for proper recycling.
By the way, at the moment you still have to call Sonos’ helpline if you want a discount offer for a new device. In the near future this should (again) become an automated process that runs via the website.