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I think Sonos did the right thing by creating Recycle Mode and the over-reaction to this was amazing. Telling customers to just send the bricked device to the

I think Sonos did the right thing by creating Recycle Mode and the over-reaction to this was amazing. Telling customers to just send the bricked device to the local recycling centre in exchange for a discount seems fair. Apple also has a trade-in program except they expect you to send them the device. Sonos took the cheaper approach by offloading the actual recycling to a local centre. But people want to have it both/all three ways: feel good about recycling, get a discount on a future new gadget and sell/give the functioning old device to somebody. Amazing.

speedgoose 7y ago
Why sending to the recycling centre perfectly fine products ?
- yardstick 7y ago
  Exactly this. Answer: they were too lazy to collect the returned units and clean/prep/rebox them for resale. The whole discount for recycling offer was just designed to encourage more sales, they didn’t care about the recycling bit. Maybe they should just... reduce their prices by 30%? Side note: will there now be a market for buying used Sonos devices dirt cheap just for the discount in buying new devices? Or will Sonos only offer this on the first sale.
  - givinguflac 7y ago
    This is wildly wrong. The whole point was that it’s a massive carbon footprint to ship them all back. Local recycling is much more environmentally friendly. Not to mention this is an optional thing regardless. The discount is offered to any owner provided it hasn’t already been claimed by a previous owner.
  - zwily 7y ago
    The discount only works once per device.
- fierarul 7y ago
  Because a trade-in program where you sent the device to Sonos wasn't operationally / financially possible. There are extra costs with doing this in house (or, I guess, by partnering with a recycling centre) which meant the discount would have been much lower, or perhaps close to 0. But for an existing customer that did want to trade in, 30% was perhaps acceptable.
debian3 7y ago
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. There is a reason why it’s in that order.
- fierarul 7y ago
  None of these really require the manufacturer to step in and give you any money or discounts.
Canada 7y ago
Apple resells the used devices to the public, so they aren't just throwing them in the trash
- fierarul 7y ago
  Apple marketed a lot their Liam iPhone dismantling robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc
netsharc 7y ago
Geezus. Imagine if Tesla did this to perfectly functioning, but "old model" cars. But maybe you're a climate change denier...
- givinguflac 7y ago
  Clearly, you didn’t read the article. What you’re saying is the equivalent of Tesla offering a 30% discount on a new car, while still letting you resell your old car. There’s nothing good enough for you ever?
  - netsharc 7y ago
    I'm replying to a severely downvoted comment who thought the original bricking (so a 30% discount, but no resell because Sonos would turn the old device to a doorstop by a server-side flag) was a fine idea. Fucking hell, but my -1 shows me Hacker News is full of people -- like you -- who can't even follow threads.
    - fierarul 7y ago
      I think he was following the thread just fine. (And I didn't downvote you).
gambiting 7y ago
>>Telling customers to just send the bricked device to the local recycling centre in exchange for a discount seems fair. No, that's literally insane by every definition of the word. They took perfectly fine, working products, and destroyed them in order to give their customers a discount. Which part of that seems "fair" to you? Imagine if a car manufacturer would give you a discount on a new car, if you took your old one to the scrapyard first - everyone would immediately how this is a huge waste of resources if the car was still working. How is this acceptable with speakers?? Other companies somehow manage without this madness fine - if you are verified as an actual customer, they give you a discount for more stuff. What usually happens then is that you either sell or give away the old device, and someone else might get into the brand and potentially purchase more devices from it as well. It's a win win for everyone. This stupid recycling thing serves no one, except like you said - people feeling "good" about recycling, which is nonsense, a fully working device should be reused first.
- alien1993 7y ago
  >> Imagine if a car manufacturer would give you a discount on a new car, if you took your old one to the scrapyard first - everyone would immediately how this is a huge waste of resources if the car was still working. How is this acceptable with speakers?? This is pretty standard in Italy, nevertheless bricking devices is shit.
  - wirrbel 7y ago
    I think what Sonos did there was fairly ok from a customer-interaction point of view, but bad from the environmental perspective. There is a difference between bricking a device and offering a trade-in program, or offering a trade-in programm. The former does not allow you to continue using a PURCHASED device (your property), the latter allows you to continue using your property or OPTING for the trade-in programm. Sonos didn't kill the devices without the customer OPTING for the purchase of a new one. I guess it's kind of bad UX, but an offer to the customer. From an environmental perspective its obviously bad. Bricking kills reuse in a second hand market and is an insentive to take working devices out of operation. Yet, its not the first sketchy thing I remember hering about Sonos and I am glad I bought Teufel multimedia systems https://www.teufel.de https://www.teufel.de who I have no recollection of pulling any of these moves.
normalnorm 7y ago
> But people want to have it both/all three ways: feel good about recycling, get a discount on a future new gadget and sell/give the functioning old device to somebody. Amazing. The discount in this case is an incentive against the best possible type of recycling, which is precisely to let someone else reuse it as is. Of course, companies tend to hate the good kind of recycling because it limits their profits. Companies are not entitled to infinite growth, nor should we facilitate that sort of expectation, least we end up destroying our own habitat. Well, we probably will, considering the way things are going... What is actually amazing is that a company would create such an incentive and then pretend to be the good guys, caring about recycling and so on. Even more amazing is that some people are convinced by such low-effort bullshit.
- fierarul 7y ago
  I'm convinced both the company wrapping this as an eco-friendly move and the eco blow-back from some consumers to be morally equivalent. I didn't see a mob asking for 30% higher prices so Sonos could actually do proper recycling.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    That is a complete nonsequitior - 30% isn't what they need for proper recycling but what they believe they can afford to give as a sale to promote conversion from those who already sold it. The two offenses are very non-equal and not remotely equatable. One is claiming to help the environment while doing something actively detrimental to it, the other is at most not going for a non-existant hypothetical option which resembled someone trying to sell them the Brooklyn bridge and added sales sleeze. If that caught on without some through and validated accreditation method would rapidly see fly by night "recycling surplus" operations that ran off with the money without any actual recycling.
    - fierarul 7y ago

speedgoose 7y ago

Why sending to the recycling centre perfectly fine products ?

yardstick 7y ago
Exactly this. Answer: they were too lazy to collect the returned units and clean/prep/rebox them for resale. The whole discount for recycling offer was just designed to encourage more sales, they didn’t care about the recycling bit. Maybe they should just... reduce their prices by 30%? Side note: will there now be a market for buying used Sonos devices dirt cheap just for the discount in buying new devices? Or will Sonos only offer this on the first sale.
- givinguflac 7y ago
  This is wildly wrong. The whole point was that it’s a massive carbon footprint to ship them all back. Local recycling is much more environmentally friendly. Not to mention this is an optional thing regardless. The discount is offered to any owner provided it hasn’t already been claimed by a previous owner.
- zwily 7y ago
  The discount only works once per device.
fierarul 7y ago
Because a trade-in program where you sent the device to Sonos wasn't operationally / financially possible. There are extra costs with doing this in house (or, I guess, by partnering with a recycling centre) which meant the discount would have been much lower, or perhaps close to 0. But for an existing customer that did want to trade in, 30% was perhaps acceptable.

debian3 7y ago

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. There is a reason why it’s in that order.

fierarul 7y ago
None of these really require the manufacturer to step in and give you any money or discounts.

Canada 7y ago

Apple resells the used devices to the public, so they aren't just throwing them in the trash

fierarul 7y ago
Apple marketed a lot their Liam iPhone dismantling robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc

netsharc 7y ago

Geezus. Imagine if Tesla did this to perfectly functioning, but "old model" cars. But maybe you're a climate change denier...

givinguflac 7y ago
Clearly, you didn’t read the article. What you’re saying is the equivalent of Tesla offering a 30% discount on a new car, while still letting you resell your old car. There’s nothing good enough for you ever?
- netsharc 7y ago
  I'm replying to a severely downvoted comment who thought the original bricking (so a 30% discount, but no resell because Sonos would turn the old device to a doorstop by a server-side flag) was a fine idea. Fucking hell, but my -1 shows me Hacker News is full of people -- like you -- who can't even follow threads.
  - fierarul 7y ago
    I think he was following the thread just fine. (And I didn't downvote you).

gambiting 7y ago

>>Telling customers to just send the bricked device to the local recycling centre in exchange for a discount seems fair. No, that's literally insane by every definition of the word. They took perfectly fine, working products, and destroyed them in order to give their customers a discount. Which part of that seems "fair" to you? Imagine if a car manufacturer would give you a discount on a new car, if you took your old one to the scrapyard first - everyone would immediately how this is a huge waste of resources if the car was still working. How is this acceptable with speakers?? Other companies somehow manage without this madness fine - if you are verified as an actual customer, they give you a discount for more stuff. What usually happens then is that you either sell or give away the old device, and someone else might get into the brand and potentially purchase more devices from it as well. It's a win win for everyone. This stupid recycling thing serves no one, except like you said - people feeling "good" about recycling, which is nonsense, a fully working device should be reused first.

alien1993 7y ago
>> Imagine if a car manufacturer would give you a discount on a new car, if you took your old one to the scrapyard first - everyone would immediately how this is a huge waste of resources if the car was still working. How is this acceptable with speakers?? This is pretty standard in Italy, nevertheless bricking devices is shit.
- wirrbel 7y ago
  I think what Sonos did there was fairly ok from a customer-interaction point of view, but bad from the environmental perspective. There is a difference between bricking a device and offering a trade-in program, or offering a trade-in programm. The former does not allow you to continue using a PURCHASED device (your property), the latter allows you to continue using your property or OPTING for the trade-in programm. Sonos didn't kill the devices without the customer OPTING for the purchase of a new one. I guess it's kind of bad UX, but an offer to the customer. From an environmental perspective its obviously bad. Bricking kills reuse in a second hand market and is an insentive to take working devices out of operation. Yet, its not the first sketchy thing I remember hering about Sonos and I am glad I bought Teufel multimedia systems https://www.teufel.de https://www.teufel.de who I have no recollection of pulling any of these moves.

normalnorm 7y ago

> But people want to have it both/all three ways: feel good about recycling, get a discount on a future new gadget and sell/give the functioning old device to somebody. Amazing. The discount in this case is an incentive against the best possible type of recycling, which is precisely to let someone else reuse it as is. Of course, companies tend to hate the good kind of recycling because it limits their profits. Companies are not entitled to infinite growth, nor should we facilitate that sort of expectation, least we end up destroying our own habitat. Well, we probably will, considering the way things are going... What is actually amazing is that a company would create such an incentive and then pretend to be the good guys, caring about recycling and so on. Even more amazing is that some people are convinced by such low-effort bullshit.

fierarul 7y ago
I'm convinced both the company wrapping this as an eco-friendly move and the eco blow-back from some consumers to be morally equivalent. I didn't see a mob asking for 30% higher prices so Sonos could actually do proper recycling.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  That is a complete nonsequitior - 30% isn't what they need for proper recycling but what they believe they can afford to give as a sale to promote conversion from those who already sold it. The two offenses are very non-equal and not remotely equatable. One is claiming to help the environment while doing something actively detrimental to it, the other is at most not going for a non-existant hypothetical option which resembled someone trying to sell them the Brooklyn bridge and added sales sleeze. If that caught on without some through and validated accreditation method would rapidly see fly by night "recycling surplus" operations that ran off with the money without any actual recycling.
  - fierarul 7y ago