The Sonos speakers’ surprise that they didn’t ask to arrive at their door quickly became a major inconvenience for several customers of the multi-room hi-fi system brand.
According to On the edge (opens in new tab)Sonos is apparently mistakenly sending multiple speakers to people who ordered just a single device, with the company going to charge them for the extra units.
The article goes on to explain how, in one case, a customer was charged over $2,000 after ordering a Sonos Move, but ended up receiving seven units of the portable Bluetooth device. Now, we don’t know if you’ve seen how big and heavy a Sonos Move is, but getting eight of them out of the blue would be…weird.
It is currently unclear how widespread the problem is and whether the problem is limited to the US, but a thread on the issue also has several Reddit users detailing their own similar experiences (opens in new tab) of receiving devices that they had not ordered from the company.
Sonos has since acknowledged the issue, blaming an issue on a system update for its e-commerce platform, and asked affected customers to return excess speakers via prepaid return labels, providing them with a refund for the additional charges.
However, with a wait time of up to 10 working days for reimbursement, some of those affected by the issue were understandably disappointed that they had not received compensation for the inconvenience caused.
We asked Sonos if the issue is known to affect other countries and if Sonos has plans to provide additional compensation. He declined to comment further at this point.
Analysis: Sonos answer is out of order
While Sonos can be trusted to get things right with the design and performance of their products, that hasn’t always been the case recently with their approach to customer service issues.
The debacle a few years ago surrounding its controversial and quickly abandoned Trade Up program, which required customers to put their unsupported but still functional speakers into recycling mode, rendering them unusable, will live on fresh in the minds of those who were once loyal to the brand.
With customers being erroneously billed for incorrect orders totaling thousands of dollars for this shipping error, the issue will have caused more than a minor inconvenience, especially with refunds scheduled to take more than a week.
It’s likely that some of these affected customers have purchased Sonos products for the first time, so it’s a surprise to find that the company didn’t go the extra mile and offer a discount or compensation for having to deal with the aftermath of a problem they didn’t cause. A show of good faith in addition to a text apology seems appropriate in this case.