Thursday, March 5, 2020

Sonos Kills Recycle Mode

Santa Barbara-based whole home music device maker Sonos is backing away from its "Recycle Mode" feature, which it had introduced last year, which had required customers to "brick" their old devices to take advantage of a trade up deal from the company. The effort--which has been part of a Sonos effort to encourage owners of its older hardware to upgrade--had been introduced at the end of 2019. According to Sonos, it will now allow its users to take advantage of its tradeup offer by just validating a serial number. The original "Recycle Mode" plan had drawn widespread criticism for essentially creating a piece of e-waste out of hardware which could have been given to a friend, resold, or otherwise kept out of the trash.

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