Robotic Answers and Lack of Information Provided

[mattius]

Here are my questions:

Why do we still get robotic answers that are scripted in response to our queries on the support forums? Emails go unanswered and phone calls get nothing but a scripted answer. You have sold customers a "pemium" product you could at least provide a premium service.

Here are quite a lot of questions which get asked time and time again, and never get an answer?

Automatic Power off, why oh why can you not let your customers decide if they want this on or off?? and im talking about all models not just the 300 you only ever seem to do anything about.

Amazon Prime or any music streaming service for customers outside the US (you remember us???) we have 3 streaming music services in the UK, 3, for a streaming music product line its just shocking the lack of supported services. Time and time again we are told you are working on it, time and time again customers are coming back months and years later to find out nothing has happened! why can you not provide updates or these services? A lot of customers (myself included) were missold your product being told services would be available imminently...

Alexa Skill, you anounced this almost a year ago, told us it was coming, yet nothing, no information, just tease customers then dissapear without a trace, why anounce something you aren't going to deliver? why have their been no updates?

General software security and reliablility, do you outsource the development of the software? as the moderators/support staff have no idea what is being worked on, there is never any progress updates, the quality is NOT Bose quality, it doesn't seem to have gone through any kind of quality control process (the last release the play button didn't work! **bleep**), and the updates come out with features nobody seems to ask for or want.

Software priorities, who decides on the priorities of fixes/updates? Why can't users be involved in this? users vote on things they want sorted first, why can't we see progress of what is being worked on?

In over a year of owning the soundtouch range of products, nothing has changed in that year, features are still lacking, reliability has improved slightly, support and customer relations are still awful. When are you going to make this product line worthy of the Bose name?

[djbazztek]

totally agree! 

[melissa030]

totally agree !

Seriously, every BOSE engineer or quality manager is invited to my living room, live on youtube if you like.. and i promise when i switch off the AM300, no one will hear a difference between the 300€ Samsung TV sound in the sleeping room compared to the 799€ BOSE ST300 while people are speaking in a movie as the center "channel"
of the ST300 is just awful

[mattius]

Furthermore, this actual event proves my earlier post, why do we need a "live" event to get answers? surely those answers should be forthcoming when a question is asked all the time...

Its also not exactly a "live" event is it, we have no chance to question the response, its mearly an exercise to try and minimise the anger and distain of this product range.

Mike, do you read the forum in general normally? if not i suggest you do, the best way to understand your "product line" is to talk to the customers see how it is in real world scenarios, if you actually read the forum you would realise the anger and frustration that is out there. We post questions which either don't get an answer or get a robotic one, We email you guys and don't get a response, PM the moderators and they sometimes answer sometimes don't and even when they do answer they usually just stop responding.

Customers are frustrated, customers are angry, Bose don't seem to care! We need progress, we need reliability, we need good communications continually not just in one off events. The hardware is excellent, the software is awful! 

[Chris82]

I couldn`t have said it any better! Totally agree!

[sadloyalist]

I am curious if the plan is to actually answer some fo the smae questions we have asked for a year or if we will hear " we can not comment at this time" in a live setting.

[Bad-Snowman]

I can't agree with you more! You are spot on.
I have myself tried to bring up this topic. But guess what... All I got was that robotic autoanswer.

It is so disappointing and I wish with all my heart that Bose soon will realise that they have a problem!

All Bose customers. Please show your support for the post by mattius. Like or comment!

[mattius]

Thanks guys, 

I've spent a long time trying to help Bose and customers, but im at the end of my tether, i have just lost all faith in them being able to deliver the product line this should be. Hence i have gone quiet recently. 

I find the attitude just thankless and almost as if i should be grateful to own a Bose product.

I still have a big chip on my shoulder after pointing out numerous security flaws/crap design of the software and getting no thanks and not even a response, multiple emails and PMs sent. Only Jason responded but even he stopped responding. I know they were read by the top brass and developers as the problems were fixed quickly but it just goes to show why would anyone want to help them if they don't even respond to emails. I think that just shows how Bose treat us, i spent a lot of time investigating and attempting to communicate with them, trying to help them, and i didn't even get the common courtesy of a response from any of the people i emailed.

The problems are all of Bose's own making and they don't seem willing to fix them, just happy doing their own thing and ignoring the customers, it will be the downfall of this product range.

[Mike_A_Bose]

Hi mattius, thank you for being one of the most engaged users in the community.

Automatic Power off is first being tackled on the 300 and Lifestyle 600 and 650 systems which were the systems most in need, we expect this in the late summer/early fall release. We will look at expanding it to a larger selection of speakers based on usage.

As for Amazon music, I want to answer this in two ways, with an added Mea Culpa thrown in...

We were hoping we could deliver early in the year, the target was early Spring, but obviously jumped the gun a little on saying "EARLY" as we were optimistic about some of the technical complexities.

First, in terms of availability, our target for expected expansion is in the next month.

Second, and in addition, We are working on additional features within the Amazon Music integration of SoundTouch to further expand it's capabilities.

Alexa Skill will also be available in the coming weeks.

We are actively working on improving software security and reliability. We know that this is an issue that is important to you and many other users.

Finally for software priorities, there is an internal team that decides on the priorities based on input from the forum, app reviews, customer interviews, product line needs, etc. That said, we hear you on getting users involved and are implementing an "Ideas portal" for product idea submissions. The goal is, as you point out, that users can make suggestions, add weight to existing ideas, and see the status as they progress.

[Geeman22]

Thank you someone at bose who finally gives a solid answer. Yes we were told early and that has caused a barrage of animosity from me and more but all they had to do was say what you said how hard is that. We look forward to the next month now and hope for no delays. I don't pretend to understand the complex nature of programming but seem a little miffed that it's this hat had stopped this as it's running in America and we were told it was a licensing issue slowing things down. But thank you for bringing something positive to the table