Dear Bose decision makers,
I'm not going to repeat the whole vTuner/TuneIn migration.
But it is mindblowing how Bose has handled this migration.
The fact you tried to do this as silently as possible with only a small reminder in the app and later a firmware upgrade,
removing the Internet Radio (vTuner) and forcing TuneIn as the only option, only illustrates you were hoping to get away with it.
But apparently the QA on this migration was not good enough, certainly not in Belgium and this seems to have bitten you in the b**t.
We have two SoundTouch systems (20 and 30) and I adviced Bose SoundToch to (at least 2) family and friends when they asked for advice on the matter.
All in all, we are very satisfied with the product and we hope to stay that way.
We use those systems to listen internet radio (VRT) 90% of the time where Spotify takes the other 10%.
I noticed the 15 minute delay two weeks ago as I was already on TuneIn and went back to using Internet Radio(vTuner), only to discover last week it broke completely.
If there is anything I have learned from this is how dependent us customers are on Bose and its firmware updates for internet radio.
Before this mess, I was unaware Bose was using vTuner under the hood. Not having dug into it, I simple thought it was "standard" internet radio.
Now I understand there's always a portal involved, which provides the list of radio stations (and their streams in most cases).
I did notice before there was no way to enter a custom streaming URL, something I know Sonos has.
Another friend had similar issues on his Sonos last year and he could work around that with providing a custom URL, bypassing any issues portals have with the specific radio stations.
So if you should learn anything from this situation, it is to invest in bringing that functionality in order to restore customer confidence, enabling them to work around these very issues when Bose is working on a firmware update (or worse stopped firmware updates for certain products.)
I guess I didn't think of the product's lifespan before and I haven't looked for that information yet.
However, I'm sure customers expect at least 5-10 years for a 300-500 EURO radio/speaker, even after Bose decides to drop firmware upgrade support for the product.
It would be interesting to learn how long Bose plans to support SoundTouch systems and bring updates for situations like this (when the portal they've chosen, breaks down).
I'm sure I'll keep watching this thread and hope Bose IT solves the issues pretty soon.
And on the midterm implement a solution for configuring custom streaming URLs.
