My main frustration with Roon is the lack of transparency as to feature requests they know many people are interested in. Not even a “we are trying” or “we are looking into it.” Just nothing. I am a a lawyer and I have seen every kind of contract imaginable and none prevent anything like that, nor would it affect negotiations. It’s just ghosting. It’s bad customer service. In Roon’s management’s mind they apparently don’t owe us a response and I disagree.
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My feeling on this is Roon is a product designed, built, and marketed by Roon Labs, now owned by Harman. It is their product and they owe us nothing but to ensure the product works as advertised.
The Feature Suggestion Category is a place customers can make their ideas and wishes known, but Roon is under no obligation to use any of our suggestions or to respond in any way. If they did respond, they would probably need to hire additional resources just to investigate these and get into debates as to the pros and cons and answer all the “why not’s.”
How many products do we purchase where we get to make suggestions and debate the merits on a manufacturers forum?
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In Roon’s earlier days, they were much more engaged with users. Over time, they have backed off.
Perhaps we got spoiled and expected Roon would (should?) always stay engaged.
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I read a Roon Labs post somewhere, saying (I’m paraphrasing) that they shared more in the past about feature plans, but they decided to stop because it caused so much discontent when the plans had to change that it was worse than saying nothing at all. I wasn’t around at the time, but seeing the forum now, I can easily imagine it.
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As a retired developer I sympathize with the lack of transparency argument . As soon as you say “its coming in May” , the expectation is that it will despite any setbacks in achieving that deadline.
We have posts galore about stuff released that isn’t quite there yet , any feature MUST be right before release otherwise chaos reigns. Quoting “Drop Dead Date” is a recipe to release or else and risk releasing something that isn’t perfect. any users would say that Roon isn’t perfect - no software is !!
A vague roadmap with no anticipated dates may help but once again fuels the demands for 'WHERE IS IT" the company is on a hiding to nowt , they can’t win so who blames them for promising nothing
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By using Roon we agree to the terms of service. There is no contract, and no negotiation involved. We choose to use the software as-is, warts and all, with no guarantee that a feature we’d like will ever be seen.
Roon, like many software companies, decides how the product will evolve, and are not required to publish their plans. I don’t think this is particularly unusual. Some companies share plans when they are nearing fruition, and Roon does too, for example, with Roon Ready Relay.
Now I’d agree that community engagement was better in the past, but that was probably a reflection of the start-up nature of Roon at the time. Times change, and Roon has to satisfy investors now, which means growing reach and the user base, and this almost certainly consumes more time.
A year ago, Enno, their CX, set out in broad terms where the product is heading–see the Roon blog, which is the primary channel for communication and announcements nowadays. Anyway, I’d like to have an update on this, and see more effort going into stability (as promised) than new features.
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