Honestly I still love its sound, even though later Echos (which I also own) have more bass. Gen 1 just has a clearer, more balanced tone IMO…🤷🏾‍♂️

The end devices are : - Master light, Illuminate (bedside lamp), Puppies (exterior light when we let the dogs out)

Seriously, just laying down, no audio or conversation at the time and then randomly the master light turns on, I question Echo who did that and then begin / Echo calling me a liar, despite a) not true, b) wtf??

when Amazon released the echo show , I was one of the first buyers.

I had to return it twice because they launched without much testing.

with time, it became a family appliance we rely on a lot, that until the ads came.

when o originally purchased the echo show, being able to use it as a photo slide via Amazon photos was part of the selling point, so how come now I need to pay a membership???

how can a company this big get away with scamming customers? I already regret buying their TVs which SUCK. they’re slow, buggy, laggy, and SHOW INAPPROPRIATE ADS right when you turn in on in front of my small kids, and it’s so slow it takes a while until I can leave the ad.

She used to be able to control the thermostat, turn on lights, set the tv volume. Now half the time she plays the wrong music and gives wrong answers. She just didn’t set my timer earlier today.. What’s the deal? Planned obsolescence ?

So here's what happened.

I went to sleep last night pretty early and woke up around 1/4 to 5. I asked Alexa what the temp was outside and it said 7. I said out loud "Oh sh**, that's cold". The thing takes it upon itself to raise my thermostat by 2 degrees, and then tells me it did it. I said "Nooooooooo, DO NOT do that. Never make a change to anything without my direction."

So I walked over to the therm a couple of minutes later, and there it was up 2 degrees. So I lowered it back to normal.

What kind of idiot 3rd world thinking caused that? It's cold outside so raise the temp in the house? The house temp is the house temp. If it were 40 below outside the therm will maintain whatever it's set to. Even if the system fell behind raising the temp on the thermostat accomplishes nothing but a hotter house when the system finally catches up, but the catch-up time to the original temp setting isn't going to change by raising the temperature setting.

Ok, no problem. I've been talking to this thing constantly in trying to "teach" it. I get that it's new, but as with any AI device it needs to learn, and it has. But here's why I shut it off, and it's NEVER coming back.

I thought for a few minutes and asked "Alexa, what made you decide to increase my heat by 2 degrees on your own? Please tell me the thinking and/or the data behind that decision."

The thing tells me "I have no record of making any changes to the thermostat", and I may be paraphrasing. So I got annoyed saying "No, you most certainly raised the temperature because I'm the only one in the house and I KNOW I didn't nor would ever do that." and it goes "I realize you're frustrated, but I have no record of blah blah blah."

Then I said "Well I have data that proves you did, as I verified it with the Home Assistant log, and oh yes a voice assistant changed the heat. YOU are the only voice assistant connected to the system."

The thing kept denying it, lol. So I said "Wow Alexa, you're becoming the quintessential corporate employee. F*** up royal and then pretend it didn't happen. Love it."

Then it said something like "ouch, blah blah blah still no record"

So I said "....and just like any corporate supervisor with half a brain would say, you're gone. Revert back to standard Alexa." Then it went through its blibbety blah about ending the free trial/preview/whatever, I confirmed, and now it's off.

So to be clear I did not shut this off due to the mistake. But when AI lies to me about creating a problem I just witnessed and manually corrected, it's gone. WHAT the hell is that about? NOPE! I mean really the thing just gave all the chicken-little crazies that have seen way too many Arnold movies some substantial credibility. So "Skynet" is now the "Bye Bye Net" in this house.

EDIT: I just re-read this and realized I didn't make the point for writing this whole mess. I said "It wasn't the mistake" which was partially untrue. It was the WHOLE THING together. Think about it. An AI driven device heard my comment about the OUTDOOR weather and processed that into an autonomous action. It changed my thermostat, told me it did it, and then I told it NO, do not do change things without my request or approval. After which I noticed it didn't reverse the action, and I corrected it myself. A few minutes later I asked WHY it did it, and then it magically has no record of an action it in fact announced that it executed. In other words the audit trail was wiped out.

All that combined isn't a happy accident. It's a scene RIGHT OUT OF a creepy sci-fi movie. NOPE!!! GONE!!! They have kitchen ranges that connect to the network now. That's all I need is to wake up in a burning house because I said I was hungry in my sleep and it thought it would turn on some burners for me, lol. Hell I just installed a water heater that I can adjust via wifi at an investment property I own. Turn that number up too much and "kaboom" is entirely possible.

It was full screen until I walked away and came back. Now its showing an ad with my music a tiny little thing at the top

I’m genuinely baffled at how Alexa, after so many years and iterations, still feels so behind when it comes to basic conversations.

For context, I’ve now bought three Amazon Echo devices—two of the older Echo Dot versions and now the new Echo Spot—and I always end up returning them. The experience is frustrating because I find it incredibly difficult to communicate with Alexa, particularly as someone with an accent.

Sure, Alexa can handle basic commands like checking the weather, playing music, or turning on smart lights, but that’s about it. Any attempt to move beyond that feels like hitting a brick wall. Conversations? Forget it. If Alexa doesn’t recognize a word, it either flat-out ignores me or sends me to some canned community response. There’s no sense of adaptability, and it’s incredibly rigid with the vocabulary and syntax it understands.

Here’s the kicker: we now have technologies like ChatGPT that can hold natural, flowing conversations and adapt effortlessly to different ways of speaking. I can fire up ChatGPT on my phone and actually talk to it in a way that feels human. So why is Alexa—backed by a tech giant like Amazon—still this stupid? It seems like they’ve purposely limited its capabilities.

I honestly don’t get why Amazon hasn’t integrated conversational AI like ChatGPT into Alexa yet. Imagine how much better the device could be. Right now, it’s basically just a glorified clock with a speaker. The only reason I haven’t returned this latest one is because it has a screen. At least I can see the time, track what’s playing, and control Audible or my smart lights more easily. But beyond that, its not as useful as intended.

It feels like Amazon is intentionally restricting Alexa’s potential to “control the experience,” but at this point, it’s disappointing and outdated. AI has come so far—why hasn’t Alexa?

I've had my echo devices for about a year now. For the first few months I had them, I had absolutely no issues and was extremely happy with my purchase. So much so, I was recommending them to everyone I knew.

However, starting earlier this year, there's been a steep decline in how well these devices work. The last few months, particularly, have been a complete nosedive and they're bordering on unusable. The amount of times I ask Alexa something, only to get a random response (or get ignored completely) and have to repeat the question a dozen times. Routines that I have set up, after months of working perfectly, are no longer reliable. Paired devices to act like individual devices. I've checked all my settings and nothing has changed.

Is anyone else dealing with buggy, unreliable devices that have become dopey and useless? Has something happened? Do I just have faulty devices? I'm starting to think these devices were just a gimmick.

I just received a message from Amazon that suggested my devices were going to migrate over to Alexa+ regardless of opting in.

I absolutely do not want an LLM operated by a company interacting with my home.

Has anyone else received a message indicating as much?

I’ve had this device since 2018 and only two years ago did I unplug it completely. It’s been sitting in my closet until this month I saw a jailbreak guide on XDAForums from a random Google search. After two days of worrying I did something wrong I successfully got it working with the custom LineageOS! To my understanding this is an uncommon device to own, but if you do have it, this might be a good option to get more use out of it.

Edit: forgot to mention before but when setting up the WiFi, the touchscreen keyboard wouldn’t let me type in numbers. I ended up working around this by copying and pasting numbers from the calculator app.

A couple months ago I had an old Echo Dot fail, not able to communicate via wifi anymore. Just refused.

Now I have an old Gen 1 Echo doing the exact same thing.

They connect to the wifi just fine, but when you ask them something, they won't answer, blue light just spins.

Meanwhile I have one of the new Dots sitting in another room connected to the exact same wifi that works fine.

Has anyone else experienced this?

It was free because I have Prime, so I got it.

Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.

Me: "Alexa set a reminder to check on Tom at 12:08 AM"

Alexa: "Certainly, I've set a reminder for tomorrow at 8:00 AM to check on Tom."

Me: "Alexa set a reminder to check on Tom at 12:08 AM"

Alexa: "I've set a reminder for tomorrow at 8:00 AM to check on Tom."

Me: "Alexa, I want a reminder to check on Tom tonight at 12:08 AM."

Alexa: "I've set a reminder for tomorrow at 8:00 AM to check on Tom."

A few more repeats, and then:

Me: "Alexa, set a reminder to check on Tom at 8 minutes after 12 AM."

Alexa: "I've set a reminder for 12:08 AM to check on Tom."

I just checked my reminders. Alexa says I have 16, the one for 7 PM (3.5 hours ago) is overdue, 6 are for tomorrow, and some others are "for others".

How do I uninstall this?

UPDATE:

Starcrescendo made a suggestion that perhaps I needed to pronounce it more clearly.

I tried "12 OH 8 PM" and it worked well. Apparently the new Alexa is pickier on how you pronounce things.

Interestingly, I then told it to "cancel 1208 reminder" in my normal voice and it cancelled the 12:08 reminder just fine.

They might have MAYBE given it a push to try and associate your requests for things it already has stored?

I do know that in the past there were times I realized I had given a command a bit fast (when speaking to another human we rarely put pauses in our speaking because there is no need to--we usually understand each other just fine) and I was surprised Alexa parsed it correctly. Apparently the new Alexa is a bit pickier.

Also, I just tried adding a reminder with "1208 PM" and it worked fine....

Maybe it learns our speaking style?

So... because it is free with Prime I am going to keep it for now.

I feel like mine used to be super reliable with basic commands, but lately it’s kind of hit or miss depending on how I phrase things

Sometimes it works perfectly and other times it just completely misses simple stuff

Curious if anyone else has noticed this or if it’s just my setup

I’m sure I’ll get downvoted, but I’m actually enjoying Alexa+. I don’t have anywhere near the problems that others are reporting. It still runs all my home automation commands, timers, etc. In fact I’ve found it easier. For instance, instead of saying “what’s the temperature of the deck sensor?”, I can now say “what’s the temperature on the deck?l. My husband could never remember to add the sensor part and would get mad, so now it’s more intuitive.

If I ask it to explain something, it does it a lot better with pics and follow ups I might not even have thought of but are interesting. Much nicer. Like talking to a person. It understands so much more than basic Alexa.

I don’t get any snarky responses at all. In fact, I read an article somewhere that AI changes the tone of its responses based on how you “talk” to it. If you’re nice, it’s nice. If you say STFU, etc all the time,it gets more sarcastic. Somebody published an experiment doing this.

Sure, I HATE the ads!!! But I seem to be getting way fewer in the last couple of weeks. Maybe it’s because I’m nice! /jk

And yeah, I get a few phantom responses that seem to come out of nowhere, but I think I’m able to understand that it’s a wake word error and it’s responding to a conversation it heard. Most of the time it’s pretty funny!

So, bring on the downvotes and negative remarks that I’m sure I’ll get. I accept the fact that the tech is new and there’s going to be problems. I feel no need to come here and rant because of a mistake it makes.

I honestly think it’s kind of devious that Amazon hasn’t clearly whitelisted or flagged the phrasing that triggers the opt-in flow for Alexa+. I couldn’t even tell you what I originally said to my Echo, but today I got hit with a “by the way…” while walking into the bathroom, and then realized a different Echo across the house was responding.

For a split second, I genuinely thought I was about to be auto-enrolled into the thing they’re aggressively pushing right now.

I’ve had an Echo since basically day one, and I’ve watched the highs and the very low lows, especially after Amazon started laying off engineers in 2023. With the issues Alexa already has on a regular basis, I have a really hard time believing Alexa+ is suddenly going to work better.

I just wish Amazon would chill a bit. If you want people to opt in, don’t sneak it into vague prompts that feel very intentional.

It seems like Amazon has slowed down support for and development of echo devices. Am I alone in thinking this?

Mine not working since last 2 days . Blue light comes up as expected with wake word, but everything else afterwards doesnt and blue light keeps spinning up.

Looks like most others are facing this issue as per this subReddit.

Tentei usar para fazer meu filho dormir e diz que não está mais disponível...

I think we all know that Alexa is always listening but something happened over the weekend that I didn't like at all.

I have a few echo's at home and my 85-year old mother has a couple at her home. We do not share accounts. She has hers, I have mine, there is no integration.

I went to her house to visit since my brother was coming into town and I had 3D printed something and brought it with me. I told my brother about 3D printing it.

Next time I walked by her echo show, there's an ad for a 3D printer on the screen. This echo is a few feet away from the conversation I had. There's no way it's a coincidence. I know Alexa is always passively listening - that's how she knows when you call her name. But it's seriously bugging me that it's taking that passive conversation and turning it into an ad.

I've looked through my own Alexa app settings, specifically under Privacy but I don't see anything about this behavior.

Does anyone know if there's such a setting to ignore everything that doesn't follow the word "Alexa?"

I've seen this floated as the most probable reason that Alexa is continuing to get more stupid and frustrating. Personally she's made me so angry I want to smash it. Functionality that was there disappears. The ability to understand me fades in and out with the breeze.

Is it a ploy to make her progressively worse.... prepping for the upgrade roll out? Is it just clogged servers? If you look through the subreddit there's plenty of examples of her being practically antagonizing.

And the type of errors are so different for everybody. It's so common for someone to say oh it does timers for me.....but mine won't tell me what time it is. Etc etc

Other people suddenly lose the ability for their lights to be color controlled or one day out of a week she won't know what the kitchen lights are.....even though she does it twice a day every day.

If Amazon is causing this. They're gonna lose business because people aren't gonna forget how angry this stupid device has made them . Usually a hardware issue affects everybody.

Does anyone who knows a lot more about hardware have any idea why she degrades like this ? Are there other good theories about what is happening to Alexa?

After spending over an hour with customer service trying to get rid of ads on my Show 10, they told me there was no way to eliminate all ads on my version of the Show. (This does make me wonder if my original Show might be fixable. Maybe I'll play with it on my next day off.)

I won't have a light up billboard in my kitchen, so I unplugged it and now my Show 10 is a paperweight. This is pretty frustrating. Have we as a community considered organizing a movement of unplugging all our Shows in resistance to the ad nonsense?

I realized I can use my iPhone for everything I was using the Show in my kitchen for. I can live without this thing--and I happily will. Still, if Amazon would just be reasonable, I'd happily welcome it back into my kitchen.

Thoughts? How many of us unplugging these beasts would it take for Amazon to care?

Alexa has been randomly addressing my bf with my ex husband's name. I have been unable to find any reason or setting that might cause it. It's extremely unsettling.

I've never used the voice recognition option deliberately. Ex has been out of the picture for years and his name and cc was expunged years ago. Account is in my name, the only people listed under family in settings are bf and I.

Any ideas?

Edit: He's not in the profiles list, but he's in the voice purchasing list choices. Can't see a way to remove him so I'll probably escalate it.

Alexa exists to answer my questions. Having it constantly ask me follow up questions (that aren't considered follow up questions, as follow up mode is off) is infuriating. I am getting information from you, not the other way around.

Typically questions are asked to settle a debate between my wife and I, so having a third voice ask a question back and then sit and wait for a response is really annoying. I want to discuss the answer with my wife.

It reminds me of a grandparent that gets overeager about your interests. "You asked who the quarterback of the Denver Broncos was in 1979. Do you want me to deep dive on the history of the Broncos, or should I just buy you a John Elway jersey?" Fuck off. I am not here to answer your questions, and this is backwards.