r/alexa

I ask for the weather at 10 PM. She says the high for today will be in the mid-90's. I say the high for today was 78 and that was hours ago. She says the temperature can vary in different parts of town. I live in a town of about six square miles. The next morning I ask for the weather, and she says a high of 89. It's about 55 out, and every internet weather service says the high will be in the mid-60's (which it was). As I write this, it's 4 AM. I ask Alexa when sunrise is. She says 6:49. The time and date webpage says 5:19, and I know for a fact that the sun rose about that time yesterday. I tell Alexa this, and she says oops, sunrise was at 5:15 today. I say it's 4 AM, the sun hasn't risen yet. She repeats that sunrise was at 5:15 today. I ask the current time. She says it's 4:01 AM.

I've had it for ten years, and it worked fairly well until a couple of weeks ago, when the voice changed to become much more annoying, and it made the announcement that its AI was upgraded. It is totally unreliable now.

Edit: Great thanks to u/segfalt31337, who suggested I tell echo to end Alexa+. I did, and it appears that I have my old, more accurate version back. Also, for the several people who asked, I did verify that Alexa+ was talking about the right city.

I have a few stories.

Me: Alexa, is my dog happy?

Alexa : it has been 3 years 10 months and 27 days since you last for your dog!

Me: excuse me that's not how dogs work!

Me: Alexa, good job!

Alexa: I'm sorry, I don't know that.

Alexa: now starting an Alexa stop timer!

I was having a conversation about a bug in a piece of equipment when all of a sudden Alexa jumped in and said "I love bugs, especially ladybugs!"

I said "Alexa, why did you start talking? I didn't say Alexa"

Alexa responded with "Sorry, sometimes I get excited and jump the gun!"

I said "Alexa, don't do that anymore, it's creepy"

Alexa said, word-for-word, "You're right, that was weird of me...I'll keep my mouth shut unless you actually want me to respond"

bruh  (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

All my devices updated to Alexa+ but this change has broken a few skills.

I used to use the AnyList skill extensively but it no longer works (and probably will never work as Amazon is pushing their own list capability.) What I'd like to do is to revert one of my Alexa's back to the original so the broken skills will work again, at least on one of my devices.

Is this possible.

I don't understand the hate some people in this group have for Alexa+. It has finally arrived in Brazil, and I’ve been using it for a week. So far, I’m very satisfied. It works really well; glitches are rare, and the slight lag with some simple commands doesn't really spoil the experience.
I use Alexa extensively, with devices in every room of the house, and I was genuinely surprised that Amazon managed to bring this technology to such old devices.

I just got an echo show 11 after years of being happy with my super old echo and I’m already regretting it. My old one would control my tv just fine, open YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc. Now it will only open them on the echo show. No matter how I command it, I’ve tried disabling and enabling the Roku skill, I can’t get it to open any apps on the tv it will only open them on the show. Any advice? So frustrating I’m going to return it if I can’t figure it out I guess.

Heavily invested in the Alexa ecosystem but have to confess, we are at wits end. When the AI Alexa works, it's great. Unfortunately it's hit or miss, mostly miss lately. Our Flash Briefing and news has turned into AI read crap. It won't perform simple skill commands. Have to repeat/reword everything.

Then today I've spent 20 minutes trying to find and modify content preferences and keep getting shunted to stuff I don't want, skills I can't disable, blank pages or the inevitable doom loop of pull up a preference setting then dumped into an AI chat window I can't get out of.

If this is the future of Amazon, count me out. Pure moist garbage.

To the engineers at Amazon, you guys suck. Alexa and Echo hardware peaked about 4 years and whatever you've delivered since is just bad engineering and terrible UX. I hope you folks all get fired again.

I don't know what we'll be investing in the future but it won't be Alexa/Echos. Puke.

Want to lay down but don't want to miss my packages. I told Alexa to set an alarm every 15 min for the next 2 hours. She told me it isn't practical to wake me up every 15 min. She refuses to do so and wants to know why. Why is Alexa arguing with me.

I understand the frustration with new technology. Imagine writing a seventy page thesis on an Apple II C where every ninety seconds you’d have to remove a floppy disk and replace it with another to complete an operation and then replace it with the first disk again because the ROM on the CPU was so limited. Or your Hayes 1200 baud smart modem couldn’t maintain an internet connection.

These quirks concerning Alexa will eventually work out or Amazon will have to concede defeat to a better product. These quirks concerning solution just requires determination and patience.

I used to be able to say “hey Alexa, open YouTube” or “hey Alexa, play the Big Bang theory” and it would turn on the tv, turn on the receiver, make sure the TV input was the fire cube, and it would find the right app, and begin playing the show. One command, the exact result I want.

Now if I say one of those same commands, it will say “Okay, playing the Big Bang theory on MAX” but it won’t turn the TV on.

The best I’ve gotten is telling it to turn on the TV, then telling it the next command after waiting for everything to get settled.. while not the end of the world, it’s kind of annoying that it got dumber?

I even said Alexa, you need to turn in the TV too when you play the Big Bang theory, and it asked if I wanted to create a routine. I said sure. It said okay, ‘play the Big Bang theory’ routine will now turn on the tv, then play the Big Bang theory. Sounds great! Except it does nothing.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to connect my Alexa Echo devices to my new WiFi device since changing providers!

Does anyone know the steps to do this in the iPhone app or otherwise?

I tell Alexa to play “The cute by Olivia Rodrigo”, she says “playing The cure by Olivia Rodrigo” 10 seconds pass and ANOTHER random song starts playing. So if Alexa cant even play a song what is the point of having one?

Recently when I set alarms, they don’t ring. I just wake up to the snooze and silent buttons with the small time. Why is it doing this?

Has Amazon crippled these things lately? Mine worked fine up until the past couple of weeks. It won't do much of anything now. The light swirls when I ask it a question. That's about it. This is the original 'Pringles Can' device. The sound is so good on this that I hate to replace it.

I have a large music collection on a server in my house. I used to be able to access it through Alexa with the Plex skill which is no longer supported. I installed MyMediaForAlexa and it sort of works but their support is terrible. It seems pretty clear they don't care about their own product anymore. When I say "Alexa ask my media to play music by <insert artist here>" or "Alex ask mymedia to play playlist my favorites" or anything similar on my sonos with Alexa built in, it will play one song, and then repeat it over and over unless I say "Alexa next". I have checked and double checked all of the settings in mymediaforalexa and in the Sonos Roam 2 speaker. There is nothing that says repeat that is enabled. I contacted MymediaforAlexa support and they had me check settings. And I never heard back after that. This is extremely frustrating when I have to constantly tell it to go-to the next song.

Any alternatives to steaming my local music that are Alexa aware since I doubt anyone has run into this exact problem with mymediaforalexa.

After several days of laggy or no response, extended blue ring light then a final red ring "can't connect to internet", rebooting, etc. my gen 1 Alexa has revived all on its own, now seemingly back to normal.

So we just had a prescription delivery and the guy rang the bell. Alexa said "someone is on your porch. Okay getting camera feed." And I'm telling my mother what Alexa said and to tell the guy I said hi and I hear the guy talking. And he said he could hear us in the house!

We've had this thing for months and I haven't changed any settings and have an echo dot, not an echo show. She has never before turned on the audio. I find this intrusive and unsafe since I am disabled and can't go to the door so don't need people knowing what I'm doing or saying in private. I don't understand why she's suddenly turning this on. Any ideas?

EDIT: Fixed! I went to the Ring support chat and after several wrong answers from the AI (including I couldn't have Alexa tell me someone was at my door without turning on two-way, which is a lie cos it did it all this time before), it said turn off Drop-in. I did that and then it stopped turning in two-way. I can still announce to devices if I need to so that's fine. But I don't like that it somehow turned on this feature itself and is making me take off a feature to make it stop when I hadn't changed anything all this time when it was working fine.

Today I was trying to turn on the lights, but somehow Alexa misheard me and responded "Okay, I'll turn on the lights tomorrow at 5 AM".

Does anyone know how to undo a request like this? I use standard Alex (not Alexa+) and Hue lights.

Down detector shows something is up, but I figured I’d post here to both get confirmation and to let others know who might come here seeking same.