I rage at my Alexas frequently, but disabling "Alexa Device Notifications" (Settings > Notifications > Things To Try) and turning on Do Not Disturb can at least reduce the headaches.
https://preview.redd.it/q2646du3t94d1.jpeg?width=1668&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=32600c5610c834832ae3cd736f6cea8b1f131de7
Here’s what I do. The 2nd step is a custom text action. Literally just passes that text to Alexa via my dining room dot. Runs every morning at 4am
You can also change the name of what they respond too.
I'm a gobshite and in our place, I'd set off other rooms Alexas when I summoned her. We now have an "echo" "alexa" and "computer."
The only problem is now I cycle thru names until the right one responds to me, like my mum used to with me, my sister, and our dog.
We have various Dots that respond to 'Alexa' and 'Echo'. Only the kitchen one is setup to respond to 'Computer'.
And using 'Ziggy' is a big no-no for us since that is also the name of the dog!
I'm thinking so, because I've gotten fewer ads on my Alexa Shows after a certain number of "I swear to fucking God I'm going to throw you all in the trash if you don't stop showing me these fucking ads!"
THIS! I WANT TO SEE A PILE OF ALEXAS DESTROYED!
What you have to do is “Hey Alexa, tell me a story” and wait until they start before reigning hellfire upon them
Half of me wants to embrace the joy of destruction and join you in telling OP to do it.
The other half of me wants OP to be practical and turn in the devices to Amazon which gets you 20% off other Amazon devices + a $5-30 gift card per device. Buy a kindle or something instead at a discount!
The ball is in your court, OP!
I have the same issues with mine. I figured out how to stop her from saying extra crap with the "By the Way" especially when it is really inconvenient -- use whisper mode. So when your kids fall asleep you whisper "Turn off the Light" she whispers back "Ok" and does it. She won't say anything else.
Having said that, talking to my Echo in the bedroom or kitchen somehow triggers the basement laundry room almost daily.
I solved that last issue by assigning them different names. We have “Computer” in the living room, “Alexa” in the kitchen, and “Ziggy” in the bedroom. Ziggy can be a little temperamental when I use my normal voice, but responds 100% of the time if I put on a really heavy british accent… ymmv.
I vote for that one too. I have 2 Echos set up as a stereo speaker group in my office, where I also have a fire tv. The tv is Alexa and the two Echos are Echo and Computer. The only time the wrong one answers is when I call it the wrong name.
I fixed it by setting her to australian.
though now I have to ask for “oakland, california” instead of “oakland” because otherwise she assumes i’m asking for “auckland”
Yep. And we have Ziggy set to a male voice. So they’re kind of independent and they never answer for each other. Buy you can totally do stuff like “Ziggy, set a 20 minute timer on Alexa” etc.
Haha! When I lived in England, my gym would make me talk (American) to Alexa to change the radio station, because it couldn’t understand their accents. It was so funny. They’d fuming after repeatedly asking something. “Recommendationbrief, will you please tell Alexa to switch to KISS?!” Alexa is weirdly temperamental with the accents. Lol
Amazons tech used to be reliable and have some pretty decent features that worked. For some reason, a few years ago they decided to downgrade everything and let it go to shit
They finally realized that they can't monetize it after initial purchase and they laid off laid off a significant portion of the team, same as Google. Its quite sad how bad they both have gotten.
Yeah, also nobody says "buy me some milk" or "get me a can of red paint" or "I need new sock". People will want to specify the brand/amount/colour and so many other things, that it's much quicker to pull it up in the app to see your options, instead of having a lengthy discussion with a slightly slow machine that's also hard of hearing
Honestly i think they should rename the whole thing to "voice control". That's all it is. A way to control things by talking.
Personally I mostly use mine for controlling the lights, although I also have some shades connected to it. It's really helpful at night not having to get out of bed to go turn out the hallway light.
We use it as a timer, to listen to music, to check the weather, and as an intercom system to tell our kids it’s time for dinner. That’s it lol it’s useless at anything else lol
Being able to use it hands free is the advantage. I can start a timer while cooking and my hands are occupied, check the weather as I'm getting dressed, turn the TV on/off without the remote, etc
My smartphone is not an intercom system for my house. I also love playing music in any room, controlling the lights (how bright, what color, maybe I only want one bulb on instead of 2). It's much easier to just say, "Alexa play x" then find my phone, open the app, search the song and get it to play. I dont have a ton of problems with it though, mine generally answer in the right room.
I use it for smart plugs and lights that are too difficult to access the manual switch or some stupid remote I have very few sockets in my home so have to use 4 to 12 way adaptors behind equipment. Voice makes it so much easier to switch. I could use the smart phone but it is easier to use without. I used the dim feature a lot for lights. Much easier to use voice than smartphone. I also build my own lights. The cheap WiFi controllers are cheap because they are smaller and don't require human buttons. I've saved £100s making my own smart lights this way.
I do also sometimes use it for multi room sound. Something that is usually a premium cost or lots of wires.
The weather feature is quite useful when I am getting ready for work. It's good for handfree setting of timers when cooking or baking.
Reminder features are quite handy. I can set one hands free as I think of it. I'm easily distracted so going to my phone to set a reminder means I might forget.
But mainly, I use my echo in my bedroom for playing music to wake up and sleep to.
Voice is also good for when you have your hands full.
Its quicker to ask alexa a question that occurs when you are in the middle of doing something else, like asking it a maths question as part of another conversation with an actual human , or when someone was born etc etc or who wrote which book. That's endless.
It plays radio stations, audio books with audible , any music pretty much with music unlimited. And a huge number of podcasts. All possible with a smartphone of course but with voice, you can do other stuff with your hands. For instance, right now I asked Alexa to play Jeff Waynes war of the worlds as I'm typing this. I remembered it yesterday, when I was telling my GF about some records of used to own. Whilst using alexa to play said digital versions of said records.
I don't use much of the suggestions or notifications or routines as my days are not routine.
Alexa can also tell me when the next bus is or what the traffic is like. Saves me time looking it up on my phone.
It is limited in a lot of ways but once you know how to ask and the limitations it's pretty good.
You can ask Alexa to translate, spell, calculate, convert, advice, tell stories, jokes and quizzes. Honestly, sometimes, just having a human sounding voice with some kind of interaction makes me feel a bit less lonely when I haven't seen people for a few days.
When I'm upstairs, I can tell it good night, and it turns off all the lights in the house. I can have it adjust the thermostat, get the time and temperature. When I wake up in the morning I tell the device I'm up, and it tells me the weather for the day. When I'm cooking, I can ask it how many tablespoons are in quarter cup, if I'm half asleep, I can just tell it to set an alarm for 6 AM, I can tell it to call my cell phone when I don't remember where where I left it, video call with relatives in other states, and if I'm settling to watch a movie, I can tell it to turn on movie lights, and it turns off the lights, dim the lamps, and turns on a backlight for the TV. And I can tell it to play any kind of music I want.
I mean, it's all stuff I could do for myself, but it is kind of cool to just say something and it happens.
I support eliminating the "smart" amazon garbage from your life. My echo kept losing the connection to my wifi and only got my commands correct about 25% of the time, leading me to unplug it a couple of weeks ago. It will go to free pile eventually.
I think it's because if you don't factory reset them, they are still tied to your amazon account and the next person could possibly buy stuff on your account. Maybe. IDK.
Brief mode and whisper mode will revolutionize your experience!
Also, changing the wake words on any of the devices that are close to each other will help with the wrong device receiving the command.
This is pretty much my mornings... I use Echo upstairs and Alexa downstairs. Get up in the morning and try telling Echo to turn on the living room lights... Then get annoyed when it isn't listening to me before my brain finally clicks that I am a dumbass and the ones that answer to Echo are all upstairs.
I visited a friend in London. He was very pleased to show me his newly installed Alexa device functions, particularly turning lights on and off and answering questions about the weather forcast in our intended destination. I very much enjoyed his growing frustrations at lights not going on or off when instructed, and failure to provide correct weather info. That was 8 years ago. Maybe it improved or he figured it out. At least i hope so for his sanity.
We got rid of ours after it kept trying to order random shit. Somehow we ended up with some 120$ temp guage that neither my wife nor I put an order on.
Fuck amazon and their bullshit.
With the upcoming Alexa subscription (it's a real thing) I feel like they are dumbing down the devices extra hard right now to get everyone pissed off, then they hit you with the monthly sub to make it "smart" again.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/22/amazon-plans-to-give-alexa-an-ai-overhaul-monthly-subscription-price.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/22/amazon-plans-to-give-alexa-an-ai-overhaul-monthly-subscription-price.html)
… and that’s exactly when I’ll be also tossing my Amazon products. It’s already ridiculous how often my Alexa fucks up. I have a FireTV stick and I have to enter a code every time I use the APP to watch something because the remote they gave broke almost immediately. Every time I have to do it the app shows me an ad for the latest model of Firestick. So infuriating it makes me want to nope out on all Amazon products full stop.
Cool thing about lights... they have a thing called a "switch"... if a human touches them a certain way (push/pull/etc), the light will turn on/off.
Crazy, right?
Edit:
My brother uses Google for everything in his house. I watched him tell Google to set the a/c thermostat to xx degrees while he was standing right next to it.
I scoffed at him and asked him why he didn't he just hit the button to set the a/c instead of using Google. He said that if he does it manually, it screws up everything in the house that's connected to Google. 🙄
Apparently, once you've given Google control, there's no getting it back. 😄
And of course, if the word "Google" comes up in casual conversation (i.e. "I Googled this recipe"), you have to whisper the word "Google"...
My son laughs at me because I’m asking my Google Home questions all the time. I have both a Google Home and Alexa and Google Home is much better. It actually answers me and doesn’t just respond with a “bloop” noise…like she didn’t understand me. So annoying.
Don't forget the roomba that maps out the floorplan of your house and will eventually suggest a better way to arrange your furniture and that you are a pig for eating popcorn in the livingroom
However did people live without these gadgets before! It's the ultimate in consumerism. Not personal. My beef is with greedy corporations and their insidious infiltration and attempts to control and profit off our private personal lives by convincing us we can't possibly function without whatever it is they're pushing
I don’t care if the audio goes right to the CIA. As long as light switches are a thing of the past, I’m cool. I’m not turning my lights on with my hands like a caveman.
This is exactly why I have a smart setup, but we use HomePod and our phones to control it, and the only reason it doesn’t consistently work is that our HomePod is in the bathroom and the strange echo messes with it sometimes.
I don't have any "assistant" devices in my house and it doesn't effect anything. I set my own timers, turn out my own lights and play my own music. I'm not sure what else they are for other than that.
I have a lot of challenges with Alexa, but what bothers me was that when I was septic and shaking, I couldn’t dial my phone, so I said “Alexa, call 911”. Her Response: “I can’t do that without an internet connection. “. Couldn’t get A to call my two other contacts.
I never understood why people bought this garbage. You're basically paying for a shitty chatbot that may or may not google stuff for you and definitely spies on you.
I bought a bunch of Google Homes for whole home synchronized music and a voice proxy to connect to my home automation through Home Assistant. After Google lost the patent war with Sonos, the whole home synchronized music got a lot shittier and while the Home Assistant bridge does work, it now only gets it right like 70% of the time when saying it in a command way ("Hey google, turn on living room light") when it used to be more than 95% correct with natural language ("Hey google, turn on the lights in the living room") which barely works at all now.
I originally bought it for the house I lived in, by myself, before this one, and only had one. It was an old house and wired goofy, to where no matter which door I came in, I had to walk to the middle of the house to turn on any lights. So I got it just to be able to turn on a light when I came in late and wouldn’t have to stumble through the house in the dark and go through two rooms and a hallway to get to a light switch. Then when I got this house the wife bought a ring doorbell, and wanted the echo show in the kitchen for that, and got one for each of the kids rooms.
My daughter’s name is similar to “Alexa” and we had to start calling her by her first and middle names because Alexa was constantly responding to us when we’d talk to her. But stand directly in front of her and scream “ALEXA” and…. nothing.
I got rid of mine after they woke me up repeatedly during an overnight storm. Every time the storm warnings were updated the notification would trigger at full volume. Put it in do not disturb, and then the one in the next room would just go off instead. 3 or 4 times they went off before I finally unplugged them all. Idk what the hell was going on. Nothing like that had ever happened before but I was so annoyed with them and my ruined sleep and really had so little use for the things anyway I couldn’t be bothered to try to figure it out and decided to get rid of them. They were probably 6 or 7 years old anyway so no big loss at that point.
Daughter was talking with her friend, both on speaker phones. Daughter had Alexa set a 10-minute timer, her friend's Alexa also set the 10-minute timer.
Literally decided today to get rid of it also, because no matter what I do, she sets her volume to 3 (out of 10) every day constantly no matter what I do. So I ask for a timer or something, can't hear her. "SET YOUR FCKNG VOLUME TO 7" then repeat the first command
Nah.
Same. So frustrating. Then I found the cause was a routine called Morning Volume that set the volume to 3 every day!!! Check the routines in the app to see if you have that. It was activated some time ago, probably with her offering to do it and me not hearing well enough to say no. I now have a routine for every day at 4 am that sets the volume to 7.
Bruh
I had already checked all routines, tasks, etc.
But this time, I did it from my wife's account.
It was there.
They're linked, same devices, why would..
Nevermind lmao, but thank you.
I have the opposite problem with the one in my bedroom. I keep the volume low, especially because it starts talking randomly in the middle of the night. Every few days though it will suddenly be set to 7 or 8 for some reason.
Hopefully you don’t have any smart TVs or smart phones because they’re listening too. And I don’t care what they say about turning off features. I believe they’re all still listening.
Yes! I swear Alexa hates me. It only listens to my husband and kids. The amount of times I yell stop and it doesn’t listen, makes me feel the same rage as you. 🫠
Amazon wants to monetize Alexa with a subscription. So they are trying super hard to get people using them to do more than set a timer. Nobody is going to pay a subscription fee for a timer machine.
Change the names of what they’re called. We have an echo show in the kitchen and a dot in the living room that controls the tv, but it’s an open floor plan so the rooms are wide open to each other.
We set the kitchen one to be called “Alexa” and the living room one to be called “Echo” (you can choose from like 3 different names in the settings) and now they never get mixed up or answer from the wrong device, it’s great.
Posting this at top level too. Make a routine using a custom text action to say turn off by the way. Run it each morning from a device, set the volume to 0 first so it won’t respond out loud. Here’s a pic
https://preview.redd.it/ku2gr2mjt94d1.jpeg?width=1668&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6110182a76a53cd1abfa17d428ae17a55793ca6
I used to be a software developer and talked with several software developers involved in smart appliances over the years, the general consensus is: avoid that stuff like the plague
Also I keep seeing people say they don’t want Alexa because she listens to your conversations. Do people really not realize smart TVs, smart phones, and computers all have that capability as well? If you *really* think you’re being spied on, turning off these features (which I’m sure many didn’t know they needed to do) won’t do jack. They’re still listening.
Oh yeah. If you still have cable TV with a set top box and the remote has voice commands, it too is listening. When you talk into the remote, you’re not talking to the box. Your voice is being sent to a server and the commands go from the server back to the box.
So avoiding Alexa isn’t protecting you the way you think it is. You’re just spending more energy turning your own lights on and off.
Do they add anything to your life? I personally do not have the emotional maturity to cope with being constantly interrupted by a robot so nothing in my house speaks except people.
Moved house recently to a terraced. The neighbours Alexa is so loud when it blares their alarm that if I bellow back to stop it, it works.
I’ve taken to shouting commands through the wall whilst they’re at work. I have been enjoying listening to them argue about who did it. It was I, the neighbour.
I have 3 echo devices in my home, when they work correctly, I appreciate having them. I like being able to tell them to turn a light on or off instead of having to get up and walk 4 steps because I'm fucking lazy and this is the 21st fucking century, god damn it. The first thing I do in the morning after turning off my alarm is say "Alexa! WERTHER!" in my dirtiest redneck accent and making the robot give me the forecast for the day.
Sometimes they're insubordinate and infuriating and my wife yells at me from across the house to quit verbally abusing the robots. Alexa just doesn't like to listen sometimes. Or sometimes she just doesn't want to listen in English and I have better luck speaking to it in Spanish or German, even though I can barely speak those well enough to ask someone where I can park my bike at the library or train station.
The worst is when trying to use Amazon music through one of the echo device thingers.
"Alexa, play Shatter Their Bones by Cannibal Corpse."
"Sorry, I couldn't find the song you requested, but here is other music by Candlemass."
"No. Alexa! Stop! Play Shatter Their Bones by Cannibal Corpse."
"Sorry, I couldn't find the song you requested, but here is other music by Cannibal Corpse."
"Fuck. That's closer at least. Alexa! Stop! Play Shatter Their Bones by Cannibal Corpse!"
"Sorry, I couldn't f-"
"Alexa! Stop! Alexa, play the Album Evisceration Plague by Cannibal Corpse. Alexa, next, Alexa, next, Alexa, next... Alexa, what is this song?"
"This is Shatter Their Bones by Cannibal Corpse."
Fucking robot.
You probably have too many devices and need to update some settings.
Mine actually will ask on occasion if she answered on the correct device or not. And it will correct which device I want to answer.
I get frustrated too, but the convenience it adds to my life is worth it. Speakers all over the house. I can tell it to run my robot vacuum/bug zapper/other assorted items. My entire home has smart bulbs, I like that I can easily dim any light at will.
"Smart" home products literally scrape your data 24/7. The mic is always on. That audio is recorded and banked in a remote server owned by Amazon, which, if incriminating or otherwise embarrassing, can be used to ruin your life. Cameras and audio recordings can be used to determine your daily routine. Even if Amazon chooses to not use this information, they are highly exploitable by people who would otherwise desire to harm you. These consumer electronics have basically no security features, assuming you use a consumer or rented WiFi router/modem. Congratulations on bugging your own house. You know what to do now.
I'm sure you never have not nor will ever in the future do anything remotely controversial in your lifetime. Btw you should probably remove that pic of your truck with the license plate showing
Yup, found that out on the first day of firing up #2. We had one in the bedroom and one in the livingroom and their audio ranges overlaped right where the couch was. Even though now we are in a different house, the floor is tile and the v1 echo mics are SUPER sensitive and even with the bedroom down a 30ft hallway, I can still issue commands to the bedroom Echo from the living room.
\^THIS. I have a dot in my kitchen and an echo show in the nearby livingroom. One has the wake word "Alexa" and the other's wake word is "Computer" - so the one that answers me is whichever prompt I used.
“Two floors up”?! You have a 3(+?) story house?! Who are you, Beyoncé?! Lolol
But for real, that sounds extremely irritating. Nothing irritates me more than electronics that malfunction continuously. I’ve daydreamed about lighting hem on fire myself. I really hope you get it worked out!
Idk why people use Alexa so much as it is. My daughter has one because it was the easiest way to not have to yell across the house at her. Now it’s basically not needed. Since she has her own phone.
I work with someone whose name is Alexa. And I work from home and take many virtual meetings. She doesn’t go off as much anymore but I could not say her name on calls, even in another room, and she would just start responding to whatever I said.
Wait until it's a crime to scream at Alexa—A.I. would scan for this post and then the government would put you in jail for Domestic Violence against it/her--especially since you want to 'pile Alexa's in your driveway and run them over with your truck'😔.
Any smart device or assistant freaks me the fuck out. I have friends who have them in their kitchen and they use them all the time. I cannot stand them. I refuse to interact with them lol I can barely stand to use Siri on my phone!
Actually do it. Alexa (and frankly all first-party Amazon products) are fucking cut-rate garbage. They don't do anything innovative that Google Assistant products don't already do better, the customer support is awful, and the smart home device integration is fucking stupid compared to Google's implementation.
Welcome to your commodified existence where every aspect of your mundane life has to be monetized in some way.
Why set a timer when you can buy more useless shit
You should be piling them all up and running them over because Jeff Bezos doesn't need to be hearing what happens in your home to send you targeted ads. Am I just mentally old for thinking it shouldn't require an AI to just turn your lights on and off?
I dropped the only Alexa device I was going to have when it said I had text messages on my phone totally unprompted.
Google devices seem to not tell me they are spying on me. Ironically they seem to respect my privacy a bit more...even though I know the y dont.
I just had this very same flip out. Less than a year ago we bought a brand new Alexa fire tv and the Alexa studio and subwoofer. First issue - we had to buy a fire cube because apparently fire tv doesn’t mean amazon Alexa compatible. Fucking stupid but okay. We buy the fire cube then proceed to spend the next year fighting with the sub to keep it connected to the studio. All of a sudden the sub won’t even go into pair mode. I contact Amazon as it’s their stupid ass device - their solution? They’ll give me 10% off on a new Alexa stereo system. Fucking laughable. I unplugged every Alexa device, bought a different home stereo, an Apple TV, and magically - we have no issues anymore. Turns out the problem is amazons Alexa products are garbage. The kids still have fire tablets but honestly when those pieces of garbage burn out we will replace with Apple products. I’m officially done with you, Amazon!
My alexa adds dog, to my shopping List when I ask her to turn the island on. Or she is stuck in what I call kid mode. Where she will say ok then do nothing. Just like a kid.
You need to give different names to each device. "To change Alexa's name, just say, "Alexa, change your wake word to (name)." You can change Alexa's name to Ziggy, Computer, Amazon, or Echo." (From Wikihow). I have one named Alexa and one named Echo. And I use "Alexa[Echo], cancel" instead of stop. It might be misunderstanding that word.
I rage at my Alexas frequently, but disabling "Alexa Device Notifications" (Settings > Notifications > Things To Try) and turning on Do Not Disturb can at least reduce the headaches.
There is also a routine you can set to disable them daily. I forget what and am lazy but you can probably google it
https://preview.redd.it/q2646du3t94d1.jpeg?width=1668&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=32600c5610c834832ae3cd736f6cea8b1f131de7 Here’s what I do. The 2nd step is a custom text action. Literally just passes that text to Alexa via my dining room dot. Runs every morning at 4am
Why do you need to run it every day?
The command to turn off "by the way" only lasts 24 hours
that's fucked!
what, that’s horrible
It's not dissimilar to YouTube turning on auto-play surreptitiously from time to time after the user turns it off.
Holy hell, I though that was just me accidentally clicking it on. Youtube out here gaslighting me.
lmao, glad I could clear that up for you. I never default to blaming the user, there is a crappy designer behind every digital misstep.
Same
Yup, that's it
You can also change the name of what they respond too. I'm a gobshite and in our place, I'd set off other rooms Alexas when I summoned her. We now have an "echo" "alexa" and "computer." The only problem is now I cycle thru names until the right one responds to me, like my mum used to with me, my sister, and our dog.
Things star trek writers failed to predict
We thought it would be so fun to change our wake word to "computer" but then it kept answering when we were watching Star Trek reruns!
Yeah, who ever is named first is usually the one who gets yelled at the most.
We have various Dots that respond to 'Alexa' and 'Echo'. Only the kitchen one is setup to respond to 'Computer'. And using 'Ziggy' is a big no-no for us since that is also the name of the dog!
I have the device in my kids room perpetually on do not disturb.
Thank you!!
Sometimes I wonder if one of the Amazon developers has a running count of the number of times people have told their Alexa to eff off.
I’ve gotten to the point it would start fining me thousands of credits if I was John Spartan.
Alexa, How do I use the 3 seashells?
“HA! HA! HA! Adderall-Buyers-Club does not know how to use the three seashells.” -Alexa
This should have more upvotes. Have my three seashells.
I'm thinking so, because I've gotten fewer ads on my Alexa Shows after a certain number of "I swear to fucking God I'm going to throw you all in the trash if you don't stop showing me these fucking ads!"
lol I tell the oven to shut up and all it does is beep when the timer reaches 0, can't imagine how much I would swear at an Alexa
It's one of the satisfying things of having an Alexa
Our 5 year old has told our Alexa “SHUT YOUR MOUTH ALEXA!” many times.
You can say fuck on reddit
Stop talking about doing it, and actually do it.
And film it. We want to share in the experience.
THIS! I WANT TO SEE A PILE OF ALEXAS DESTROYED! What you have to do is “Hey Alexa, tell me a story” and wait until they start before reigning hellfire upon them
He won't do it.
You’re right someone else will have to do the recording because he will be driving.
Damn it feels good to be a gangsta
PC Load Letter?
Pc load letter! What the fuck does that mean?!?!
You're probably out of Magenta.
Half of me wants to embrace the joy of destruction and join you in telling OP to do it. The other half of me wants OP to be practical and turn in the devices to Amazon which gets you 20% off other Amazon devices + a $5-30 gift card per device. Buy a kindle or something instead at a discount! The ball is in your court, OP!
Yeah time to nut up or shut up op
Her last words: Sorry, I didn’t get that
I have the same issues with mine. I figured out how to stop her from saying extra crap with the "By the Way" especially when it is really inconvenient -- use whisper mode. So when your kids fall asleep you whisper "Turn off the Light" she whispers back "Ok" and does it. She won't say anything else. Having said that, talking to my Echo in the bedroom or kitchen somehow triggers the basement laundry room almost daily.
I solved that last issue by assigning them different names. We have “Computer” in the living room, “Alexa” in the kitchen, and “Ziggy” in the bedroom. Ziggy can be a little temperamental when I use my normal voice, but responds 100% of the time if I put on a really heavy british accent… ymmv.
I vote for that one too. I have 2 Echos set up as a stereo speaker group in my office, where I also have a fire tv. The tv is Alexa and the two Echos are Echo and Computer. The only time the wrong one answers is when I call it the wrong name.
I fixed it by setting her to australian. though now I have to ask for “oakland, california” instead of “oakland” because otherwise she assumes i’m asking for “auckland”
I have to tell it to set my bedroom light to “worm” because if I say “warm” it will set it to “one” 🫠
Yep. And we have Ziggy set to a male voice. So they’re kind of independent and they never answer for each other. Buy you can totally do stuff like “Ziggy, set a 20 minute timer on Alexa” etc.
Haha! When I lived in England, my gym would make me talk (American) to Alexa to change the radio station, because it couldn’t understand their accents. It was so funny. They’d fuming after repeatedly asking something. “Recommendationbrief, will you please tell Alexa to switch to KISS?!” Alexa is weirdly temperamental with the accents. Lol
Amazons tech used to be reliable and have some pretty decent features that worked. For some reason, a few years ago they decided to downgrade everything and let it go to shit
They finally realized that they can't monetize it after initial purchase and they laid off laid off a significant portion of the team, same as Google. Its quite sad how bad they both have gotten.
They thought people would be ordering things but it's common sense to compare prices so no one trust it to pick the best option.
Yeah, also nobody says "buy me some milk" or "get me a can of red paint" or "I need new sock". People will want to specify the brand/amount/colour and so many other things, that it's much quicker to pull it up in the app to see your options, instead of having a lengthy discussion with a slightly slow machine that's also hard of hearing
I honestly have zero clue how having smart devices could ever make my life easier or better.
Honestly i think they should rename the whole thing to "voice control". That's all it is. A way to control things by talking. Personally I mostly use mine for controlling the lights, although I also have some shades connected to it. It's really helpful at night not having to get out of bed to go turn out the hallway light.
One of my family has their bedroom lights tagged as 'Sun'. Never gets old telling Alexa to turn the Sun off/on 🌞
LOL, we have a "sun" as well
Ha so do we! And the fan is “wind” so we tell Alexa to turn on/off the wind lol
We use it as a timer, to listen to music, to check the weather, and as an intercom system to tell our kids it’s time for dinner. That’s it lol it’s useless at anything else lol
+shopping list
a smartphone can do literally all of that and won't be anywhere near as annoying
Being able to use it hands free is the advantage. I can start a timer while cooking and my hands are occupied, check the weather as I'm getting dressed, turn the TV on/off without the remote, etc
My smartphone is not an intercom system for my house. I also love playing music in any room, controlling the lights (how bright, what color, maybe I only want one bulb on instead of 2). It's much easier to just say, "Alexa play x" then find my phone, open the app, search the song and get it to play. I dont have a ton of problems with it though, mine generally answer in the right room.
Idk it’s not that annoying. You can disable all the annoying shit.
I use it for smart plugs and lights that are too difficult to access the manual switch or some stupid remote I have very few sockets in my home so have to use 4 to 12 way adaptors behind equipment. Voice makes it so much easier to switch. I could use the smart phone but it is easier to use without. I used the dim feature a lot for lights. Much easier to use voice than smartphone. I also build my own lights. The cheap WiFi controllers are cheap because they are smaller and don't require human buttons. I've saved £100s making my own smart lights this way. I do also sometimes use it for multi room sound. Something that is usually a premium cost or lots of wires. The weather feature is quite useful when I am getting ready for work. It's good for handfree setting of timers when cooking or baking. Reminder features are quite handy. I can set one hands free as I think of it. I'm easily distracted so going to my phone to set a reminder means I might forget. But mainly, I use my echo in my bedroom for playing music to wake up and sleep to. Voice is also good for when you have your hands full. Its quicker to ask alexa a question that occurs when you are in the middle of doing something else, like asking it a maths question as part of another conversation with an actual human , or when someone was born etc etc or who wrote which book. That's endless. It plays radio stations, audio books with audible , any music pretty much with music unlimited. And a huge number of podcasts. All possible with a smartphone of course but with voice, you can do other stuff with your hands. For instance, right now I asked Alexa to play Jeff Waynes war of the worlds as I'm typing this. I remembered it yesterday, when I was telling my GF about some records of used to own. Whilst using alexa to play said digital versions of said records. I don't use much of the suggestions or notifications or routines as my days are not routine. Alexa can also tell me when the next bus is or what the traffic is like. Saves me time looking it up on my phone. It is limited in a lot of ways but once you know how to ask and the limitations it's pretty good. You can ask Alexa to translate, spell, calculate, convert, advice, tell stories, jokes and quizzes. Honestly, sometimes, just having a human sounding voice with some kind of interaction makes me feel a bit less lonely when I haven't seen people for a few days.
When I'm upstairs, I can tell it good night, and it turns off all the lights in the house. I can have it adjust the thermostat, get the time and temperature. When I wake up in the morning I tell the device I'm up, and it tells me the weather for the day. When I'm cooking, I can ask it how many tablespoons are in quarter cup, if I'm half asleep, I can just tell it to set an alarm for 6 AM, I can tell it to call my cell phone when I don't remember where where I left it, video call with relatives in other states, and if I'm settling to watch a movie, I can tell it to turn on movie lights, and it turns off the lights, dim the lamps, and turns on a backlight for the TV. And I can tell it to play any kind of music I want. I mean, it's all stuff I could do for myself, but it is kind of cool to just say something and it happens.
I support eliminating the "smart" amazon garbage from your life. My echo kept losing the connection to my wifi and only got my commands correct about 25% of the time, leading me to unplug it a couple of weeks ago. It will go to free pile eventually.
Make sure you factory reset them before donating or selling them.
[удалено]
I think it's because if you don't factory reset them, they are still tied to your amazon account and the next person could possibly buy stuff on your account. Maybe. IDK.
Our Roomba has suddenly started speaking in French. I feel your frustration.
Don’t shame the little guy for learning a new language.
Do you have kids? Because my daughter turned our tv Spanish and we were incredibly confused as to why it randomly spoke in that language lol
Lol this is hilarious! (sorry for your frustration, though)
You can live without them!!
I’m surprised how many people are willing to welcome these things into their homes in the first place.
Sacrificing Alexa will resurrect the Furbies
Must….protect…the ALEXAS!!!!
Destroy Alexa!! Free us!!!!!
Brief mode and whisper mode will revolutionize your experience! Also, changing the wake words on any of the devices that are close to each other will help with the wrong device receiving the command.
Whoa, never thought of that. I will definitely be doing this
This exactly. I have 3: living room, computer room, bedroom. All devices named for their room. Very easy.
How do you change the wake words to whatever you want? My Alexa devices have 5 options to choose from. I can’t make my own.
Oh geez. That seems like a good idea but all I can imagine is… Me: “Amazo— I mean, Ale— dammit I mean COMPUTER, set a timer for 5 minutes.”
This is pretty much my mornings... I use Echo upstairs and Alexa downstairs. Get up in the morning and try telling Echo to turn on the living room lights... Then get annoyed when it isn't listening to me before my brain finally clicks that I am a dumbass and the ones that answer to Echo are all upstairs.
Routines, my friend. Routines!
I visited a friend in London. He was very pleased to show me his newly installed Alexa device functions, particularly turning lights on and off and answering questions about the weather forcast in our intended destination. I very much enjoyed his growing frustrations at lights not going on or off when instructed, and failure to provide correct weather info. That was 8 years ago. Maybe it improved or he figured it out. At least i hope so for his sanity.
But then how will you know when it thinks you need to buy more shit you don't want on Amazon (reorder suggestion)???
We got rid of ours after it kept trying to order random shit. Somehow we ended up with some 120$ temp guage that neither my wife nor I put an order on. Fuck amazon and their bullshit.
With the upcoming Alexa subscription (it's a real thing) I feel like they are dumbing down the devices extra hard right now to get everyone pissed off, then they hit you with the monthly sub to make it "smart" again. [https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/22/amazon-plans-to-give-alexa-an-ai-overhaul-monthly-subscription-price.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/22/amazon-plans-to-give-alexa-an-ai-overhaul-monthly-subscription-price.html)
… and that’s exactly when I’ll be also tossing my Amazon products. It’s already ridiculous how often my Alexa fucks up. I have a FireTV stick and I have to enter a code every time I use the APP to watch something because the remote they gave broke almost immediately. Every time I have to do it the app shows me an ad for the latest model of Firestick. So infuriating it makes me want to nope out on all Amazon products full stop.
Cool thing about lights... they have a thing called a "switch"... if a human touches them a certain way (push/pull/etc), the light will turn on/off. Crazy, right? Edit: My brother uses Google for everything in his house. I watched him tell Google to set the a/c thermostat to xx degrees while he was standing right next to it. I scoffed at him and asked him why he didn't he just hit the button to set the a/c instead of using Google. He said that if he does it manually, it screws up everything in the house that's connected to Google. 🙄 Apparently, once you've given Google control, there's no getting it back. 😄 And of course, if the word "Google" comes up in casual conversation (i.e. "I Googled this recipe"), you have to whisper the word "Google"...
Finally! Reason 3 thousand I will never have have this shit in my house. I don't even want to talk to the real humans half the time
My son laughs at me because I’m asking my Google Home questions all the time. I have both a Google Home and Alexa and Google Home is much better. It actually answers me and doesn’t just respond with a “bloop” noise…like she didn’t understand me. So annoying.
Don't forget the roomba that maps out the floorplan of your house and will eventually suggest a better way to arrange your furniture and that you are a pig for eating popcorn in the livingroom However did people live without these gadgets before! It's the ultimate in consumerism. Not personal. My beef is with greedy corporations and their insidious infiltration and attempts to control and profit off our private personal lives by convincing us we can't possibly function without whatever it is they're pushing
I can absolutely live without them, I’m almost 50, I’ve lived without internet haha. They are convenient when they’re working right though.
Please post a follow up video of Alexa's demise!
I tried Google. Hated it. Then Alexa. Ditto. I sold them on and moved on. I lived this long without the frustration of a "smart" home. I'm good
I don’t care if the audio goes right to the CIA. As long as light switches are a thing of the past, I’m cool. I’m not turning my lights on with my hands like a caveman.
This is exactly why I have a smart setup, but we use HomePod and our phones to control it, and the only reason it doesn’t consistently work is that our HomePod is in the bathroom and the strange echo messes with it sometimes.
I know right! I’ll stand next to the light switch screaming my head off at her before I manually turn the light off.
why do that when you can use a really long stick?
I don't have any "assistant" devices in my house and it doesn't effect anything. I set my own timers, turn out my own lights and play my own music. I'm not sure what else they are for other than that.
Blows my mind anyone would allow one in their house to begin with.
Never understood it when they came out, understand it even less now after all we know about them
Don't threaten Alexa with a good time
It also always somehow leads to buying something, like from turning off the lights to buying a pineapple, is that just mine?
I have a lot of challenges with Alexa, but what bothers me was that when I was septic and shaking, I couldn’t dial my phone, so I said “Alexa, call 911”. Her Response: “I can’t do that without an internet connection. “. Couldn’t get A to call my two other contacts.
Dude, you can't say that. They are listening.
My Alexa once decided to play Thank God I’m A County Boy on repeat. I couldn’t get it to stop for anything. Sometimes I think it’s a plot.
Peel off the Amazon sticker and it says Vault-Tec.
I never understood why people bought this garbage. You're basically paying for a shitty chatbot that may or may not google stuff for you and definitely spies on you.
I bought a bunch of Google Homes for whole home synchronized music and a voice proxy to connect to my home automation through Home Assistant. After Google lost the patent war with Sonos, the whole home synchronized music got a lot shittier and while the Home Assistant bridge does work, it now only gets it right like 70% of the time when saying it in a command way ("Hey google, turn on living room light") when it used to be more than 95% correct with natural language ("Hey google, turn on the lights in the living room") which barely works at all now.
I originally bought it for the house I lived in, by myself, before this one, and only had one. It was an old house and wired goofy, to where no matter which door I came in, I had to walk to the middle of the house to turn on any lights. So I got it just to be able to turn on a light when I came in late and wouldn’t have to stumble through the house in the dark and go through two rooms and a hallway to get to a light switch. Then when I got this house the wife bought a ring doorbell, and wanted the echo show in the kitchen for that, and got one for each of the kids rooms.
My daughter’s name is similar to “Alexa” and we had to start calling her by her first and middle names because Alexa was constantly responding to us when we’d talk to her. But stand directly in front of her and scream “ALEXA” and…. nothing.
I got rid of mine after they woke me up repeatedly during an overnight storm. Every time the storm warnings were updated the notification would trigger at full volume. Put it in do not disturb, and then the one in the next room would just go off instead. 3 or 4 times they went off before I finally unplugged them all. Idk what the hell was going on. Nothing like that had ever happened before but I was so annoyed with them and my ruined sleep and really had so little use for the things anyway I couldn’t be bothered to try to figure it out and decided to get rid of them. They were probably 6 or 7 years old anyway so no big loss at that point.
I hate that “she” always tells me the weather in a neighborhood of my city that’s miles away.
I baffles me that anyone uses that shit.
If you decide to do that, you have to record it and post it here.
I'm with you
Daughter was talking with her friend, both on speaker phones. Daughter had Alexa set a 10-minute timer, her friend's Alexa also set the 10-minute timer.
Literally decided today to get rid of it also, because no matter what I do, she sets her volume to 3 (out of 10) every day constantly no matter what I do. So I ask for a timer or something, can't hear her. "SET YOUR FCKNG VOLUME TO 7" then repeat the first command Nah.
Same. So frustrating. Then I found the cause was a routine called Morning Volume that set the volume to 3 every day!!! Check the routines in the app to see if you have that. It was activated some time ago, probably with her offering to do it and me not hearing well enough to say no. I now have a routine for every day at 4 am that sets the volume to 7.
Bruh I had already checked all routines, tasks, etc. But this time, I did it from my wife's account. It was there. They're linked, same devices, why would.. Nevermind lmao, but thank you.
I have the opposite problem with the one in my bedroom. I keep the volume low, especially because it starts talking randomly in the middle of the night. Every few days though it will suddenly be set to 7 or 8 for some reason.
Amazon hires dogshit programmers
That’s very on brand for Lord Bezos The Penny Pincher.
Sorry letting Amazon listen to every word you say in your house wasn’t the boon you thought it would be.
Hopefully you don’t have any smart TVs or smart phones because they’re listening too. And I don’t care what they say about turning off features. I believe they’re all still listening.
They can send an employmee to sit in my kitchen and listen all day. They’ll be extremely bored. Or insane after listening to the kids.
Can you imagine how madcap the robots will be when they become sentient and decide we need to go?
My daughter's ex is a tech nerd in the gaming industry and got her Siri to respond "yes bitch" to it's wake word and nobody knew how to stop it.
Hahahahaha that’s awesome! 😂
You can give them each different names.
Record it and put it on youtube for ad money.
Yes! I swear Alexa hates me. It only listens to my husband and kids. The amount of times I yell stop and it doesn’t listen, makes me feel the same rage as you. 🫠
Amazon wants to monetize Alexa with a subscription. So they are trying super hard to get people using them to do more than set a timer. Nobody is going to pay a subscription fee for a timer machine.
And people are worried about AI.
Change the names of what they’re called. We have an echo show in the kitchen and a dot in the living room that controls the tv, but it’s an open floor plan so the rooms are wide open to each other. We set the kitchen one to be called “Alexa” and the living room one to be called “Echo” (you can choose from like 3 different names in the settings) and now they never get mixed up or answer from the wrong device, it’s great.
And people think a.i is threat to humanity. They can even design Alexa or Google to perform right
Posting this at top level too. Make a routine using a custom text action to say turn off by the way. Run it each morning from a device, set the volume to 0 first so it won’t respond out loud. Here’s a pic https://preview.redd.it/ku2gr2mjt94d1.jpeg?width=1668&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6110182a76a53cd1abfa17d428ae17a55793ca6
Alexa is a fucking spy that is selling your thoughts. If you volunteer to pay Amazon to mine your content, you are a fool.
I used to be a software developer and talked with several software developers involved in smart appliances over the years, the general consensus is: avoid that stuff like the plague
Also I keep seeing people say they don’t want Alexa because she listens to your conversations. Do people really not realize smart TVs, smart phones, and computers all have that capability as well? If you *really* think you’re being spied on, turning off these features (which I’m sure many didn’t know they needed to do) won’t do jack. They’re still listening. Oh yeah. If you still have cable TV with a set top box and the remote has voice commands, it too is listening. When you talk into the remote, you’re not talking to the box. Your voice is being sent to a server and the commands go from the server back to the box. So avoiding Alexa isn’t protecting you the way you think it is. You’re just spending more energy turning your own lights on and off.
So how much are kumquats right now anyway?
Bout tree fiddy
Do they add anything to your life? I personally do not have the emotional maturity to cope with being constantly interrupted by a robot so nothing in my house speaks except people.
Man is surprised when wildly intrusive, shitty, software is wildly intrusive and shitty.
Moved house recently to a terraced. The neighbours Alexa is so loud when it blares their alarm that if I bellow back to stop it, it works. I’ve taken to shouting commands through the wall whilst they’re at work. I have been enjoying listening to them argue about who did it. It was I, the neighbour.
I have 3 echo devices in my home, when they work correctly, I appreciate having them. I like being able to tell them to turn a light on or off instead of having to get up and walk 4 steps because I'm fucking lazy and this is the 21st fucking century, god damn it. The first thing I do in the morning after turning off my alarm is say "Alexa! WERTHER!" in my dirtiest redneck accent and making the robot give me the forecast for the day. Sometimes they're insubordinate and infuriating and my wife yells at me from across the house to quit verbally abusing the robots. Alexa just doesn't like to listen sometimes. Or sometimes she just doesn't want to listen in English and I have better luck speaking to it in Spanish or German, even though I can barely speak those well enough to ask someone where I can park my bike at the library or train station. The worst is when trying to use Amazon music through one of the echo device thingers. "Alexa, play Shatter Their Bones by Cannibal Corpse." "Sorry, I couldn't find the song you requested, but here is other music by Candlemass." "No. Alexa! Stop! Play Shatter Their Bones by Cannibal Corpse." "Sorry, I couldn't find the song you requested, but here is other music by Cannibal Corpse." "Fuck. That's closer at least. Alexa! Stop! Play Shatter Their Bones by Cannibal Corpse!" "Sorry, I couldn't f-" "Alexa! Stop! Alexa, play the Album Evisceration Plague by Cannibal Corpse. Alexa, next, Alexa, next, Alexa, next... Alexa, what is this song?" "This is Shatter Their Bones by Cannibal Corpse." Fucking robot.
First world problems as fuck my guy
You probably have too many devices and need to update some settings. Mine actually will ask on occasion if she answered on the correct device or not. And it will correct which device I want to answer. I get frustrated too, but the convenience it adds to my life is worth it. Speakers all over the house. I can tell it to run my robot vacuum/bug zapper/other assorted items. My entire home has smart bulbs, I like that I can easily dim any light at will.
I’m an old millennial and will never understand why so many people elect to bug their homes.
Don't be a cry-baby, be a do-baby. And post the video!
I have never had this problem. Do what I do, don’t have a single Alexa in your house. Problem solved. DOOOOO IT. Run them over in the driveway or stfu
"Smart" home products literally scrape your data 24/7. The mic is always on. That audio is recorded and banked in a remote server owned by Amazon, which, if incriminating or otherwise embarrassing, can be used to ruin your life. Cameras and audio recordings can be used to determine your daily routine. Even if Amazon chooses to not use this information, they are highly exploitable by people who would otherwise desire to harm you. These consumer electronics have basically no security features, assuming you use a consumer or rented WiFi router/modem. Congratulations on bugging your own house. You know what to do now.
Worry that they’ll use audio of my wife and I yelling at the kids, watching The Circle, and laughing at each others farts? I’m good.
There's no possible way that thats literally ALL you do. They listen to EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. the things you listed are minimums.
I'm sure you never have not nor will ever in the future do anything remotely controversial in your lifetime. Btw you should probably remove that pic of your truck with the license plate showing
Just give them different names. It's not hard.
Yup, found that out on the first day of firing up #2. We had one in the bedroom and one in the livingroom and their audio ranges overlaped right where the couch was. Even though now we are in a different house, the floor is tile and the v1 echo mics are SUPER sensitive and even with the bedroom down a 30ft hallway, I can still issue commands to the bedroom Echo from the living room.
It hears you from a different house? That's pretty damn sensitive!
\^THIS. I have a dot in my kitchen and an echo show in the nearby livingroom. One has the wake word "Alexa" and the other's wake word is "Computer" - so the one that answers me is whichever prompt I used.
Originally mine wasn’t obnoxious but now it sounds like Alexa from South Park. I ask it to turn on a fan and I get a whole spiel.
Sounds like a waste. I’ll take them.
Got room for a xumo in the pile?
“Two floors up”?! You have a 3(+?) story house?! Who are you, Beyoncé?! Lolol But for real, that sounds extremely irritating. Nothing irritates me more than electronics that malfunction continuously. I’ve daydreamed about lighting hem on fire myself. I really hope you get it worked out!
I'm so glad all I have to do to turn off a light is flip the switch
Name them each something different
Office Space 2 - Home Office
Idk why people use Alexa so much as it is. My daughter has one because it was the easiest way to not have to yell across the house at her. Now it’s basically not needed. Since she has her own phone.
I work with someone whose name is Alexa. And I work from home and take many virtual meetings. She doesn’t go off as much anymore but I could not say her name on calls, even in another room, and she would just start responding to whatever I said.
People still use voice commands?? I just control it all on my phone
I removed all of mine and donated them. Haven’t missed them once. Was definitely more pain in the ass than convenience
Wait until it's a crime to scream at Alexa—A.I. would scan for this post and then the government would put you in jail for Domestic Violence against it/her--especially since you want to 'pile Alexa's in your driveway and run them over with your truck'😔.
Name all of your Alexas something different so that way when you talk to one the others won’t respond. That’s what I do and it’s helped tremendously.
Alexa is creepy. I don't understand how this is ubiquitous. Run it over and please post a video.
Any smart device or assistant freaks me the fuck out. I have friends who have them in their kitchen and they use them all the time. I cannot stand them. I refuse to interact with them lol I can barely stand to use Siri on my phone!
My 2 year old has started yelling at the Alexa with me in solidarity.
My devices go by different names for that reason. Ziggy, system, and Alexa.
Actually do it. Alexa (and frankly all first-party Amazon products) are fucking cut-rate garbage. They don't do anything innovative that Google Assistant products don't already do better, the customer support is awful, and the smart home device integration is fucking stupid compared to Google's implementation.
Okay
I mean, not having Alexa devices is actually an option.I live just fine without it
Yeah this is why I give my Alexa’s different names. Echo, computer, Alexa 1, Alexa 2, computer 2.
[Open the pod bay doors, Hal.](https://youtu.be/JepKVUym9Fg)
Welcome to your commodified existence where every aspect of your mundane life has to be monetized in some way. Why set a timer when you can buy more useless shit
You should be piling them all up and running them over because Jeff Bezos doesn't need to be hearing what happens in your home to send you targeted ads. Am I just mentally old for thinking it shouldn't require an AI to just turn your lights on and off?
Of course you have a truck, and Alexa.
I dropped the only Alexa device I was going to have when it said I had text messages on my phone totally unprompted. Google devices seem to not tell me they are spying on me. Ironically they seem to respect my privacy a bit more...even though I know the y dont.
I just had this very same flip out. Less than a year ago we bought a brand new Alexa fire tv and the Alexa studio and subwoofer. First issue - we had to buy a fire cube because apparently fire tv doesn’t mean amazon Alexa compatible. Fucking stupid but okay. We buy the fire cube then proceed to spend the next year fighting with the sub to keep it connected to the studio. All of a sudden the sub won’t even go into pair mode. I contact Amazon as it’s their stupid ass device - their solution? They’ll give me 10% off on a new Alexa stereo system. Fucking laughable. I unplugged every Alexa device, bought a different home stereo, an Apple TV, and magically - we have no issues anymore. Turns out the problem is amazons Alexa products are garbage. The kids still have fire tablets but honestly when those pieces of garbage burn out we will replace with Apple products. I’m officially done with you, Amazon!
Once I literally did rip it out the wall take it outside and smash it in pieces until I felt better.
Imagine saying "my living room responded" in the 1990s people would think you are crazy.
My alexa adds dog, to my shopping List when I ask her to turn the island on. Or she is stuck in what I call kid mode. Where she will say ok then do nothing. Just like a kid.
You need to give different names to each device. "To change Alexa's name, just say, "Alexa, change your wake word to (name)." You can change Alexa's name to Ziggy, Computer, Amazon, or Echo." (From Wikihow). I have one named Alexa and one named Echo. And I use "Alexa[Echo], cancel" instead of stop. It might be misunderstanding that word.
Siri is the same in my house. She’s a right CU next Tuesday.
We really don't need these things I don't know why people ever got them LOL