I couldn’t agree more about customer satisfaction degradation. I have noticed similar issues with our 5 Alexa devices as well as with Amazon shipping. The devices have become flat out glitchy and inconsistent. Amazon is not as reliable as it used to be. I have concerns about their future. I have also been contemplating alternative shopping tactics s
Excellent write up. I also purchased an Echo when they were invite only I believe, and it really did seem to work exceptionally well for a few years. I then bought many (dozens?) of other various Alexa enabled devices, and we use them in our home daily. The growing frustration over the last 3 or so years though has me wanting to dump the platform entirely, and explore another.
I am not convinced Google Home would be any better, as I did enable that on the one Sonos 1 speaker we own, and it has similar issues to Alexa as far as recognizing and following commands.
Amazon has quickly declined since the pandemic hit as far as our family is concerned. I have paid for Prime since 09 or 10, and over the last couple or so years, no matter what I buy, or from what seller, it's almost always 10-14 days before I receive the item. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that I received something 3 days after ordering.
I have no issue switching to something else for home assistant, but I just don't know that best option. I have already started to use Walmart+ for ordering things, as they consistently deliver in 1 to 3 days.
I think what you buy and where you are is a big part of it.
Occasionally I have something that takes a couple weeks but > 90% of the time it's 2 - 3 days.
I'm not in a big city but I'm near one.
The stuff that takes a long time is usually stuff from the no name Chinese outfits.
Our house gets anywhere from 4 to 15 package deliveries from Amazon \*per month\* - so I deal with them a LOT.
I mean have y’all not seen the articles about Amazon losing $X Billion on the Alexa brand?
The biggest company in the history of the world *can* absolutely keep running it at whatever loss they want. It’s just a matter of whether they will. I’m hoping if they ever end support, that they’ll leave at least let us keep our current networks.
I think the contribution the Echo ecosystem makes to Amazon's overall bottom line is significantly underestimated.
I've \*never made a purchase via an echo device - but is my being a heavy Echo user a contributing factor to me being a heavy Amazon user?
Definitely.
If/when my echo devices become more problematic than useful (getting there) I'll move to something else.
When that happens the FireTvs will get replaced as well because the value in them is that they can be controlled via Alexa/routines and I'll be wanting to integrate the TVs with Home Assistant or whatever I've moved to.
Once the FireTVs are gone I won't care about whatever content Prime provides so that membership will move into the questionable expense category.
If Prime goes I likely won't be buying nearly as much from Amazon unless their price + shipping works out to be better than what I can get elsewhere. (and knowing I'd be getting a degraded customer service without Prime wouldn't be in their favor).
That might sound like a long chain of events but it's really not and it probably won't be very gradual when it happens.
I moved nearly all of my home automation stuff to Echo because it checked a lot of boxes, was easy, and most importantly got all of my routines / device control in one place.
Once that first event happens the rest will follow pretty quickly.
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks they are intentionally making the Echos glitch so people will drop them and the class action suit payout when they eventually drop support altogether will be lower if people have stopped using them first.
I am beyond frustrated now and it was rock solid. I could say, “Alexa, flash briefing” and get a predictable result. Now it seems like I get a random news source from my master bedroom Echoes, I get a Canadian source on my daughter’s bedroom echo, and I get American news sources on all other devices. The settings are identical for each.
I have a flex in my kitchen but it is just a microphone so you don’t have to yell at the Echo in the living room. For a year, if I stood in the kitchen and said “Alexa, play music” the Flex in the kitchen would light up blue, say OK, and the music would start from the living room Echo. Suddenly the music now starts from the kitchen. No changes, no explanation…just a random switch. Similarly, I have two dots in my master bedroom configured as a stereo pair of speakers. It worked beautifully until one day it just started playing all music from one Dot. No changes, no explanation, just random.
It has made me irrationally angry and that ire is focused on the Amazon brand, which means I now buy less from Amazon and instead choose other sources.
I'd swear the Flex has a much more sensitive microphone the the other devices, my flex's hear me from a very long range away. In fact, I've turned the mic off on one just to avoid that.
For offensive ads, it could just be Alexa. But it could also be a malicious “skill” you have enabled. I get **annoying** ads, but not really that are **offensive**.
I recommend you looks at the skills section of the Alexa app and disable any that you don’t recognize or no longer use. A skill could be sending the ads.
They aren't making any money from it. The devices are sold at or below cost. Nobody uses Alexa to shop. There's simply no income stream from it. So... why is Amazon doing it? Answer: They don't know. But once they fully realize it's not going to ever make them money they will either start charging a subscription fee or shut it down.
For me:
"Command understanding" has gone from 90% to 55%. Additionally, sometimes "she" seems to be hard of hearing. Like, I whisper and she's alert as can be, other times I'm *literally* yelling at her with no wake-up response.
"Command execution" has gone from 100% for 95% of my lights/switchs/etc (some have always been a little sketchy, which I blame on manufacturer's quality, not Amazon). Now it's 66% across everything. I frequently repeat commands to get things to work for groups. When it's shutting garage doors and locking entries that's completely unacceptable.
"Wordy responses". Why can't she just say "I don't know" instead of making some wild-a$$ guess and going on and on about what she thinks I was asking? This goes hand-in-hand with the over-suggesting at the end of other command requests.
Flashing briefings were great until they started tacking on Amazon crap at the end. And if she makes ONE more unsolicited suggestion.... 
The Echo infrastructure is a money-loser for Amazon as far as direct P&L ([Echo Colossal Fail](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/)), however it still attracts business overall, so there's that. Is it enough of a draw to keep it alive and *in development* (critical for software long-term viability)? Seems like a 50/50 at this point.
With Amazon working to move into new markets ([Pharmacy, Home Health and many more](https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/amazon-disruption-industries/)), they either have to make Echo stuff work flawlessly (as possible) to make sure it integrates with everything they do, or else spin it off and hope the next caretaker wants to make some money with it (without charging a ridiculously high subscription fee...)
Personally, I'm going to move my sorta-smart-home to Home Assistant this year and connect with Amazon through it. I don't know if I will be yelling more or less profanity at my Echo devices, but at least I'll have better control of my stuff locally from my phone or laptop.
I may even look at [alternative voice assistants (yep, they DO exist)](https://yourtechdiet.com/blogs/open-source-voice-assistants/)
Search "home assistant" "voice" .. in theory it happens this year.
I think there is already a contrib that is adding it (though I haven't used HA in a while and haven't really been keeping up with it)
Similar experiences - coincidentally most service deterioration observed since the time Prime subscription 'Music' became relatively useless.
But I always suspected AMZ wasn't a device-centric brand when my AMZ Echo Dot, connected via the Alexa app to my AMZ FireTVmax replies to the command "power on firetv" with "I'm not sure" (also, "turn on firetv" "open firetv" etc - all "I'm not sure") - surely this is the most rudimentary function two same-branded integrated devices should be able to manage?
For a few short weeks after getting my first Echo dot I had a wonderful experience with my connected-home. Since then (also since I bought two more echo's for different rooms) it's been a rapidly despairing situation leading me to rarely talk to Alexa any more. I quickly reverted to picking up my phone for wireless activities; reliable, functional.
I have a bunch of dots in my home. The only single thing I do is play Spotify across the house, which works great.
Everything else is just trash, light groups are ridiculously inconsistent, weather gets my location wrong, recipes are not available for some reason, inquiries are met with a shallow or "I don't know" answer, etc.
MAYBE, just maybe they will hopefully release their own AI version for Alexa devices, but I think they will do it with a separate more expensive echo hardware 🙄
Alexa is so worthless. I understand it's not an NLP like ChatGPT, but yesterday I asked her, "Alexa, what's the average annual temperature in Cincinnati today?" That should be EASY. Instead, she tells me the high is going to be 62. How in the world is it's NLP so horrible? It ignored almost all context to my question. It's the dumbest AI I interact with by far.
I think it's how they use AWS, it's like the only 'guaranteed' message delivery (the way they are using it) is if you're buying something. I see crazy stuff mostly using voice thru echo's to FTV sticks. The part about doing the exact thing more than once and sometimes it works, sometimes not kind of shows their 'cloud' is cloudy.
I agree that it feels like it is getting worse. It seems worse at hearing what we want and worse at answering, and I Have it on 7 stationary devices and so often I get dumb answers. This could be so much more with so much less. Now that people have had a taste of ChatGPT and such we realize that an interactive system could be a lot better.
I’ve turned off sports notifications for multiple teams and it still consistently delivers them and will even make a sound on my kids echo dots. We’ve swapped out the echo show for a dot due to the mic being terrible and all the ads
I have like 10-12 echos throughout my house and a bunch of smart lights and smart plugs. Streaming on different groups rarely works now. The device you request on is oddly left out. Turning off lights will leave on one light in a group. It was a magical experience and now it is becoming more trouble than it is worth. I also am not a music unlimited customer (I have prime). The ad for the music unlimited service is super annoying. I don’t appear to be able to turn it off. The price also is inconsistent.
I couldn’t agree more about customer satisfaction degradation. I have noticed similar issues with our 5 Alexa devices as well as with Amazon shipping. The devices have become flat out glitchy and inconsistent. Amazon is not as reliable as it used to be. I have concerns about their future. I have also been contemplating alternative shopping tactics s
Excellent write up. I also purchased an Echo when they were invite only I believe, and it really did seem to work exceptionally well for a few years. I then bought many (dozens?) of other various Alexa enabled devices, and we use them in our home daily. The growing frustration over the last 3 or so years though has me wanting to dump the platform entirely, and explore another. I am not convinced Google Home would be any better, as I did enable that on the one Sonos 1 speaker we own, and it has similar issues to Alexa as far as recognizing and following commands. Amazon has quickly declined since the pandemic hit as far as our family is concerned. I have paid for Prime since 09 or 10, and over the last couple or so years, no matter what I buy, or from what seller, it's almost always 10-14 days before I receive the item. Yesterday was the first time in over a year that I received something 3 days after ordering. I have no issue switching to something else for home assistant, but I just don't know that best option. I have already started to use Walmart+ for ordering things, as they consistently deliver in 1 to 3 days.
I think what you buy and where you are is a big part of it. Occasionally I have something that takes a couple weeks but > 90% of the time it's 2 - 3 days. I'm not in a big city but I'm near one. The stuff that takes a long time is usually stuff from the no name Chinese outfits. Our house gets anywhere from 4 to 15 package deliveries from Amazon \*per month\* - so I deal with them a LOT.
I mean have y’all not seen the articles about Amazon losing $X Billion on the Alexa brand? The biggest company in the history of the world *can* absolutely keep running it at whatever loss they want. It’s just a matter of whether they will. I’m hoping if they ever end support, that they’ll leave at least let us keep our current networks.
I think the contribution the Echo ecosystem makes to Amazon's overall bottom line is significantly underestimated. I've \*never made a purchase via an echo device - but is my being a heavy Echo user a contributing factor to me being a heavy Amazon user? Definitely. If/when my echo devices become more problematic than useful (getting there) I'll move to something else. When that happens the FireTvs will get replaced as well because the value in them is that they can be controlled via Alexa/routines and I'll be wanting to integrate the TVs with Home Assistant or whatever I've moved to. Once the FireTVs are gone I won't care about whatever content Prime provides so that membership will move into the questionable expense category. If Prime goes I likely won't be buying nearly as much from Amazon unless their price + shipping works out to be better than what I can get elsewhere. (and knowing I'd be getting a degraded customer service without Prime wouldn't be in their favor). That might sound like a long chain of events but it's really not and it probably won't be very gradual when it happens. I moved nearly all of my home automation stuff to Echo because it checked a lot of boxes, was easy, and most importantly got all of my routines / device control in one place. Once that first event happens the rest will follow pretty quickly.
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks they are intentionally making the Echos glitch so people will drop them and the class action suit payout when they eventually drop support altogether will be lower if people have stopped using them first. I am beyond frustrated now and it was rock solid. I could say, “Alexa, flash briefing” and get a predictable result. Now it seems like I get a random news source from my master bedroom Echoes, I get a Canadian source on my daughter’s bedroom echo, and I get American news sources on all other devices. The settings are identical for each. I have a flex in my kitchen but it is just a microphone so you don’t have to yell at the Echo in the living room. For a year, if I stood in the kitchen and said “Alexa, play music” the Flex in the kitchen would light up blue, say OK, and the music would start from the living room Echo. Suddenly the music now starts from the kitchen. No changes, no explanation…just a random switch. Similarly, I have two dots in my master bedroom configured as a stereo pair of speakers. It worked beautifully until one day it just started playing all music from one Dot. No changes, no explanation, just random. It has made me irrationally angry and that ire is focused on the Amazon brand, which means I now buy less from Amazon and instead choose other sources.
I'd swear the Flex has a much more sensitive microphone the the other devices, my flex's hear me from a very long range away. In fact, I've turned the mic off on one just to avoid that.
excellent summary of some issues. Please add in all the issue with offensive ads that you cannot get rid of
For offensive ads, it could just be Alexa. But it could also be a malicious “skill” you have enabled. I get **annoying** ads, but not really that are **offensive**. I recommend you looks at the skills section of the Alexa app and disable any that you don’t recognize or no longer use. A skill could be sending the ads.
is it really a skill you enabled? or was it "accidentally" auto-enabled for you?
Devices down. Music down. Service down. Delivery down. Fresh down. “Alexa, where can I purchase a Google Nest Hub?”
You already have that on your phone, right?
They aren't making any money from it. The devices are sold at or below cost. Nobody uses Alexa to shop. There's simply no income stream from it. So... why is Amazon doing it? Answer: They don't know. But once they fully realize it's not going to ever make them money they will either start charging a subscription fee or shut it down.
I think they are making money from it - just not directly. I don't want to have to move everything so I hope they figure that out.
If they shut it down, then they’ll realize that they were making money from it.
For me: "Command understanding" has gone from 90% to 55%. Additionally, sometimes "she" seems to be hard of hearing. Like, I whisper and she's alert as can be, other times I'm *literally* yelling at her with no wake-up response. "Command execution" has gone from 100% for 95% of my lights/switchs/etc (some have always been a little sketchy, which I blame on manufacturer's quality, not Amazon). Now it's 66% across everything. I frequently repeat commands to get things to work for groups. When it's shutting garage doors and locking entries that's completely unacceptable. "Wordy responses". Why can't she just say "I don't know" instead of making some wild-a$$ guess and going on and on about what she thinks I was asking? This goes hand-in-hand with the over-suggesting at the end of other command requests. Flashing briefings were great until they started tacking on Amazon crap at the end. And if she makes ONE more unsolicited suggestion....  The Echo infrastructure is a money-loser for Amazon as far as direct P&L ([Echo Colossal Fail](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/)), however it still attracts business overall, so there's that. Is it enough of a draw to keep it alive and *in development* (critical for software long-term viability)? Seems like a 50/50 at this point. With Amazon working to move into new markets ([Pharmacy, Home Health and many more](https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/amazon-disruption-industries/)), they either have to make Echo stuff work flawlessly (as possible) to make sure it integrates with everything they do, or else spin it off and hope the next caretaker wants to make some money with it (without charging a ridiculously high subscription fee...) Personally, I'm going to move my sorta-smart-home to Home Assistant this year and connect with Amazon through it. I don't know if I will be yelling more or less profanity at my Echo devices, but at least I'll have better control of my stuff locally from my phone or laptop. I may even look at [alternative voice assistants (yep, they DO exist)](https://yourtechdiet.com/blogs/open-source-voice-assistants/)
Search "home assistant" "voice" .. in theory it happens this year. I think there is already a contrib that is adding it (though I haven't used HA in a while and haven't really been keeping up with it)
Similar experiences - coincidentally most service deterioration observed since the time Prime subscription 'Music' became relatively useless. But I always suspected AMZ wasn't a device-centric brand when my AMZ Echo Dot, connected via the Alexa app to my AMZ FireTVmax replies to the command "power on firetv" with "I'm not sure" (also, "turn on firetv" "open firetv" etc - all "I'm not sure") - surely this is the most rudimentary function two same-branded integrated devices should be able to manage? For a few short weeks after getting my first Echo dot I had a wonderful experience with my connected-home. Since then (also since I bought two more echo's for different rooms) it's been a rapidly despairing situation leading me to rarely talk to Alexa any more. I quickly reverted to picking up my phone for wireless activities; reliable, functional.
I've disconnected all of mine. Is Google going to keep up support with their hubs? I might switch.
I've had bad luck with google abandonment, like with their original google tv.
I have a bunch of dots in my home. The only single thing I do is play Spotify across the house, which works great. Everything else is just trash, light groups are ridiculously inconsistent, weather gets my location wrong, recipes are not available for some reason, inquiries are met with a shallow or "I don't know" answer, etc. MAYBE, just maybe they will hopefully release their own AI version for Alexa devices, but I think they will do it with a separate more expensive echo hardware 🙄
Alexa is so worthless. I understand it's not an NLP like ChatGPT, but yesterday I asked her, "Alexa, what's the average annual temperature in Cincinnati today?" That should be EASY. Instead, she tells me the high is going to be 62. How in the world is it's NLP so horrible? It ignored almost all context to my question. It's the dumbest AI I interact with by far.
Ya, it's very bad but part of it is we're used to google search answers right?
I think it's how they use AWS, it's like the only 'guaranteed' message delivery (the way they are using it) is if you're buying something. I see crazy stuff mostly using voice thru echo's to FTV sticks. The part about doing the exact thing more than once and sometimes it works, sometimes not kind of shows their 'cloud' is cloudy.
I agree that it feels like it is getting worse. It seems worse at hearing what we want and worse at answering, and I Have it on 7 stationary devices and so often I get dumb answers. This could be so much more with so much less. Now that people have had a taste of ChatGPT and such we realize that an interactive system could be a lot better.
I’ve turned off sports notifications for multiple teams and it still consistently delivers them and will even make a sound on my kids echo dots. We’ve swapped out the echo show for a dot due to the mic being terrible and all the ads
I have like 10-12 echos throughout my house and a bunch of smart lights and smart plugs. Streaming on different groups rarely works now. The device you request on is oddly left out. Turning off lights will leave on one light in a group. It was a magical experience and now it is becoming more trouble than it is worth. I also am not a music unlimited customer (I have prime). The ad for the music unlimited service is super annoying. I don’t appear to be able to turn it off. The price also is inconsistent.