27 Dec 2018

Amazon Alexa went down on Christmas Day: Details here

Science

Written by

Shubham Sharma

Amazon's Alexa is pretty handy for day-to-day tasks, but on Christmas, the smart assistant served a nasty surprise - it went down.

Multiple users took to Twitter to note that the assistant was having trouble registering new devices or handling queries.

However, after some two hours the issue was resolved, Amazon's customer service confirmed.

Here's more on the issue.

Issue

Error on handling queries, registering devices

The outage, first reported by The Guardian, began at about 3:30 pm IST on December 25.

Alexa failed to register new devices and answered queries by saying "Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you right now." and "Please try again later".

Naturally, this frustrated many, especially those who wanted to use their Alexa devices for playing festive songs, turning on lights, or getting cooking instructions.

Information

Complaints flooded from Europe

Notably, the complaints on Twitter were more pronounced from UK, Germany, and other parts of Europe. Even the heat map on Downdetector suggested the same.

Amazon's response

However, after 2 hours the issues were resolved

Some two hours after the issue started appearing, Amazon Help confirmed that "some Echo devices in Europe have had intermittent connections".

However, the service did note that the issues have been resolved and the assistant began working normally.

Amazon didn't provide detailed insights into the issue, but many speculated it could be due to excessive load on its servers.

Possible reason

Amazon sold record Alexa devices this Christmas

Amazon has confirmed its Alexa devices, particularly the Echo and Echo Dot lineup, were best-selling devices of the holiday season.

This seems to suggest the addition of several users, all looking to set up Alexa devices around the same time, proved too much for Amazon's servers.

And, naturally, when servers get loaded, Alexa, which relies on them for delivering responses, would get affected too.

IST Alexa Amazon Twitter Echo Dot Guardian

Aadhya Dutta

Asked on 27 December, 2018

How server issue could impact Alexa?

Answered by

NewsBytes

The exact reason for this outage isn't clear, but server load could be a possible case because all queries are interpreted by the servers, which then instruct the smart speaker to perform the required command.

Ananya Patel

Asked on 27 December, 2018

What is the price of Amazon Echo speakers?

Answered by

NewsBytes

The latest generation of Amazon's Alexa speakers includes Echo Dot and Echo Plus. The former is priced at Rs. 4,500 in India, while the latter comes at Rs. 15,000.

Arnav Kapoor

Asked on 27 December, 2018

How to order to food with Alexa?

Answered by

NewsBytes

In order to order food, you'll have to link your Zomato account with the Alexa app and say, "Alexa, order food from Zomato". It will use the default address from your account, ask cuisine preferences, and list out open restaurants and available meals to finish placing your order.

Ridhi Nair

Asked on 27 December, 2018

How to make Skype calls from Alexa?

Answered by

NewsBytes

For this, you'll have to link your Skype account, up Alexa and say the name of the contact you want to call. Within seconds, it will use your Skype account to call them on theirs.

View all questions (4)