Amazon Echo Club

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by sqdancer

I believe DNSB was referring to Amazon Sidewalk going live in the US effective June 8th.

Okay. I haven’t heard of that either. I’ll have to look it up!

[sqdancer]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Okay. I haven’t heard of that either. I’ll have to look it up!

There's a thread going in the News forum, if you're feeling brave.
(the usual MR discussion re privacy, etc)

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by sqdancer

There's a thread going in the News forum, if you're feeling brave.
(the usual MR discussion re privacy, etc)

Actually I do know about it, I just forgot it was called Amazon Sidewalk.

To turn off Amazon Sidewalk:

Open the Alexa app then select More —> Settings —> Account Settings —> Amazon Sidewalk and make sure it says Disabled.

I turned mine off way back when it was first announced, then promptly forgot about it. It probably is a good idea to check the settings again though to Enable or Disable according to your preference.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by sqdancer

There's a thread going in the News forum, if you're feeling brave.
(the usual MR discussion re privacy, etc)

They went went through a similar discussion filled with misinformation, wild assumptions, and apocalyptic fears way back when this was first announced. The option was set to disabled when it first showed up in a FW update, despite wide reports to the opposite, at least in my case it was disabled. If one is unsure about it or simply wants to opt out, then they can do so easily enough.

[mlewis78]

I get the yellow ring on my Echo that indicates there is a notification, usually about a delivery that day or a weather alert. I asked early this morning what the notification was and it was a shopping idea, so I said "I'm trying to sleep!" Alexa said "I don't now that one."

I just wanted to get rid of the yellow light.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by mlewis78

I get the yellow ring on my Echo that indicates there is a notification, usually about a delivery that day or a weather alert. I asked early this morning what the notification was and it was a shopping idea, so I said "I'm trying to sleep!" Alexa said "I don't now that one."

I just wanted to get rid of the yellow light.

The pushed marketing is getting really bad. There's now a significant fraction of the shopping list screen in the alexa app taken up by a banner ad for another Amazon app for food shopping.

Nolan Sorrento's plan for the OASIS advertising in the "Ready Player One" movie is looking more realistic every day:
"We can sell up to 80% of an individual's visual field before inducing seizures."
Max Headroom's 'Blipverts' predicted it decades ago. No one listened.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by mlewis78

I get the yellow ring on my Echo that indicates there is a notification, usually about a delivery that day or a weather alert. I asked early this morning what the notification was and it was a shopping idea, so I said "I'm trying to sleep!" Alexa said "I don't now that one."

I just wanted to get rid of the yellow light.

The Alexa reply, "I don't know that one," occurs quite often around my house. She does that even to tried and true commands that normally work fine. But for some strange reason, she will occasionally say "I don't know that one." I prefer that come back, as annoying as it is, to her going off on a sales pitch for something I didn't ask about and am not interested in. I've found that the best way to shut her up, other than unplugging her, is the say, "Alexa, stop!" However, sometimes when she is in the middle of an advertisement pitch she won’t even listen to commands.

Quite frankly, I often have better luck getting the cats to do what I tell them than getting Alexa to do what I tell her!

[DiapDealer]

When Alexa mistakes something I say in my house, nine times out of ten, it results in her thinking I requested some sort of music to be played. Even though I almost never purposely ask her to play music.

I noticed the shopping suggestions as notifications some time ago. It doesn't happen to me that often, but since shipping/delivery notifications are the only type of notifications I'm interested in, I delete any without listening to them when I know no packages are due.

The process to delete them is certainly tedious enough for me, though.

Me: "Alexa, delete all my notifications"
Alexa: "Delete all your notifications, right?"
Me: "Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight"
Alexa: "OK. Deleted all your notifications"

[OtinG]

A bit off topic, but this has to do with Amazon. I got a suspicious email today purporting to be from a person working for a company seeking people to be testers for products from about 100 different companies. I know there are legitimate companies that deal with testers, but this email seemed very suspicious.

• It listed Smith Arty as the company, but a Google search turned up nothing on this company.
• The contact on the email used an @gmail.com email address rather than @[company-name].com.
• They asked for my "AMZ profile link."
• The email did not look professional at all.
• She mentioned using PayPal for transactions.

I'm pretty sure this is a scam and immediately deleted it after marking it as junk mail. I only mention this because the people in this thread buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, and this certainly looked like a scammer trying to prey on an Amazon customer. So beware.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I'm pretty sure this is a scam and immediately deleted it after marking it as junk mail. I only mention this because the people in this thread buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, and this certainly looked like a scammer trying to prey on an Amazon customer. So beware.

I do occasionally get emails from sellers I've bought stuff from offering to send me a free product in exchange for a review, and sometimes they are not the best communicators in written English. If I can clearly associate it with an actual purchase I've made, I occasionally accept. I've gotten some nice things that way. But if I can't, I'd consider it a scam, or spam, at best, as well.

(BTW, When the offer is an item in exchange for an honest review, I sometimes accept. When the offer is an item for a FIVE STAR review, I blacklist them.)

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by ApK

I do occasionally get emails from sellers I've bought stuff from offering to send me a free product in exchange for a review, and sometimes they are not the best communicators in written English. If I can clearly associate it with an actual purchase I've made, I occasionally accept. I've gotten some nice things that way. But if I can't, I'd consider it a scam, or spam, at best, as well.

(BTW, When the offer is an item in exchange for an honest review, I sometimes accept. When the offer is an item for a FIVE STAR review, I blacklist them.)

There are definitely some legitimate companies that will ask for honest reviews in exchange for a free product which you review. This email though seemed to have a bogus company name. They said they represented about 100 other companies but didn’t mention which ones. Plus there was no indication of why they extended the invitation to me or mention of any item I had already purchased. It just smelled of phishing to me, so to be safe I deleted the email and will ignore their offer.

Here is the text of the email. Pay attention to the PayPal portion, as that sounds really suspect to me. Why should the reviewer care how they pay for the item? I would think they could just send the item without having the reviewer actually use PayPal to buy it. That just sounds like they want to get the reviewer’s PayPal info.

Looking for review partners

Hi there,
This is Nicole. I'm running on a review program with many US review partners, cooperating with various sellers on AMZ.
Would you be interested in testing our products at no cost？

I’ m finding long term relationship review partners, and you can choose our items weekly.
To show my sincerity, if you would like to test our products, we will cover the expense by Paypal upfront for most products.
We also cover the cost of tax and the Paypal fee.
Thus, you would not take any risk losing money. All we ask in is an honest 5-star review.

We have more than 100+ great items that need reviews on AMZ.
Our products span all categories such as electronics, home and kitchen, outdoor and sports, clothing, pets, baby and automotive, etc.
I believe that you would find your ideal products from us!
With just a helpful review (with words, better with pics)on Amazon, you can take one of our items with high value and good quality to home at no cost.
If you are interested in product trials, plz reply yes and send me your AMZ profile link. And I will send you our newest product list for you.
If you are not interested in our product trials, you can reply unsubscribe. And we will never send you emails.
Thank you
Nicole

[ApK]

Originally Posted by OtinG

That just sounds like they want to get the reviewer’s PayPal info.

Your 'paypal info' is just an email address, and can't be used to take money from you, so I see nothing suspicious there. It's perfectly reasonable to let the person know they'd be getting reimbursed via paypal.

But as for everything else about it, even if the offer is legitimate in the sense that they will really send you free products for review, there is still the problem of:

All we ask in is an honest 5-star review.

These people literally don't know the meaning of the word 'honest.'
Blacklist.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by ApK

But as for everything else about it, even if the offer is legitimate in the sense that they will really send you free products for review, there is still the problem of:


These people literally don't know the meaning of the word 'honest.'
Blacklist.

Yep I saw that too. “We want your honest review, but make sure it includes a 5 star rating or you want get paid.”

[WT Sharpe]

The Echo Tap is the best idea Amazon ever gave up on.
There, I said it.

[ApK]

Can someone please help me understand something about Prime Music and the Echo:
As Prime members, going to the Amazon music website (and presumably the Music app) we see several Adele albums, which we can play freely, choose to play specific tracks from, and download to the device if we like. But when we ask any of our Echoes to play the same songs or albums, we just get the "only with Unlimited" sales pitch. If we make a playlist with those same albums or songs, and ask the Echo to play the playlist, then she'll play them.

What's going on? Shouldn't the same Prime music content be available via Alexa as via the web or app?

TIA,
ApK