Those who have gotten an Amazon Echo for Christmas seem to be not fully enjoying the functionalities of this smart speaker, as Amazon's servers are experiencing issues and causing many users to get crashes when invoking Alexa, Amazon's virtual assistant.
Complaints from a multitude of users begin to flood support forums and comments on specialized blogs looking for a solution to a problem that seems to you will have no other solution but to wait for Amazon to fix the problems which appear to be caused by an overload on the servers.
If this morning you unwrapped your gift and discovered that an Amazon Echo was ready to plug in at home, you may have had trouble adding your account, or getting the Amazon Echo connecting to company services. It is not a problem with your unit, or with your internet connection, but rather that Amazon servers seem to have not coped with the overload of new connections, caused by the barrage of Amazon smart speakers that have reached homes around the world this Christmas. The largest number of complaints and error notifications come from the United Kingdom, but in Spain we are not free of errors either. In my case, I can't get it to play music for me, and many of the requests I make to Alexa don't get the proper response.
The solution? Put the speaker aside and wait for the company to fix these issues. It will be a matter of a short time before everything returns to normal and we can again use the services that Alexa offers us in the Amazon Echo and in other compatible speakers such as the Sonos. Even a giant like Amazon has its problems from time to time.
You don't give a lot of information the truth. Are these servers on AWS? Was it general downfall or just those who are dedicated to Amazon Echo? Does it affect all regions?
We do not know much more data because Amazon has not said anything officially. What I indicate in the article, the most affected area has been the United Kingdom, but there have been problems outside there.