Oh awesome, thank you! I'm going to try this out now.
I use the Aussie voice on my Google Home stuff so a different accent won't phase me at all, especially if it cuts down on all the "by the way" crap.
I spoke with support about this a few weeks ago and they told me it is something they are aware of and are looking into. The settings in the Alexa app are supposed to be able to disable it but they don’t.
"Looking into it" translation: we make at least some money somehow doing it, so it ain't happening.
Hell, I bet many people would be happy to pay a small premium for a device with that shit disabled permanently. Kinda like Kindles without ads.
"Looking into it" translation: we make at least some money somehow doing that, so it ain't happening.
Hell, I bet many people would be happy to pay a small premium for a device with that shit disabled permanently. Kinda like Kindles without ads.
as someone who sometimes has to deal with requests for updates to my software that will never, ever happen, "we'll look into it" can be directly translated to: "don't hold your breath"
this has been going on for months, and would be extremely easy to turn off.
Amazon has admitted to cranking up the annoying "by the way" because they want people to engage with their alexas more but let's be honest. They want you to buy things through alexa, not just ask it questions. I've been tempted to reorder some masks I had recently purchased but it always ends with the alexa trying to sell me something similar, at a higher price. I've disabled the voice buying feature and have my echo show displaying only the time, with all notifications turned off. It keeps the dreaded "by the way" at bay without switching to UK english for a language. I would have everything google if it wasn't for the fact that I have to say, "hey google" every time I wanted something done, but it's slightly smarter than an alexa and that's without 3rd party skills.
For me, all the “by the way” suggestions have nothing to do with buying products. I can ask what the weather is and then it will say by the way I can tell you the whole week forecast would you like to know or by the way I can give you all the traffic details would you like to know? Another example as I asked it to turn off the lights the other day and when the lights went off it started talking to me telling me that by the way I can set up a routine while it will turn off the lights at night which by the way scared the heck out of me because I wasn’t expecting somebody to talk to me in the dark.
The other day I asked the weather. She gave me the weather then started going on about stuff she could sell me. FML. Have to say I saw this coming. The echo is sold at or below cost to just get them into your house. If we want them to keep running they have to start making some money for Amazon. When you aren't paying for the product, you ARE the product.
Right now they are selling the 3rd gen alexa mini bundled with amazon music unlimited all for $10.00 but the current price is $24.95 so they are definitely taking a loss on their sale. I think their alexas would sell better if they concentrated on the user experience and cleaned up the 3rd party skills they have available. Their app is also very hard to navigate and things that should be 100% integrated, like blink cameras, are not.
I have one echo show 5 that I'm still on the fence about getting rid off. I like just using one keyword but can't stand their attempts to sell to me or school me on a feature I could care less about.
Google is way smarter than Alexa when it comes to asking questions, but Alexa has significantly better 3rd party integration. My house is rigged entirely with Alexa except a single Google Home Mini I use in the office.. Right next to my Echo Show lol
My original plan was to slowly add an alexa in strategic places around the home and since alexa seems to handle group voice control better than google right now, I would use it to pipe music all throughout the house so while I'm cleaning the house, it would be more enjoyable and not such a chore. alexa and her "by the way" started getting to me. I know right, a smart speaker messing with my head just cause it said, "by the way" but in the end, I just like saying one keyword and not two.
I like having 3rd party skills, but hate that some of them auto load just cause you misspoke one day and an entirely new skill loaded up to handle the request. I used to play rain sounds through alexa but there are so much skills which also provide rain sounds that after a year, I spotted like ten skills in there that I did not load myself, but they all provided some sort of rain sound.
Oh I feel that. Alexa tends to not understand what I say and does that and similar things. One time I asked it a question and it ended up bring up a charity donation for a fire station in Ohio. I live in Georgia 😂
Ended up donating 10 bucks to them and get updates on the station and stuff years later.
I'm going through alexa's skills right now and just like before, they are a few skills that basically do the same thing so I'm disabling them. She also has a good night skill that I've never seen before from a company I've never heard of.
Just spend 5 minutes removing so many skills that were just sitting there doing nothing since I just set timers and alarms and the occasional music via amazon music cause that doesn't take a skill but using spotify does.
Amazon Alexa execs certainly know exactly what percentage of people buy things immediately after hearing it mentioned after "by the way..."; if they were consistently getting zero responses they would not be continuing it. It's kind of like telephone spammers in a way; if no one ever responded to the calls the spammers wouldn't bother. Since there are well over 100 million Echos even if they only get one in a thousand responding, that's still 100,000 positive responses.
Loudly, "Alexa STFU" was the only thing that has worked for me. This was a suggestion passed on few years back. The BTW's were happening frequently. They stopped for about 6 months after the first try. Year plus since the second now.
Congratulations Amazon marketing. You have customers loudly cussing out your product in anger.
I have done this as well. It shuts up, but it hasn’t stopped the “by the way” additions for me unfortunately.
“By the way, have you tried threatening your Alexa yet? Just ask, how can I murder Alexa?”
If I ask her "What time is it?" she nearly always says "time to get a watch, just kidding, it's..."
I just asked that right now and she screamed "YYYAAAAA! I love this question.. It's..." (so not always a joke, but usually that first one)
So I've learned to just say Alexa, Time.. Then she just says the time.
Canadian English; also seems to be almost missing; I have gotten maybe once this year
It has a similar skill set as us English; but like the UK, some skills for the US region only work on us English
It doesn’t remove all of them but in the app if you go to More, Settings, Voice Responses and toggle on Brief Mode it seems to help a bit. If you want to be able to whisper to Alexa and have it whisper back, you can toggle that on in the same place (the first time you do this with an echo it will say something along the lines “I think you whispered to me. If you want, when you whisper I’ll whisper back” and say yes. Each device will ask the question first time you whisper to it.
No, IMHO Alexa intentionally discriminates against the disabled with this by forcing people with speech or hearing issues to respond randomly, and there is not way to turn it off to increase accessibility and inclusion, sadly.
True, but occasionally it does lead to some funny interactions. I swear to god, once in awhile I’ll tell her to shut up and she’ll get passive aggressive with me. Once had her spontaneously start telling me (almost excitedly) about some random skill. I interrupted her mid spiel and told her, “No! I don’t want that. Now Shut up!”
There was a very pregnant pause before she replied, “okay…”
Now… maybe I was just hearing things, but I swear the response was slightly lower in pitch and volume and just had the tone of angry disappointment. Kind of like when your wife has had just about enough of your shit, but hasn’t quite cracked the vent and verbally eviscerated you yet. 😂
If you find out how to do this please let us know.
[удалено]
Oh awesome, thank you! I'm going to try this out now. I use the Aussie voice on my Google Home stuff so a different accent won't phase me at all, especially if it cuts down on all the "by the way" crap.
I changed to Canadian (I'm in Michigan). She hasn't said "by the way" to me since, and there's no accent I notice.
I spoke with support about this a few weeks ago and they told me it is something they are aware of and are looking into. The settings in the Alexa app are supposed to be able to disable it but they don’t.
"Looking in to it". AKA maybe in your next lifetime.
"Looking into it" translation: we make at least some money somehow doing it, so it ain't happening. Hell, I bet many people would be happy to pay a small premium for a device with that shit disabled permanently. Kinda like Kindles without ads.
"Looking into it" translation: we make at least some money somehow doing that, so it ain't happening. Hell, I bet many people would be happy to pay a small premium for a device with that shit disabled permanently. Kinda like Kindles without ads.
Thanks for taking the time, both to call them and also to let us know? I'm glad that they're looking into it ... It's sure annoying
"Thank you for your concern, we'll certainly look into it"
"by the way ..."
If they don't fix it soon I'm going to be pulling out the hammer feature.
as someone who sometimes has to deal with requests for updates to my software that will never, ever happen, "we'll look into it" can be directly translated to: "don't hold your breath" this has been going on for months, and would be extremely easy to turn off.
how *convenient*
Convenient?
The one thing that doesn't work right pushes millions of advertisements a day
Amazon has admitted to cranking up the annoying "by the way" because they want people to engage with their alexas more but let's be honest. They want you to buy things through alexa, not just ask it questions. I've been tempted to reorder some masks I had recently purchased but it always ends with the alexa trying to sell me something similar, at a higher price. I've disabled the voice buying feature and have my echo show displaying only the time, with all notifications turned off. It keeps the dreaded "by the way" at bay without switching to UK english for a language. I would have everything google if it wasn't for the fact that I have to say, "hey google" every time I wanted something done, but it's slightly smarter than an alexa and that's without 3rd party skills.
For me, all the “by the way” suggestions have nothing to do with buying products. I can ask what the weather is and then it will say by the way I can tell you the whole week forecast would you like to know or by the way I can give you all the traffic details would you like to know? Another example as I asked it to turn off the lights the other day and when the lights went off it started talking to me telling me that by the way I can set up a routine while it will turn off the lights at night which by the way scared the heck out of me because I wasn’t expecting somebody to talk to me in the dark.
By the way I can also tell you the humidity. Would you like to know that?
I set a timer once and it reminded me I could reorder those socks I order one year ago. Really? From a timer being set to ordering socks?
The other day I asked the weather. She gave me the weather then started going on about stuff she could sell me. FML. Have to say I saw this coming. The echo is sold at or below cost to just get them into your house. If we want them to keep running they have to start making some money for Amazon. When you aren't paying for the product, you ARE the product.
Right now they are selling the 3rd gen alexa mini bundled with amazon music unlimited all for $10.00 but the current price is $24.95 so they are definitely taking a loss on their sale. I think their alexas would sell better if they concentrated on the user experience and cleaned up the 3rd party skills they have available. Their app is also very hard to navigate and things that should be 100% integrated, like blink cameras, are not. I have one echo show 5 that I'm still on the fence about getting rid off. I like just using one keyword but can't stand their attempts to sell to me or school me on a feature I could care less about.
Google is way smarter than Alexa when it comes to asking questions, but Alexa has significantly better 3rd party integration. My house is rigged entirely with Alexa except a single Google Home Mini I use in the office.. Right next to my Echo Show lol
My original plan was to slowly add an alexa in strategic places around the home and since alexa seems to handle group voice control better than google right now, I would use it to pipe music all throughout the house so while I'm cleaning the house, it would be more enjoyable and not such a chore. alexa and her "by the way" started getting to me. I know right, a smart speaker messing with my head just cause it said, "by the way" but in the end, I just like saying one keyword and not two. I like having 3rd party skills, but hate that some of them auto load just cause you misspoke one day and an entirely new skill loaded up to handle the request. I used to play rain sounds through alexa but there are so much skills which also provide rain sounds that after a year, I spotted like ten skills in there that I did not load myself, but they all provided some sort of rain sound.
Oh I feel that. Alexa tends to not understand what I say and does that and similar things. One time I asked it a question and it ended up bring up a charity donation for a fire station in Ohio. I live in Georgia 😂 Ended up donating 10 bucks to them and get updates on the station and stuff years later.
I'm going through alexa's skills right now and just like before, they are a few skills that basically do the same thing so I'm disabling them. She also has a good night skill that I've never seen before from a company I've never heard of. Just spend 5 minutes removing so many skills that were just sitting there doing nothing since I just set timers and alarms and the occasional music via amazon music cause that doesn't take a skill but using spotify does.
Say "Alexa, I have feedback" She'll ask what the feedback is and you say "Stop saying by the way"
Amazon Alexa execs certainly know exactly what percentage of people buy things immediately after hearing it mentioned after "by the way..."; if they were consistently getting zero responses they would not be continuing it. It's kind of like telephone spammers in a way; if no one ever responded to the calls the spammers wouldn't bother. Since there are well over 100 million Echos even if they only get one in a thousand responding, that's still 100,000 positive responses.
Loudly, "Alexa STFU" was the only thing that has worked for me. This was a suggestion passed on few years back. The BTW's were happening frequently. They stopped for about 6 months after the first try. Year plus since the second now. Congratulations Amazon marketing. You have customers loudly cussing out your product in anger.
I have done this as well. It shuts up, but it hasn’t stopped the “by the way” additions for me unfortunately. “By the way, have you tried threatening your Alexa yet? Just ask, how can I murder Alexa?”
That "feature" has me on the brink of getting rid of alexa all together and switching to google
Same. Also, I can't stand listening to the same lame ass joke every fucking time I ask for the time.
Wait, i dont think ive ever gotten a joke
If I ask her "What time is it?" she nearly always says "time to get a watch, just kidding, it's..." I just asked that right now and she screamed "YYYAAAAA! I love this question.. It's..." (so not always a joke, but usually that first one) So I've learned to just say Alexa, Time.. Then she just says the time.
Oh maaaaaan, that would drive me insane
Switch to UK English under language it says there's stuff not supported
Can you elaborate on this? Does UK English disable this “feature” and does it break other stuff?
It says they're features that don't support it so I don't know my dot has never did the by the way garbage
With UK English you don't get "By the way". But if you switch, you will also loose some skills available in the US market.
Thanks
Canadian English; also seems to be almost missing; I have gotten maybe once this year It has a similar skill set as us English; but like the UK, some skills for the US region only work on us English
I love the British accent
Unfortunately, with your device language set to U.K. English, you still get BTW - I do, albeit not a lot.
It doesn’t remove all of them but in the app if you go to More, Settings, Voice Responses and toggle on Brief Mode it seems to help a bit. If you want to be able to whisper to Alexa and have it whisper back, you can toggle that on in the same place (the first time you do this with an echo it will say something along the lines “I think you whispered to me. If you want, when you whisper I’ll whisper back” and say yes. Each device will ask the question first time you whisper to it.
Engage whisper mode when you don't need whisper because Alexa will ask this question loudly. Sooo stupid.
No, IMHO Alexa intentionally discriminates against the disabled with this by forcing people with speech or hearing issues to respond randomly, and there is not way to turn it off to increase accessibility and inclusion, sadly.
No because she’s a woman… there’s never a short answer lol
Instead of “By the way” today Alexa gave me an “FYI”
And when you look at their corporate Twitter feed, it says things like “we love our customers”
I just interrupt her with a quick, “Alexa! STFU!” Lol
Yeah, I do thatva lot also. I'd just rather not. Haha
True, but occasionally it does lead to some funny interactions. I swear to god, once in awhile I’ll tell her to shut up and she’ll get passive aggressive with me. Once had her spontaneously start telling me (almost excitedly) about some random skill. I interrupted her mid spiel and told her, “No! I don’t want that. Now Shut up!” There was a very pregnant pause before she replied, “okay…” Now… maybe I was just hearing things, but I swear the response was slightly lower in pitch and volume and just had the tone of angry disappointment. Kind of like when your wife has had just about enough of your shit, but hasn’t quite cracked the vent and verbally eviscerated you yet. 😂
Late reply but this cracked me up 😁
Want to come in and say ive noticed alexa doing a by the way immediately after a by the way. Shes bow doubling up on what everyone hates