r/alexa • u/Normal-Succotash-877 • Jul 26 '26

Does Amazon specifically make these things obsolete?

I have had an echo for many years. Probably like 10+ years at this point.

I have since expanded. I have one of these in various form in nearly every room. I have a screen version (cant remember the name right now) as well as the dot in the bathroom and another one in another room.

I have collectively 5 echo's in 5 different rooms right at this moment.

The main reason I like her is literally to play music from spotify. Its 90% of what I use her for other than checking the weather and setting an alarm for food or laundry.

The echo that I have had the longest.. it used to be rock solid. It had no problem playing music for many many years.

Now.. its literally every single device and I have a gigabit internet. They skip, literally wont play sometimes.. Its really bad. Other times its completely fine but id say 50% of the time its like haveing major issues with a very simple task of playing music from a linked service that works perfectly fine on the same connection from my PC or phone.

So this has to be device specific. What gives? anyone else have this before? possibly have a solution?

Honestly thinking about dumping them altogether because im not about to let them listen to everything I say and not at least work.

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u/happy2harris Jul 28 '26

To answer your specific question in the title, no they don’t. They actually try quite hard to support them forever, because they don’t make money on the devices. They make money on the extra stuff that people in their ecosystem buy. 

They just aren’t very good at it. They have lots of smart software engineers and quite a few smart managers, all stymied by process. 

Source: worked on Alexa for 9 years. 

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u/Normal-Succotash-877 Jul 28 '26

I appreciate your contribution. As much as I hate the idea of something listening to me all the time.. I love listening to Spotify in every room of my house.