Alexa Goes Down in the UK on Christmas Day

If you live in the UK and got someone a new Amazon Echo speaker, that might not have been the best idea. Amazon’s Alexa assistant went down just about an hour ago, with the assistant failing to respond to user queries on any of the devices.

Users on Twitter started reporting the issue around 09:45am, stating that their existing Echo devices aren’t working — and those who gifted a new Echo speaker to someone, aren’t happy about it. At all.

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Thousands of users are reporting the downtime across the country, too.

It looks like the downtime is likely caused by all the new Echo speakers people have bought for Christmas. Amazon does promote Echo speakers quite a lot in the UK, and the demand shouldn’t be surprising. Still, it’s quite unusual to see Amazon not scaling its service to handle this kind of demand, especially on such a big day like Christmas. New customers aren’t going to be happy about the ruined first experience.

Merry Christmas!

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Conversation 12 comments

  • markbyrn

    Premium Member
    25 December, 2018 - 7:05 am

    <p>Looks like Alexa wasn't home for Xmas and Bezos &amp; Co. should provide an Echo status notification page.</p>

  • chris n

    25 December, 2018 - 7:56 am

    <p>No problems at all in Bournemouth…</p>

  • Tony Barrett

    25 December, 2018 - 8:06 am

    <p>Glad I use Google Home across the house. By far the better AI, and no down time to report! I will agree Amazon plug the Echo hugely in the UK, and sponsor some big prime time TV shows.</p>

    • Stooks

      25 December, 2018 - 11:08 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#386944">In reply to ghostrider:</a></em></blockquote><p>I thought about using Google home, instead I smashed my fingers with a hammer. I got a better deal. </p>

  • bharris

    25 December, 2018 - 9:16 am

    <p>It's not like Amazon didn't know how many were sold. Real shame because most non-tech people will not fool with it. For normal people, if it doesn't work easily on the first try, there might not be a second.</p>

  • Stooks

    25 December, 2018 - 11:06 am

    <p>OMG!!!!!!</p><p><br></p><p>Seriously some online services always goes down each holiday. I remember Xbox live being down a week one holiday season. </p><p><br></p><p>You need some better link bait. </p>

  • dcdevito

    25 December, 2018 - 11:32 am

    <p>LOL. Amazon Echo is a meme</p>

  • jules_wombat

    25 December, 2018 - 12:32 pm

    <p>At least its reassuring to know that Amazon could not predict the demands on their service, from their own sales. Funny. we can listen to our Queen instead.</p><p>Anyway Merry Christmas. </p>

  • rbwatson0

    Premium Member
    25 December, 2018 - 1:12 pm

    <p>Cortana is working just fine.</p>

  • BlackForestHam

    26 December, 2018 - 12:54 am

    <p>Your writing has improved by an order of magnitude, Mehedi, and your headshot no longer screams “douche”. Happy new year! </p>

  • Patrick3D

    26 December, 2018 - 2:45 pm

    <p>Amazon's US website was struggling on Christmas Day as well, it took me about 10 tries to redeem a gift code as it kept failing with a "something went wrong" error page when trying to load the page where you are supposed to enter the code.</p>

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