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Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

theguardian.com

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Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#91

Post by amluto »

feintruled wrote: post #6

I don't think this particular incident is any kind of big deal, though it's funny. It was only a £1.99 a month and there was a 7-day free trial anyway. Amazon say they emailed about it as confirmation. I think the issue it shows is how you can't trust voice control for anything important. It's just a bad interface for buying stuff particularly. If I am buying some dog food, I search dog food, glance over the options,…

> "Alexa, order me the cheapest best reviewed dry dog food that will arrive tomorrow"

This is Amazon we’re talking about. The cheapest best reviewed dog food probably has 4K excellent reviews saying it’s the best cheap coat hangar anyone has ever seen.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#92

Post by jacquesm »

ghaff wrote: post #66
jacquesm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Voice control is mostly pretty disappointing. That's because you interact with it as though it is a person, so your expectation levels are corresponding to the mode of communication used.

>That's because you interact with it as though it is a person Well, that was sort of the pitch and it's certainly implied by "virtual/voice assistant." Certainly Amazon wasn't pitching Alexa as a voice-operated kitchen timer. To be honest, I'm probably better with them now because I know they mostly don't work but can be used for some simple tasks for which I know an incantation that mostly gives me the result I want…

Fair enough, but anybody that knows more about this stuff than your average consumer was likely quite skeptical of that pitch. All I saw was an always on microphone with a line to Apple, Google or Amazon and for me that was reason enough to bar that stuff from crossing the threshold at the front door here.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#93

Post by andrewaylett »

retrac wrote: post #36
haunter wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly useful for people with disabilities

I can see that. But I hope it never becomes standard. I find them aggravating because of my disability. An acquaintance has made every light in their home integrated into Google's services. I have a mild speech impediment and Google seems incapable of recognising my speech as speech. "Hey Google. HEY GOOGLE. Hey Gooooogle! Turn off the lights." I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. "Hey Goooooooogle! Turn. Off. The. Lights…

I'm struggling to understand their stance :(. The point of "smart" is that it makes things easier. If it doesn't make things easier, what's the point? And as a guest, it had better make it easier for you.

For what it's worth, which obviously isn't much, all my public rooms have smart switches as well as being able to be controlled by voice. And if someone needs to use the physical switch (they're all still uncovered and accessible) then that's a failure of my system not of whoever needed to bypass it.

The main benefit to me of smart is that I can automate transitions, so it's that much less likely that anyone will need to manually adjust the lighting.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#94

Post by kube-system »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #80
kube-system wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s disgusting that these types of devices have potentially an obvious use as a accessibility device, and yet, that’s completely being ignored in lieu of mass-market sales gimmicks. We need an ADA that has teeth in the digital age. This is like a brick and mortar store building a ramp into their store for the convenience of people who can walk, and making it an inch too narrow for a wheelchair. Real corporate social…

You can turn off voice purchasing entirely.

I’m not saying that Amazon should simply avoid harming people with disabilities. I’m going one step further and saying that they should actively help them.

Voice assistants are an obvious solution for people who can’t use other input devices because disability. Yet, Amazon has designed the device as a solution for people who choose not to use other input devices out of mild inconvenience, without any thought to accommodating the former.

They could improve people’s lives with very little marginal effort, yet, they choose not to. This is illegal when you’re building accommodations in the physical world, but sadly, mostly legal in the digital world.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#95

Post by CrazyStat »

robonerd wrote: post #86
CrazyStat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have hundreds of recipes in my file that I've never tried, requiring thousands of conversions. Even if each conversion is only done once it's absolutely worth automating.

You're not cooking hundreds of recipes at once; I'd just convert them when I need them.

Which is what I do, with the help of automation.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#96

Post by rgrieselhuber »

probably_wrong wrote: post #35
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boggles my mind that anyone buys these things.

At the risk of sounding like a drug dealer, have you tried one? The main reason why I'll probably never buy an Alexa is because it sucks at the specific things I need it to do, but I concede that there's something liberating about just yelling at the computer and getting a reply. If I'm about to leave and I don't know which jacket to pick, being able to yell "Alexa, what's the weather like?" keeps me from switching c…

I just don't see those tradeoffs adding up for me. My days in the Bay Area taught me to dress in layers and always have extra layers when going out anyway, although I know it was just one example you were giving.

I don't even like to speak around them because I assume they are archiving every voice sample forever.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#97

Post by jsjohnst »

CrazyStat wrote: post #68
jsjohnst wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, converting a cup of flour to 120g of flour is absolutely better. Yes, but you do that once and done and then continue using the recipe in the future with the new quality measurement (adjusting as needed on future cooks). OP was advocating for using their Alexa to convert every time they cooked, specifically when their hands were full of raw sausage for example.

Maybe they make new recipes on a regular basis, so they're doing it once per recipe but still fairly often. I have hundreds of recipes in my file that I haven't gotten around to trying yet, I could easily make a new recipe every day for a year. I use a recipe app that has built-in conversions I can configure, but if I'm making a recipe out of a paper book I sometimes use Alexa to do conversions for me. Ideally I'd do…

> Maybe they make new recipes on a regular basis, so they're doing it once per recipe but still fairly often.

Then memorize the conversions. It’s not that hard. Or you know, plan ahead and convert before cooking. Or simply just own up to the fact that the only reason an Alexa is a “insane QOL improvement” for this use case is SOLELY because you’ve rationalized it as such. This horse is now more than sufficiently beaten, so I’m backing away.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#98

Post by jsjohnst »

jamespo wrote: post #84
jsjohnst wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Like I don’t even get the conversion argument at all. “1 cup of flour weighs 125g”. Except when the recipe was using something other than all purpose flour. I’ve had Alexa incorrectly hear the specifics necessary to answer those type questions too many times to ever trust it, let alone to take the preposterous stance that Alexa is the only way to solve the problem.

No one said it was the only way, you seem personally offended no one is keen on your weird alternatives though

> no one is keen on your weird alternatives though

The karma on the posts says otherwise, but thank you for your opinion!

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#99

Post by thewebcount »

Yeah, Amazon is terrible about this. It claims that it must have had the user confirm the purchase, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t. I order from Amazon about once a year, and the last time I did, they ran the, “Would you also like to sign up for Prime while making this order?” scam on me. I hit the button and immediately realized what I had done. I hit the back button before the next page loaded, but it was too late. I already had an email saying I had signed up without confirming anything or agreeing to any terms of service. Luckily I only had to go through about 3-5 pages of “Are you really sure you want to cancel?” And “how about we just suspend the service but don’t cancel it,” before I was allowed to cancel it. This company is disgusting.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#100

Post by jsjohnst »

evandale wrote: post #77
jsjohnst wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You honestly think having measuring devices for two entirely different systems If you want to make recipes based on imperial measurements, YES, and I’d also say the vast majority of people here would agree with me. Having a full set of imperial kitchen measuring cups costs less than any meal you are bothering to prepare and takes up less kitchen space than a single salad bowl. For your follow up edit: > to which yo…

This whole conversation is pretty pointless and "Having a full set of imperial kitchen measuring cups costs less than any meal you are bothering to prepare and takes up less kitchen space than a single salad bowl" demonstrates exactly why. Having an Alexa and asking it how many grams are in 1 1/4 cups of white wine vinegar is easier than having 2 sets of measuring cups. It's easier than having 1 set of measuring cups…

> This whole conversation is pretty pointless

Couldn’t agree more. Knew I should have backed away after my first post in this tree, the only one I stand 100% behind out of context of the rest of the replies around it.

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