Alexa “Tell Me A Story” skill not working on latest Sonos update

  • 24 December 2019
  • 5 replies
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missyagogo
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The Alexa skills “Tell Me a Story, and “Amazon Storytime” are both no longer functional after the latest Sonos software update. 

 

Now, the only way I can get them to work is through the Alexa app on my iPhone. 

 

Previously, prior to the update, I was able to get the skills to work through my Sonos speakers, like regular Alexa skills. 

 

Both the Alexa skill and the Sonos skill were updated. After the updates, the story skills no longer work through the Sonos speakers. 

 

This is especially missed during the holidays, as I cannot ask her to tell me a Christmas story, or even a bedtime story at this point. 

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5 replies

missyagogo
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Got nowhere attempting to email Sonos support.  Sonos wants to blame Amazon when it is Sonos devs’ job to work with Amazon to ensure that Alexa  works properly with Sonos speakers. It is clearly a glitch with Alexa and this skill and the Sonos speakers. The scale works fine when I use it directly with Alexa and my iPhone using the Alexa app.  It is only when I introduce the Sonos speakers into the mix that the skills do not work. The skills involved are the “Alexa tell me a story“ and “Amazon Storytime“.      

 

Both of these skills are not third-party skills. They are both Amazon skills. This is the job of Sonos to work directly with Amazon to figure out what is causing this glitch with the Sonos speakers. I am extremely disappointed with Sonos‘s lack of response to this issue 

missyagogo
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Both of these skills are not third-party skills. They are both Amazon skills. This is the job of Sonos to work directly with Amazon to figure out what is causing this glitch with the Sonos speakers. I am extremely disappointed with Sonos‘s lack of response to this issue.

  Again, these are NOT third-party skills. These are Amazon skills. These skills are directly created by Amazon. Again, it is the job of Sonos developers who created the Sonos skill and the Sonos app along with the Amazon developers who created these Amazon skills – – not a third-party – – to come up with a solution to this problem.    Please escalate this immediately.. 
missyagogo
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I finally fixed it myself … by a painstaking process of removing the Sonos skill, disabling Alexa, deregistering all of my Sonos devices, signing out of all Sonos and Amazon-related accounts, restarting my phone, and basically starting the entire setup process over from scratch … I have had to do this before when Alexa just inexplicably stops working with my Sonos speakers. This is everything I did:

 

Go to Sonos app Settings / Services -- remove Amazon Alexa voice from all rooms

 

Go to website alexa.amazon.com and deregister all Sonos devices (I used my laptop and a desktop browser for the website steps)

 

Go to website alexa.amazon.com under skills and disable Sonos skill

 

Remove Amazon music from Sonos app on my phone

 

Sign out of Amazon, Alexa, and all Amazon services 

 

Sign out of Sonos app

 

Sign out of Alexa app on phone

 

Sign out of all Amazon apps and services on phone, Amazon, Prime Now app, Amazon Music app, etc.

 

Restart phone

 

Sign in to Alexa on web alexa.amazon.com but skip setup.

 

Enable Sonos skill on alexa.amazon.com

 

Sign in to Sonos on website and sign in to Sonos app on phone

 

Sign in to Alexa app on phone

 

Go to Sonos app and enable Alexa one room at a time, signing in to Amazon for each room. Test each room individually before adding another room. Test several skills on each room as each room is added to make sure skills are working correctly.

 

Now all Alexa skills are working again, including story skills.

 

This is clearly a breakdown somewhere between the Sonos software, Sonos speakers, the Sonos skill, and Amazon Alexa. This keeps happening to me in random ways, as I notice it every so often when something inexplicably stops working. The appropriate people at Sonos and Amazon Alexa should figure out why this keeps happening and fix it, instead of allowing the underlying problem to continue. I waste a lot of time with tech support who attempt to help me but fail. Both of the past two times it has happened, I have fixed it myself with the above steps. This time it was the story skills; the last time it was something else that failed that was unrelated. Last time, it was all Alexa voice commands that ceased to work with my Sonos speakers. This seems to happen more and more frequently as the last time Alexa/Sonos malfunctioned was about three weeks ago. 

 

Please do not close this nor mark it “solved,” as when it happens to other people, or if it happens to me again, I want to be able to report it here -- and I want others to feel free to report their similar experiences here. Thank you.

missyagogo
Userlevel 2
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Spoke with Sonos today to ask that they pass along to their appropriate software development team that works with Amazon to please get to the bottom of why Alexa sometimes stops responding to Sonos Beam or Sonos Ones. 

 

The representative I spoke with was condescending and asked me “how can I help you today” after I laid out all of the times this has happened to me and the lack of support from Sonos; I have had to muddle through figuring it out myself. I restated that, as I had originally asked him, I wanted him to pass my comments to the developers so they can get to the bottom of these incidents on behalf of all customers experiencing them. They have all of my diagnostic reports. They have similar reports here in the community from people who have had Alexa no longer responding to either the Sonos One or the Sonos Beam.

 

The response I received from the representative was that technology is “complicated” and “fast-moving” and “there is so much to do” and “we put out updates every day.” He sounded defensive, unhelpful, and not customer-oriented. I thanked him profusely for letting me know that technology is moving at such a fast pace. I had no idea! /s

 

Seriously, there is something amiss with the Alexa/Sonos One/Beam communication that goes beyond any one skill and needs to be resolved.

 

In my case, it manifests differently each time. This time, it was first the story skills that stopped functioning, but this later progressed to a completely nonresponsive Alexa. 

 

Sonos, please take these reports seriously and get to the bottom of why Alexa stops responding to Sonos One and Sonos Beam.

UKMedia
Userlevel 7
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I would have thought that Disabling and Enabling the Skills alone would have sorted this.  Refreshing the Skill for any Alexa skill functionality is always my go-to step, regardless of whether Sonos is involved within the loop.

 

In defense of Sonos, updates are introduced into the functionality environment by changes to Skills, Amazon Cloud, Sonos Cloud, Sonos App, and Sonos Firmware. I suspect that Amazon doesn’t notify Sonos of ALL changes nor do I suspect that Sonos have any ability to test their technical environment for each Amazon change.

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