Alexa chimes but rarely listens

@myllor 

Of course… there are updates of Sonos and also of Amazon Alexa software from time to time. And sometimes they depend on each other. So maybe it’s not quite easy to find out what exactly caused the bug. 

I feel a bit of an idiot. I have told my wife that buying era 100s to replace the old 5s in the kitchen and bedroom would save space and work seamlessly. Now she gets really angry when she asks Alexa to set a timer in the kitchen and it refuses to respond or sets an alarm in another room.

I also find the Era100 frustrating- tonight I stood close to the kitchen speaker and asked for some music as my wife was watching a TV program in the lounge. The Sonos system decided to play rock music out of the beam in the lounge stopping the TV audio. I really think Sonos are damaging their reputation (and my wife's temper) with these speakers which are obviously faulty. 

Same on both my Era 100s. Very frustrating and I don’t understand why the fix is taking so long. My other Sonos speakers work fine with Alexa.

This is what Sonos support writes.

Thank you for contacting Sonos Customer Service.

My name is Ramona and I am happy to assist you with your problem.

In fact the anomaly has not yet been resolved by our technicians but they are working on it.

The email is sent automatically by our system, I kindly ask you to wait as everything will be resolved shortly.

I take this opportunity to wish you a good day!

If you have further questions do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards,
Ramona V.

I think Ramona is an AI chatbot. No sympathy for the fact that customers are feeling letdown by Sonos as they have spent hard earned money on supposedly state of the art smart speakers that will not do simple tasks.

Sadly for me if it’s not fixed in the next couple of days it will have to go back. It was toss up between this and the Homepod. I like the sound of both, I’m sure some will disagree but it’s subjective. I wanted the Alexa functionality but I haven’t got it and I’m not certain that I ever will have. If I knew that it was coming soon I would hang onto it but no one can give me a time frame.

Just adding to this, same with us. Very frustrating. Firstly we used Google on Arc and Ones,  frustrated that this wasn't an option for the ERA, now after spending time trying to figure out what's up with Alexa, find out its a known problem. Surly this should be communicated at point of sale.

The problem with Alexa not being activated has been resolved, you need to update the Sonos app with the new Alexa update. Then uninstall Alexa from Sonos, close all applications and then reactivate Alexa from Sonos again.

Thank you @Corry P and @myllor !