Amazon is responding to a story we wrote last week about XETV in San Diego being responsible for an uptick in accidental doll house orders through the Amazon Alexa after an anchor did a story about the device.
In our story, XETV said that after its report about a girl who accidentally ordered a doll house and four pounds of cookies through the family’s Amazon Echo, its morning anchors did the same thing to their viewers after anchor Jim Patton said “I love the little girl, saying ‘Alexa ordered me a dollhouse.”
A source tells TVSpy there was not an influx of dollhouse orders after the San Diego newscast, since what we know about Alexa is that a user would have had to order and then confirm the order with a ‘yes’ response to complete the purchase.
Amazon tells us the original story about the girl accidentally ordering a dollhouse and cookies is most probably bunk since the girl would have had to have made four mistakes to accidentally order a dollhouse and four pounds of cookies. Two mistakes to order each item, then two separate accidental confirmations to complete the purchase.
“You must ask Alexa to order a product and then confirm the purchase with a “yes” response to purchase via voice,” said Amazon. “If you asked Alexa to order something on accident, simply say “no” when asked to confirm. You can also manage your shopping settings in the Alexa app, such as turning off voice purchasing or requiring a confirmation code before every order.”
