Amazon has rolled-out a new update to its chatty AI assistant Alexa, which should ensure you never miss a must-have deal. The voice assistant can warn you about a limited-time discount up to 24-hours in advance as long as you have the item saved in your shopping basket, saved for later, or logged on a wish list.
For those who don’t know, a wish list is available to all Amazon accounts and allows you to create a public or private shopping list. Amazon will already notify you when an item on your wish list drops in price. With the latest update, your Amazon Echo, Echo Show, Fire TV, and other Alexa-powered gadgets will be able to notify you too.
If you have a voice-only Amazon Echo device, you’ll see the light turn yellow. If you own a device with a touchscreen, like the Echo Show 5 or Echo Show 10, then you’ll see a pop-up notification about the price change.
Better yet, if you’re worried that you’ll never get around to buying the discounted item – you can grant Alexa permission to charge your credit card automatically whenever the item saved in your basket or on your wish list drops in price.
Unfortunately, this nifty new feature is only available in the United States for now. This isn’t anything new, Amazon often releases its latest functionality in North America before bringing the features to the UK and Europe at a later date. If you’re based in the United States, you’ll need to be an Amazon Prime membership to make use of this feature.
Amazon Prime is a membership scheme that unlocks next-day (and in some areas, same-day) delivery on thousands of items sold by Amazon in its online store. It also bundles access to exclusive films and boxsets on Prime Video, unlimited photo backup to the cloud, free streaming for millions of tracks via Amazon Music – perfect for listening on your Amazon Echo, and more.
In the UK, it is possible to make purchases using Alexa. By default, the feature is not enabled, so you’ll need to head to the Alexa companion app on your iPhone or Android smartphone, select Settings > Account Settings > Voice Purchasing, then toggle On. Amazon also lets you limit purchasing so that only recognised household members – who have trained Alexa to recognise their unique tone – so you can add items to your specific calendar, for example – can place orders using Alexa.
Although Alexa won’t make the purchase automatically, but if you receive an email from Amazon notifying you about a price drop for an item on your wish list – you’ll be able to use the Amazon Echo or Echo Show in your home to make the purchase that second.
Published at Tue, 05 Apr 2022 08:21:40 +0000
Your Amazon Echo just received an update to save you money during the sales
