Residents throughout the borough found themselves in a technological quandary yesterday evening as their trusty Amazon Echo devices abruptly stopped working, leaving many reliant on traditional switches instead of the voice-activated assistance they had grown accustomed to. Reports flooded in highlighting the widespread disruption faced by users across the local area.
Initial investigations revealed that the technical hiccup also affected users across the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, and Italy.
The outage, which started shortly after 9:20pm, prompted a surge in complaints on the widely-used website downdetector.co.uk. A staggering 18,840 users from across the UK said their services were affected.
For many residents accustomed to the convenience of smart home technology, the sudden reliance on manual switches represented a jarring step backward.
An Amazon spokesperson told Hillingdon Today: “Yesterday evening we had an issue that impacted some Alexa customers’ ability to interact with the service. The Alexa service is operating normally.”
