Turning Japanese

In our house we have a variety of smart devices, including both Amazon and Google speakers. Last year I got an Echo Show on sale to put in the bedroom and it has been good for us so far. I also have Amazon Prime access and noticed the show was a device listed for it. I tried to remove it and apparently accidentally deregistered the entire device because when we went to bed it was showing a new setup.

So I guessed this was related to the mistake I’d made earlier and went through the set up process. But after going through most of it, I got a message saying there was a mismatch between the account language and the device language. This made no sense but it became clear afterwards the device thought my account was Japanese and the introductory video played in that language. Sigh. I thought maybe I did something wrong and we went through it again a couple more times with the same result.

Meanwhile my Alexa app wasn’t showing the Echo show on the list of devices on any of these occasions. We did a lot of searching and couldn’t find any answers. Eventually I found a contact page where someone would call me and I filled out the details and submitted it.

Within seconds I had a callback and was immediately on hold for about 30-45 seconds. The guy that answers sounded like he might have been in India and his name possibly was Indian. At first he was a bit hard to understand but he got better with time. I am pleased to report that he was extremely helpful and stayed online the entire time we were sorting things out. What happened is I seem to have created an account in Amazon Japan at some point and it had the same login details. I have a vague idea of trying to buy something from their site and trying to sign in but I guess it created a different account. The guy I spoke with deleted that account and reset the password for the Australian account. I think it took around 20 minutes to reset the device and to sign in again. All was working fine when we finished the call.

So I am pleased to have such a good result of this customer service even though it was tricky to actually get to the page to use it. :)