Alexa not understanding speech

[hartleys]

Having problems with Alexa understanding clear spoken commands/requests.
It's not only myself.
Does not matter how many times you repeat AND in different ways. Alexa will ALWAYS come back with same speech !!
So how can that be ?
I ask " Alexa play Yazoo  from Amazon ".
Alexa replies with " can't find no songs by Jazoo ".  Same reply no matter how it's pronounced, "Y" enthasise etc .. Alexander gives same reply.
Guess I won't be listening to Yahoo anytime soon on my Echo 😕

[strayfish]

Mine seems to have gone slightly deaf, of late. I've had to repeat the wake word at least three times on several occasions - and from only inches away with no other noise in the room. Other times though, she's up and trying to respond to nothing identifiable from the TV two rooms away!

[malliekm]

Warning:  This reply includes an unsolicited rave about GH and GH Mini 

Alexa actually says "can't find no songs by Jazoo "?   I don't believe it! 
I tried it on my Alexa AND Google Home.   Neither played the right artist (I've never
heard of the artist.  So I googled the pronunciation and who they were.  Below is what I
found.  I then asked Alexa and Google Home to "play music by Yaz".  One of the said
playing music by Yaz and the other one said playing music by Yazoo.  Hopefully this who you're looking
for.
Wikipedia:
Yazoo (known as Yaz in North America for legal reasons involving Yazoo Records) were a British synthpop duo from Basildon, Essex, England, consisting of former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke (keyboards) and Alison Moyet (vocals).

Strayfish, my sister in CA has been having so much trouble with her Dots she says she's thru with them   They can't understand her anymore and they speak when not spoken to and respond to her tv often.  She said it started when she connected her Dot to her tv using FireTV...I'm not sure how all that works as we don't stream tv. 
I'm experiencing a bit of trouble with my Dots.  Mostly not understanding.  Rarely speaking when not spoken to and rarely does the tv set her off.  I'll be ordering her a Google Home Mini when I order mine   Have zero problems with my GHs.  All the reviews that talk about how the new Mini sounds say it's better than the Dot and that it hears even better than the larger GH...which hears amazingly well!

[strayfish]

My devices' 'hearing' has always been variable but this deafness seems quite recent. I saw they'd tried to make them less responsive to the wake word on TV so maybe that meant fiddling with the microphone and not hearing its own name is a consequence. If so, it hasn't succeeded with the TV thing either - there's an ad running at the moment that wakes my Dot several times over a couple of minutes, although fortunately it hasn't yet tried to order the cat food!

[jwlv]

Amazon has always said that  Alexa devices will learn from your speech, the way you talk, and I assume the background noise near the Alexa device. So if you frequently watch TV or listen to the radio near the Alexa device, I suppose it will become hard of hearing. My Echo on the kitchen counter is hard of hearing because when i'm cooking or washing dishes, i have the TV up pretty loud. I'm not sure if unplugging the power will also unplug Alexa's ears, though. Perhaps deleting all of the voice data that Amazon has collected from you over the months will do the trick.

See this page on Amazon for directions on how to clear your voice data from Echo devices.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602040

[strayfish]

We don't have voice training in the UK so I'm not sure the software is geared to learning how we speak. I know it can't manage the way we say Seven (sevun or even sev'n) because I've had to give up on seven minute timers!

[twistedspokebrewing]

Try to get it to play ANyTHING by ACDC.... it will drive you nuts

[malliekm]

I tried ACDC on Alexa and my first two attempts failed.  Then I tried saying, "play music by AC...DC".  I paused between AC and DC.  She said, "playing songs by DJ ACDC".  Not familiar with the band so I have no idea if it was the right artist or not.  Google Home got it right the first time