International Use of Alexa

[Mwalsh]

Hi,

I live in Germany and my mother lives in Ireland. I bought two Alexa devices from Amazon.de and brought one of them to Ireland. At some stage I got the video conferencing to work ... and in general we are very happy with that. Both Alexas use English language and are associated with Amazon.co.uk accounts. The UK account from the Alexa in Ireland has an Irish mobile phone number and the UK account from the Alexa in Germany has a German mobile phone number.

So far, so good. Now for some issues that I hope someone can help me with ...

1. RADIO: On the Alexa in Ireland I can ask Alexa to play Irish Radio "Alexa ... play RTE Radio 1" and it works fine. But on the German one it doesn't work ... and I also can't get it to play any German stations either. Apparently we're meant to use TuneIn for that service, but I am fairly certain I never needed to activate TuneIn on the Irish Alexa. When I tried to activate it on the German one "Alex Open TuneIn Live" it just ignores me. So I cannot get the German one to play ANY radio stations. How do I even pronounce German Radio stations to an English-speaking Alexa? Any ideas?

2. AMAZON MUSIC UNLIMITED: We set up the Irish Alexa with an Amazon Music Unlimited subscription and it was initially working fine. (GBP/EUR 3,99 per month). But now my mother cannot play any music. When I try to see what is wrong using the Alexa Mobile apps and using the UK account associated with the Irish device with an Irish mobile number, then I get told that the account is being managed by Amazon.de .... to which I get transferred and am asked to login using an Amazon.de account, which I don't have for THAT device. It has clearly been configured to use a UK account. Am I doing something wrong?

Whilst In Germany I have full access to the Irish mobile phone account and to the Amazon.co.uk account that is assocaited with the Echo Show in Ireland ... but I am obviously not physically in Ireland and depend on my 87 year old mother to tell me what is working and what isn't.

Does anyone have any suggestions abut services that can be of use to elderly people?

What about Spotify ... or Audible?
 
Are they any easier to use on Alexa and do they care what country you're in?

Many Thanks - Michael.

[daffy98]

What about Spotify ... or Audible?
 
Are they any easier to use on Alexa and do they care what country you're in?

The content right holders care a lot about geo-location. So distributors (Spotify, Audible, Amazon) do, too.

Your best bet is to decide on exactly one location and then tie everything to that location. This includes:
* transferring your Amazon digital content to the relevant store (there are options on your account page)
* assuming an identity that is in the right location
* entering appropriate address data into Alexa stationary devices
* tying the Internet connection to the intended location (using a VPN for Alexa)

I do not know the extent to which Amazon try preventing this massaging.