The EFTM podcast – Sonos woes, USB vs TV drama and Alexa+ Launches in Australia

Episode: Sonos woes, USB vs TV drama and Alexa+ Launches in Australia
Podcast: EFTM
Date: 18 August 2026
Host: Trevor Long
Guest: Michele Butti (VP, Alexa International, Amazon)

[00:00:03] VOICE OVER: The EFTM Podcast. Talkback Technology. Got a question about tech? Trev’s here to help. Not sure what to buy? Ask Trev. Australia’s number one talkback technology podcast.

[00:00:33] VOICE OVER: Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev. Helping Australians with tech questions for over 15 years, the EFTM Podcast with Trevor Long.

[00:00:44] Trevor Long: Real Australians, real questions, every week.

[00:00:51] VOICE OVER: You can text Trev now, thanks to Vodafone, on 0477 657 657.

[00:01:09] Trevor Long: Great to have your company. Uh, welcome to the EFGM Podcast. If this is your first time listening, how the hell did you find this? Um, it’s— I don’t know, that’s kind of an interesting thing. If you are new, it’s great to have your company. Um, this is a talkback technology show. We try and bring you some interviews and some information, but also just help you out. If you’ve got a tech question, you wanna chat about something tech in your world, you’re challenged by something or you need some advice when you’re in the market for something, just give us a buzz. Send us a text on 0477657657 or a WhatsApp 0477657657. You can go to the website eftm.com, you can download the EFTM app and also just click Ask Trev in there. The EFTM app is loaded with prizes this week. Week’s prize is a cracker, and it’s worth a look. I’m just going to open the FTM app on an iPhone that I haven’t been using for a while, so I’m going to check that it’s still working, frankly, because I’ve been on Android for a little while now. And if we click the win tab, you’ll see that this week’s prize is an Insta360 X6 worth over $1,000. That is a brand new camera announced literally last week. So that is there to win. Uh, next week’s prize, and I’m going to run this one for 2 weeks, is a $3,000 Hisense 65-inch RGB TV. Is the UR8. Uh, it is an absolute cracker of a TV. Stunning picture, great technology. You’ll be able to have 14 entries in that. You can enter every day. So all you gotta do is open the EFTM app every day, Click the win tab and then click the entry. Click, click, click the competition. It’s that easy. It’s that easy. Um, but, uh, if you don’t enter every day, you only get, you know, one chance. If you only enter once, you only get one chance. And there’s a lot of people that enter, I can tell you that right now. A lot of people enter. After that, we will have some beautiful gaming headphones from JBL, their latest Quantum 950 gaming headphones, and then the Arlo Ultra 3 security system, a 4K 4-camera with solar panel security system. That’ll run in September, mid-September. So great prizes in the EFTM app. And as I said, all you gotta do is download the app, sign up for free, and click to enter for free. Every single day there’s a prize. I think we’ve got prizes, I’ve got prizes broadly mapped out now until around November, uh, when the magazine will launch. And I’m still deciding what the comp will be in the magazine. I’ve got some ideas, I’ve got some ideas. I’ve done a dummy front cover which has a pretty epic prize on the front, but I need the budget to fall into place. I need some bills paid, I need cash flow because what I wanna do needs cash flow. And unfortunately, being a small business and operating in a world of big business, often takes 90 days for bills to be paid. And so I sit here hoping that I’ll have enough money at the end of the month for the wages. Fortunately, I’ve got a deposit today and I’ve got next month’s wages covered. That’s always good news. But that is the life of a small business person. If you’re a small business person, I feel you, I hear you, and Rock and roll. Um, anyway, um, I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got a tech question. Today we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about everything from Sonos to TV problems to graphics cards. We’re also going to talk to Michele Butti, uh, who is the president, vice president of Alexa International at Amazon, uh, and we’re going to talk about Alexa Plus launched a few weeks ago. Um, this was a good chat and, uh, a nice little chat about Alexa generally and what Alexa Plus is. So yeah, let’s, um Let’s bring you that chat a little later in the show. But most importantly, to make next week’s show possible, I need to hear from you. So get in touch, send me a text, an email, or a message, whatever it might be. Get in touch. I’d love to hear from you here on the EFTN Podcast.

[00:05:21] VOICE OVER: Helping Australians with tech questions for over 15 years, the EFTN Podcast with Trevor Long.

Peter — Sonos streaming dropouts and a new LG OLED TV

[00:05:29] Trevor Long: Great to have your company, trying to help where I can. If you’ve got a tech question, I’d love to hear from you. Uh, you can send me a text, 047765 855-7657, or jump on the EFTM app and click Ask Trev. Peter’s on the line. G’day, Peter.

[00:05:41] Peter: Hey, Trevor, how are you, mate?

[00:05:42] Pete: Really good.

[00:05:42] Trevor Long: What can I do for you?

[00:05:44] Peter: Yeah, so I sent you a message. Just have a— we listen to Triple M in Newcastle streaming on our Sonos speakers, right? Okay. And it can go for periods where it’s fine going on, and then it has periods where it just drops out and drops in. Continually and it’s really annoying. And it like even happened this morning, seemed it was fine when you were on at quarter past 7.

[00:06:08] Trevor Long: Lovely.

[00:06:09] Peter: At 7:46, I think it dropped out and then it came back in a minute later. You know, it’s just really annoying. I’m trying and I can’t work out where the problem might be. You know, the Sonos setup’s pretty—

[00:06:24] Trevor Long: how much— what else do you use the Sonos for? Do you use it for music and things like that as well?

[00:06:28] Peter: Yeah, yeah. Some Spotify and stuff like that.

[00:06:32] Trevor Long: And no issues with the Spotify, no issues with the streaming, anything else. It’s got a great connection. Yeah.

[00:06:38] Peter: Like sometimes Triple M will drop out and I’ll bring in ABC and that’ll work fine.

[00:06:42] Trevor Long: Oh wait, so yeah, another radio station is totally fine as well. Yeah, right. So it’s isolated.

[00:06:48] Peter: I don’t listen to it that often, so yeah, but it seems to be more Triple M.

[00:06:51] Trevor Long: Yeah, but yeah, basically you haven’t noticed the cutting in and out of other radio stations. It seems to be just Triple M. Yes. I mean, the challenge is firstly Sonos is like a, you know, third, fourth party to the way Triple M would normally stream. So the only— my initial suggestions are firstly to remove the content service because that’s how you do it, isn’t it? In the Sonos app, you add a service and then you kind of add Triple M. Is that how it works?

[00:07:16] Peter: Yes. Well, you add a service and Triple M is a service. Yes. In the system there. And like I said, it’s been there for a long time. Used to be KO-FM. So, you know, I’m not sure if that service within the Triple M algorithm synchronization gets a lot of attention. You know, I guess I keep looking thinking that they’re going to add a listener service, which is where Triple M seems to concentrate there.

[00:07:38] Trevor Long: Right. So my, my, what I would do is I would remove Triple M and I would add what’s called Radio App.

[00:07:46] Peter: Radio App.

[00:07:47] Trevor Long: Radio App is a, it’s an actual app, but it’s a kind of service that was created by all the radio stations getting together. So mainly commercial radio stations, but they all got together and went, we, we need to be ahead of this whole streaming drama. You know, people aren’t listening to the radio anymore, what do we do? They created a single app and a single service so that on a Google smart speaker, you just ask Google, you can ask Alexa, you can ask these speakers to play the radio, and that’s actually the mechanism through which it’s played. So it basically means that all of the individual radio stations or networks don’t need to build something and make something work for all these different speakers. So you’re right, the Triple M one is probably really old and is actually maybe now legacy and it shouldn’t be there. And I just wonder whether— but it might not be, it might just be that it’s connected to a stream that’s not great. So if you— and I think remove the Triple M app service because you don’t want to confuse any, any commands. You use voice for that or is it just all in the app?

[00:08:45] Peter: I never try using voice. Okay, I’ll just use the app.

[00:08:48] Trevor Long: So, so in the content services, add radio app One word, radio app. And then theoretically in that service you should be able to choose hundreds of radio stations, add a couple of them as favorites, you know, add a talk station, an ABC, and then a Triple M, and see, and then find out again whether or not that streams better. Because if it streams better, then basically you were getting the wrong, though you were getting an old stream. If it doesn’t stream any better, then you were, then the Triple M app is also, you know, using the same stream and it’s rubbish. So Basically, I need you to do that before we can, you know, trial and error work out exactly where the fault lies. Because at this point, I would blame the Triple M service being old, as you kind of insinuated. But the only way to clarify that is to listen to Triple M through radio app on the Sonos.

[00:09:39] Peter: Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:41] Trevor Long: And radio app, it will be— if there’s any issues and things, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s supported more by the station. So Essentially, like, I don’t even know whether Triple M know they’re on Sonos.

[00:09:51] Michael: Yeah.

[00:09:52] Trevor Long: And you’re right, I don’t think they wouldn’t build a LiSTNR one because they’re in Radio App.

[00:09:57] Michele Butti: Yeah.

[00:09:58] Trevor Long: Okay.

[00:09:59] Trevor Long: Slightly different kind of thing for them, even though they don’t push Radio App in any other way in places where— so on a Google smart speaker and Alexa smart speaker for Southern Cross Australia, who own Triple M and LiSTNR, for them to build a LiSTNR functionality in Alexa and Google would be very difficult, cost prohibitive. They’ve got it already through Radio App. So I think that’s where all their support probably lies. So mate, that would be my suggestion, is to give Radio App a go and report back on whether or not it actually seems to be doing a better job.

[00:10:33] Peter: Yeah. Okay. I’ll give it a try.

[00:10:35] Trevor Long: All right, mate. Thank you. I’ll look forward to hearing back and that’ll be knowledge for us all then.

[00:10:39] Peter: Yeah.

[00:10:40] Trevor Long: Thank you, mate.

[00:10:41] Pete: Yep.

[00:10:41] Peter: I was going to mention one other thing. We recently bought a new TV in June, which we looked at your nice website and sort of helped me in the selection and the buyer’s guide to narrow it down. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:55] Trevor Long: How did you— what was your selection? What was the most important price or size?

[00:11:00] Peter: Well, we already had an LG OLED.

[00:11:03] Trevor Long: Yep. And great TV.

[00:11:04] Peter: It was about 7 years old and, you know, it was getting burn-in, burn-in, you know, the Today Show was on 24 hours a day according to it. So, so but we like, we did like the LG OLED, so we sort of went straight back there. Right.

[00:11:20] Trevor Long: And the good news, by the way, burn-in, burn-in is now a broadly solved problem. So on an older TV, still a problem, but a modern TV, not a huge issue. Go on. Where did you end up?

[00:11:31] Peter: Yeah. So we, our one was 55, we went for the 65. But I guess in the store I did like the look of the Samsung without the, without the glare. Yeah. Yeah. And we, you know, in some ways I probably should have got it, but couldn’t go past the, the LG mouse thing.

[00:11:50] Trevor Long: The Magic Mouse. It’s funny, some people just do not like it, you know, but I think it’s fantastic.

[00:11:56] Peter: Yeah. So we couldn’t go past that. So we went back with the LG.

[00:11:59] Trevor Long: And is the room bright? Do you notice the glare?

[00:12:03] Peter: It is bright. Yeah.

[00:12:04] Trevor Long: And you’re only noticing it now because you’ve seen the glare-free and you’re like, oh, we should have had that.

[00:12:07] Trevor Long: That’s right.

[00:12:07] Michele Butti: That’s right.

[00:12:08] VOICE OVER: Which model?

[00:12:10] Trevor Long: OLED, did you get the G Series, the B Series, the C Series?

[00:12:13] Peter: The C Series.

[00:12:14] Trevor Long: So I don’t think that has their anti-reflective coating from memory, which frankly doesn’t add much anyway. I think that’s LG’s biggest failure this year is not going harder on the glare-free here in Australia. But mate, in the end, beautiful television.

[00:12:30] Peter: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very happy with it. Yeah.

[00:12:34] Trevor Long: Your Honor, did you say you went the same size?

[00:12:36] Peter: No, we went up to the 65.

[00:12:38] Trevor Long: Up to 65, mate. Come on. What are we doing?

[00:12:41] Peter: Yeah, yeah. But again, in this case.

[00:12:44] Trevor Long: So yeah.

[00:12:44] Trevor Long: Yeah. Oh, okay.

[00:12:45] Trevor Long: Also the budget, mate. The OLEDs aren’t cheap, so.

[00:12:48] Peter: Well, I guess the other thing I was going to mention, so it was on— we got it the weekend before the end of year, so they had 15% off that weekend. So grab that. I actually had some gift cards from work and stuff where I use that to pay for it, but also the place we get our gas bottles with, they had a— that weekend you could buy gift cards for them for 5% off. So, so I, you know, I stacked up all these things and ultimately ended up costing less than $1,500 for what was—

[00:13:17] Trevor Long: wow.

[00:13:18] Michael: Yeah.

[00:13:18] Peter: You know, like nearly $3,000 before the 15% thing came off. So I was very happy.

[00:13:24] Trevor Long: Yeah. No, you did really well because the, the 65— so C, you said the C-Series. Yeah. I mean, the cheapest, the cheapest it’s been since April was 2.9.

[00:13:37] Peter: Yeah. So that week again, it was 2.9, it was 2.9 everywhere. But JB Hi-Fi had 15% off that weekend off that price.

[00:13:45] Trevor Long: That’s crazy, mate. You nailed it. Plus your extra. Well done. That’s a great— that, mate, you’ve got a great deal on a great TV.

[00:13:52] Peter: Yeah.

[00:13:52] Trevor Long: Yeah. It’s— I haven’t looked at the buyer’s guide for a little while, but it’s cool with a little graph where I can see the prices up and down and where they— how they stagger. I must do some data analysis at some point to get a sense of how TVs trend in pricing. And, you know, put it this way, in 2027, because of all the data we’re collecting in 2026, we’ll know when is the best time to buy a TV. Yeah, because we’re literally collecting prices whenever they change now. So yeah, it’s fascinating. Oh, well, good man. Enjoy the TV, buddy.

[00:14:23] Peter: Okay.

[00:14:24] Trevor Long: Thanks, mate. Thanks for getting in touch.

[00:14:26] Peter: Okay.

[00:14:27] Trevor Long: No worries. And thank you very much for A, watching The Today Show, B, listening to Triple M Newcastle.

[00:14:32] Michael: Love the super fandom of that.

[00:14:35] Trevor Long: And well done on getting a cracking deal. So the RRP on that LG 65-inch C6 is $3,999, which is the current price at today, and we’re in August. But because of the EFTM TV Buyer’s Guide, we can see a little graph which gives us a little bit of a sense of the pricing over time. And it, look, it hasn’t changed much. Went down to 3.5 off for a bit, but that must have been that weekend where he saw it and boom, it was $2,977. So pretty good price.

[00:15:10] VOICE OVER: Tech, cars, lifestyle. This is the EFTM podcast with Trevor Long.

Pete — Hisense TV comparison, USB playback and HeyU app issue

[00:15:16] Trevor Long: Great to have your company. Pete’s on the line. G’day, Pete.

[00:15:18] Pete: G’day.

[00:15:19] Michael: Good morning.

[00:15:19] Pete: How are you, Trevor?

[00:15:20] Trevor Long: Mate, really good. What can I do for you?

[00:15:22] Pete: Listen, just a couple of quick things. I’m a Hisense fan, love the TVs, and I’ve bought a Q— sorry, a 65-inch U8 last year.

[00:15:31] Peter: Fantastic.

[00:15:33] Pete: Fantastic, Telly. Love every bit of it. And so I bought a 65-inch U7 for the front room, just a step down. Now the U8—

[00:15:42] Trevor Long: sorry, were the sizes the same, did you say?

[00:15:44] Pete: Yes, both 65. One’s a U7, one’s a U8.

[00:15:47] Trevor Long: Before you tell me, before you tell me why you’ve called, I’m curious now. Yes, you switch between them now and then. You’re in the front room sometimes, you’re in the main room the others, whatever, back and forth. How big of a notice, how big of a difference do you notice? Because it’s very rare to have two models from the same brand, you know, nearby other than in a store?

[00:16:06] Pete: Well, they were both new. Obviously the U7 is a bit cheaper. That’s the reason. But just the brightness on the U8 is better than the U7.

[00:16:14] Trevor Long: Of course you can notice the brightness. Is it— is the contrast different? Like, can you notice the blacks are different or anything like that?

[00:16:20] Pete: Yeah, it seems to. It’s a bit hard to tell because the U8 is in a brighter room than the U7. So the U7 is already got a bit of a heads up. But the, the, the sound on the U8 is crazy, mate. It’s fantastic. It’s a, it’s a built-in proper soundbar, I believe, whereas the U7 has just got the two speakers. But I did put a little Hisense soundbar on it with a wireless.

[00:16:42] Trevor Long: You are a fan.

[00:16:44] Pete: Oh mate, that’s great, that’s great. Everything works from one remote, um, and I even annoy the wife by using the one remote on the other telly when she’s watching something, but that’s okay. Well played, mate. Um, the U8 will play USBs if I’ve got a put some pictures on, movies on or something, but only to a 32 gig. But the U7 will play all the way up to 128 gig with the USBs. Um, yeah, and I’ve rung Hisense and they sort of got no idea. And I’ve tried, I’ve tried all them on the U7 and they all play, and I’ve tried them all on the U8 and the only ones in the U8 will only go up to 32 gig. Um, I’ve looked at the, what, the FAT32s, I’ve looked at the exFATs, you know, the, the system of the, of USB. Yeah, but doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. They stop at 32 and it just picks up no USB recognized or won’t even let you link onto the button.

[00:17:38] Trevor Long: Any USB drive that’s bigger than 32 gigabytes, regardless of its file system, regardless of what you’ve done with it, regardless of brand, you’ve tried many on the U8. Let’s be clear, the more premium one simply does not show up over 32.

[00:17:53] Pete: No. And yet the U7, it does. It plays them all. And I just thought, well, maybe the processor is working hard at the screen or something like that rather than trying to pick up the USB.

[00:18:03] Trevor Long: I don’t know.

[00:18:03] Trevor Long: I don’t know if you’ve done software updates. You got the latest firmware on both?

[00:18:08] Pete: Done it all. Done it all. I’ve even done factory resets, which took me a while because I had to reset all the apps and stuff again. But yeah, I tried them both. I’ve done them both exactly the same way, the same time. And again, the U7 plays them all, but the U8 only plays them to 32 gigs.

[00:18:21] Trevor Long: It’s not, not a major problem, of course, but it’s just sort of interesting observation. Yeah, absolutely. Well, as a Hisense fanboy, 2 TVs and 1 soundbar. I think we need to find out the answer for you. So the best person to answer that is Chris at Hisense. He’s an absolute technical nerd and he won’t mind me saying that. I will contact the team at Hisense and ask him whether he’s tested this, and he may well be blown away by your level of testing, mate.

[00:18:51] Pete: That’s good, that’s good. You’ve got to fool them sometimes.

[00:18:52] Trevor Long: Yeah, well, if you could put it this way, if you can one-up Chris Meyer on Hisense knowledge, then you are, you are in an elite category.

[00:19:03] Pete: Oh, I might get an 85-inch telly out of it.

[00:19:04] Trevor Long: I don’t know that you’re going to get an 85-inch telly out of it. No, but, you know, certainly call me next time you’re in the market. You know, we make sure we look after you.

[00:19:12] Pete: I wish I’d gone 85 in both rooms. I went from a 55 to 65.

[00:19:17] Trevor Long: What stopped you?

[00:19:20] Pete: Price and availability. And I was going the best I could with the 65 and that was it. But to go the best of the 85 was just a lot more, isn’t it? Nearly another couple of thousand dollars on top of the $65,000.

[00:19:31] Trevor Long: It is a leap.

[00:19:32] Trevor Long: It is a leap for sure.

[00:19:34] Pete: But next time, next time I drop one, I’ll think I’ll replace it.

[00:19:38] Trevor Long: Well, go big or go home, you know, is my motto. So we’ll see what we can find out for you.

[00:19:42] Pete: And the other thing was that the U8 will play the HeyU app, pick it up, no problem. But the U7 won’t. It says U7 won’t even appear, won’t come up on the Play Store, won’t do anything. Now I know they’ve got a VIDD.

[00:19:57] Trevor Long: Yep.

[00:19:58] Pete: Vida, and I’m just wondering if that’s sort of stopping the HeyU app on one. And once again, it’s not, not an issue. It’s just things I’ve noticed between the two tellies. You know, they’ve both got their differences.

[00:20:09] Trevor Long: Yeah, that’s interesting. I wouldn’t have thought there’d be huge app differences because I mean, HeyU, I wouldn’t have thought would be the most advanced app. So I would have thought your biggest streamers, you know, Netflix and stuff, or Disney would be the maybe processor intensive. If there was some sort of processor issue, it could be. How has HeyU always been there? On the U8?

[00:20:27] Pete: Um, on the U8, yeah, I put it on when I bought the telly, as you know, when we initially set it up. And I’m, I’m pretty sure when I got the U7 it first went on, um, but then it’s dropped off. And then I did read somewhere that Hisense isn’t playing ball with Hey You anymore.

[00:20:43] Trevor Long: I don’t know, so maybe there’s a little tiff, they might have had a lover’s tiff, which fits in perfectly with Hey You, but raises a much more important question, Pete.

[00:20:53] Pete: Yep.

[00:20:53] Trevor Long: What are you watching on HeyU?

[00:20:56] Pete: Well, the wife watches a lot of reality.

[00:20:58] Trevor Long: Don’t blame the wife, mate. Don’t blame the wife.

[00:21:00] Pete: You seem passionate about it.

[00:21:04] Trevor Long: So you’re watching Real Housewives of where?

[00:21:08] Pete: Beverly Hills, mate. No, I watch the Millionaire Housing in America and Dream, you know.

[00:21:14] Trevor Long: Oh, that’s that one where they show you just the crazy expensive houses and all that kind of stuff.

[00:21:18] Pete: Oh, unbelievable. Puts you in a sense of unbelief, you know, and it sort of makes you think, do people really have to live like that? And especially the agents make you think they really could have got a different job.

[00:21:28] Trevor Long: Does it also make you think, what’s Tatts Lotto paying this week?

[00:21:32] Pete: Yeah, but it doesn’t seem to work for me either. So I don’t think high sense can fix that. But yeah, look, I mean, you’ve got to see how the other side lives sometimes to realize how lucky you’ve got it, you know?

[00:21:44] Trevor Long: Yeah, I think of that with the Real Housewives, mate. I mean, if I think I’d like to think my wife thinks thinks how lucky she’s got it when she watches that rubbish.

[00:21:51] Pete: Oh, look, I tell you what, that Below Deck and everything else, it’s always worth a bit of a dream, isn’t it?

[00:21:55] Trevor Long: What’s Below Deck? I’ve not seen it.

[00:21:57] Pete: Oh, that’s when the people go on these big luxury cruise yachts and they take them around the Mediterranean or around down under the Pacific Islands or through Mediterranean. Different captains, different crew, and it bases itself on the clientele that are going on there that pay extraordinary amounts of money to go on these yachts for like a weekend and get 7-star service. It’s worth a watch, mate. Watch it. Have a look at it.

[00:22:20] Trevor Long: Well, I’d have to get Hey You first. So that’s the breaking news here. Anyway, you’ve outed yourself as a massive reality TV fan, but that’s okay. To each their own, my friend. Good on you.

[00:22:30] Pete: That’s it.

[00:22:30] Trevor Long: All right, mate. Well, I’m going to reach out to Hisense and I’ll let you know what we find out.

[00:22:34] Pete: Okay? Yeah. Look, any problem, any issues, let me know and we’ll take it from there. But thank you very much for your help on the call, Trevor.

[00:22:40] Trevor Long: Good on you, mate. No worries at all. Thanks for getting in touch. Cheers, Pete.

[00:22:43] Pete: You have a good day. Bye now.

[00:22:44] Trevor Long: You too, mate.

[00:22:44] Trevor Long: No worries at all. I mean, who would have picked it? If I could have picked all the apps that Pete might have had a problem with, HeyU wouldn’t have been in the top 4, probably top 5. It’s, I mean, it’s been around for a while, but I guess if you love that stuff, there you go, you’re all in. And you know what? Pete’s realized happy wife, happy life, and he’s just become a sucker for it now. If she’s loving it, he’s loving it. Uh, let me know what you’re watching. Uh, if you’ve got, uh, if you’ve got a random streaming platform that you enjoy, let us know.

[00:23:19] VOICE OVER: 0477 657 657, that’s the text line. Thanks to Vodafone. Get in touch and Ask Trev today.

Michele Butti — Alexa+ launches in Australia

[00:23:37] Trevor Long: Michele, welcome, welcome to Australia.

[00:23:41] Michele Butti: Thanks for having me.

[00:23:42] Trevor Long: Now, this is a big event, a big announcement for Amazon.

[00:23:45] Trevor Long: We’ll get to kind of what’s coming, but Alexa generally, I feel like Australia is an important market for Amazon in this sense. Even though it’s very competitive here, Alexa’s gained some ground. It’s doing well here.

[00:23:57] Michele Butti: It is. Thanks for saying that. But yes, it was one of the first we launched with the original Alexa. It was actually in 2018 when I joined the team to lead the international expansion. One of the first one— one of the first launches I’ve seen was the Australian one. And you are right that we are very happy because even right now, Australian customers are using Alexa a lot. Just last year, they used it more than 2 billion times for interactions. They love smart home. They use the smart home more than half a billion times. Actually, I think Australian customers in average use more than 40 routines a month each. And it’s one of the— yeah, I think it’s more than American, British customer, maybe the number one in the world or one of the top 2, 3.

[00:24:49] Trevor Long: And so out of 2 billion, that’s like a quarter of the conversations with Alexa or requests of Alexa thus far are smart home related.

[00:24:56] Michele Butti: Yes, it’s one of the biggest applications. It makes a big difference. And by the way, just to continue, what is very encouraging to us is that customers have been extremely loyal to Alexa. And they’ve never been more loyal to Alexa than in the last 12 months. We measure that with the customers that stop using Alexa over time. And it’s a very, very small number. And even better, something that maybe we give give for granted, but even after all these years, Alexa is still growing in terms of new customers, still double-digit year over year. That again, we give for granted, but there’s plenty of businesses that would love to have a double-digit growth after so many years.

[00:25:35] Trevor Long: As a local observer, I would put that down to simply your presence here. You know, Amazon as a business is growing, the shopping is, is growing, I can assume, exponentially. Just based on my household alone. But also your competitors in the smart speaker space have essentially abandoned Australia. And so that advantage is something you’ve been able to just run with the ball, as we would say here.

[00:25:56] Michele Butti: Yeah, we kept investing on devices. They are a big part of the experience. We started with smart speakers. So the quality of the sound mattered a lot. Music is actually even more important than smart home. It’s one of the biggest applications. And then we added smart smart screens, smart displays with the Echo Shows. And keep refreshing the devices, keep making them faster, smarter, with better sound has been important to us. And, you know, we’re not stopping.

[00:26:25] Trevor Long: Do you find that people potentially don’t even realize what they’ve got in their Alexa? So, for example, music you mentioned is one of the most used reasons, number one reason as I understand it, for smart speakers. Play the radio, play some songs. Do you think a lot of people just don’t realize the things that they can do with that speaker that’s already there, already set up, ready to go?

[00:26:45] Michele Butti: In part, that is true, but that’s also the beauty of technology. When it works well, you don’t realize the complexity behind it. So we’re talking about routines, a smart home. It takes a significant effort to make sure that Alexa works with, you know, Alexa in the world is connected to more than a billion devices like smart home devices, and there’s tens of thousands of different brands and manufacturers and type of devices that work with Alexa. So customers don’t realize the complexity. They might not know everything that Alexa can do, but they couldn’t find anything that could do the same job for them than what Alexa does.

[00:27:23] Trevor Long: And routines are a fun part of it because it’s about simplifying things. And I I have a very simple routine in my office where I say, “I’m here,” and lights turn on, TVs turn on, and then when I’m leaving today, I’m going home, and things turn off. That simplicity, when you bring it into the home, the smart home, I think it’s a word-of-mouth experience. If you noticed a friend doing that, you’re like, “Wait, how did you just do that?” That’s how things like the smart home and Alexa can grow.

[00:27:51] Michele Butti: That is true, and indeed, we did not invest much in mass marketing or advertising. If you notice, we’re not doing much. But customers tend to endorse their experience with Alexa. And by the way, this simplicity you mentioned, it was a core part of the original vision. And we might have said that multiple times. Apologies if you’ve heard the story before. But the original inspiration was the computer on the Star Trek Enterprise, on the spaceship. You haven’t heard that? And yes, the idea of a name ambient intelligence, an ambient computer that can get stuff for you wherever you are. And now you can ask a computer, raise the temperature, or remind me this, remind me that. That was the original inspiration. And indeed, when the original Alexa was launched, you had multiple wake words. One of them was computer, so that you could replicate the experience of computer. Turn on the radio for me.

[00:28:43] Trevor Long: Absolute Star Trek nerd at Amazon.

[00:28:45] Michele Butti: Yes.

[00:28:46] Trevor Long: That dream came true.

[00:28:47] Michele Butti: Absolutely.

[00:28:48] Trevor Long: Well, a while ago you announced Alexa Plus, which is now available in Australia. So for Alexa users, explain the difference.

[00:28:58] Michele Butti: Wow, it’s a massive difference because now the new Alexa that is called Alexa Plus is based on the new generative AI with these large language models that are much more powerful. And therefore right now Alexa Plus is much more conversational. You can actually have an interaction at multiple— we say turns. You can keep going, talking about a topic, changing your mind, like you and I are doing. You don’t have to use the wake word, Alexa, every single time. You have a longer conversation. Alexa is much smarter, can talk about almost anything. You can try from a recommendation on how to negotiate with your boss for a raise to scientific questions. Alexa becomes much more personal because now you can teach Alexa the things that you want Alexa to know about you. And therefore, you tell Alexa that you’re vegetarian or you don’t like mushrooms. And then when you ask her for a recommendation, she remembers the things that you asked her to remember. So she becomes much more personal to you. And then one of the things that make Alexa very unique, Alexa Plus gets things done. In the real world. So it’s not just like other AI tools that are limited to being a chatbot experience, but it controls your home. Now it has more interactions with other service providers like OpenTable, where you can actually book a table directly with your voice. And very quickly say, Alexa, I forgot to book a table for tomorrow with my wife. Please book a table for 2 at 7:30 at that place.

[00:30:28] Trevor Long: And that knowledge that we’ve created over many conversations, like my wife’s a vegetarian, legitimately. If I said to Alexa through Alexa Plus, “Hey, I want to take my wife to dinner on Saturday night, find somewhere near,” and name a suburb, it’s going to use that knowledge of my wife being a vegetarian.

[00:30:44] Michele Butti: Yes.

[00:30:44] Trevor Long: It’s going to find a vegetarian suitable restaurant and actually make the booking for me?

[00:30:49] Michele Butti: Yes, and not only the things that—

[00:30:51] Trevor Long: It’ll be a two-way conversation about what times are available?

[00:30:54] VOICE OVER: Yes.

[00:30:54] Trevor Long: And things like that?

[00:30:54] Michele Butti: Yes, and you can, yes, absolutely. Like you would ask your personal assistant, and you can add new instructions like, you know, I don’t like places that are too far away. And sometimes you can be explicit about what you want Alexa to remember. Typically it’s, I don’t like mushrooms, you know, please remember I don’t like mushrooms. But she also learns about you as you interact with her, so if you keep booking looking for pizzerias, she’s going to understand that it’s one of your favorites. And when you ask for recommendations, she might start from a pizzeria, even if you never explicitly asked her to remind you.

[00:31:31] Trevor Long: A lot of the power of Alexa over the years behind the scenes has been kind of interoperability with apps or skills, different things like that. Is Alexa Plus able to work that way? So for example, a chain restaurant that has online ordering, Could they integrate with Alexa Plus so this conversational awareness can happen? So, I won’t name a restaurant, but let’s say, Alexa, we’re gonna stay home tonight and get takeout. There’s just my wife and Harry here. Let’s get our usual. Will it, can restaurants plug into it as well? Like takeaway and things like that in any way?

[00:32:05] Michele Butti: I think right now, that’s clearly the vision. And the way we’re getting there to begin with is to work with some of the services that aggregate all the restaurants and all the opportunities so that you don’t need to have thousands or hundreds of thousands of restaurants to integrate themselves with Alexa Plus. And we’ve done that already in other countries. And I think— I’m not announcing anything yet, but clearly that’s part of our—

[00:32:34] Trevor Long: Literally that— I mean, I think we’re getting getting to a point where the phones we carry around are becoming less and less a part of our day. If we were to put a little bit of a crystal ball in front of us and go 5 years into the future, do I open an app to make my order? Do I open an app to order a car? Do I need to do those things when an assistant like Alexa knows where I go, where I do, do, do? I should be able to just ask for it. Is that the broad vision for a far more intelligent assistant?

[00:33:01] Michele Butti: I think that’s And that’s one of the possibilities of these new agents that are becoming more and more capable of taking actions for you. So you’re not the only one who foresees that one. And I think there are many technologists who think that a personal assistant like Alexa could replace a lot of the functions you normally use an app for.

[00:33:26] Trevor Long: One of the reasons— Alexa Plus didn’t launch globally when you announced it was localization. Explain why that matters, because theoretically it’s just a smart assistant, right? We’ve all seen ChatGPT and Claude and all these things that are, you know, we can talk to and ask. So why does Alexa need time to launch in Australia?

[00:33:44] Michele Butti: Well, there are multiple reasons. First, it needs to work with the devices, services, content providers that you want to integrate with. So it doesn’t just play Amazon Music. It plays Spotify. It plays Deezer. It plays Apple Music. And it plays all the radios. So we wanted to take the time to make sure that the content, the smart home brands, the things that matter to customers keep working with Alexa Plus. And we don’t start from scratch. So customers are already using a lot a lot of these services in order to make sure that everything that worked well with the original Alexa keep working on Alexa Plus. And then when the interactions with your personal assistant goes through voice, the relationship is different than when it’s simple text. And it has to sound natural to you. And I have to say that while these large language models are generally speaking multilingual, they tend to be very monocultural and very easy to detect that. English as English. They got trained. Most of the data they used to be trained are English American data. So they tend to think and behave like an American. And so you could provide an Australian voice and accent, but you would really feel that it is an American voice American agent. I’ll give you an anecdote that blew my mind. When we launched in Canada, that it’s a relatively similar culture, we were experimenting with multiple models. And one of the first feedback we received from Canadian customers using one of the early Alexa Plus was that it sounded like an American agent. And it was really speaking with the Canadian voice, but they immediately understood that the way they think about relationship between friends, educating kids, it was very American and not Canadian. So we took the time to make sure that also the culture is fully localized and is not just translated from the American English.

[00:35:58] Trevor Long: And I guess there’s the idiosyncrasies of every country and language as well, because because with the greatest respect, you probably wouldn’t know what I meant if I was saying, “I’m gonna, Alexa, I’m gonna chuck a sickie on Friday. I wanna take my wife to the Chinese joint near the servo.” I mean, an American Alexa’s gonna struggle with that command, but hopefully an Australian Alexa’s gonna understand I’m taking a day off work, so I’m probably talking about lunch. The service station has a Chinese restaurant within 100 meters. That’s probably the one I’m talking about. But if we just adopted Alexa Plus from the American version, get all these negative responses.

[00:36:30] Michele Butti: Yes, and we, we could have made the American English version available everywhere very quickly, but I don’t think that’s the vision we had in mind for a personal assistant that has to feel natural to you.

[00:36:44] Trevor Long: It’s, I mean, it’s, it’s a tough thing to, I guess, get people to understand what they can do next, but people, you’ve just got to test it really. You know, you just got to find its boundaries. That’s the way Absolutely.

[00:36:55] Michele Butti: And indeed, one of the things we do now that we’re introducing Alexa Plus, we’re launching in Australia, we are trying to show it more than talking about it. So we’re going to run more than 30 live demos at our launch event, because there’s nothing like actually seeing how Alexa Plus works instead of just describing how it works. I wish we had the time to show you all the demos.

[00:37:17] Trevor Long: We’ll show some. Don’t worry. We’ve got old Alexas from, or old Echos from some time ago. At what point does your Alexa speaker, your Echo, become qualified to use Alexa Plus?

[00:37:30] Michele Butti: Well, first, we want as many Alexa customers as possible to use the new Alexa Plus. So we took the time to make sure that the large majority of the Echo devices devices that could actually work on Alexa Plus. And right now in Australia, 98%, more than 98% of the customers that are using Alexa Plus have at least one device that is compatible with Alexa Plus. Basically, if you exclude the very first generation that we sold in 2018, maybe ’19, but I think it was really the first generation, every other Echo can work with Alexa Plus. And we think the future—

[00:38:08] Trevor Long: But if you’re using the original one, you’ve probably all in on the ecosystem, you’ve probably bought new ones since.

[00:38:14] Michele Butti: Hopefully so, although the devices were built to last many, many years. You know, we, we always, uh, wanted to make sure that a customer could use the same device for multiple years. And there are, you know, 8, 9 years old devices still out there working very well for customers, which will still work.

[00:38:30] Trevor Long: There’s no change to those, correct? They just won’t potentially be able to do the correct Alexa Plus. Now, I don’t, I don’t I don’t really understand the Amazon business, but you’re doing very well, making a lot of money. But I don’t understand how you make money from Prime. I pay very little for that and I get free delivery. Don’t understand it. I also don’t understand how Alexa Plus, if I don’t have Prime, is $30 a month, but Prime’s $10. Does anyone— has anyone told you that? You’re charging $10 for Prime and I get Alexa Plus and movies and music and free delivery, but if I don’t want any of that and I just want Alexa Plus, Plus, it’s going to cost me $30 a month.

[00:39:03] Michele Butti: Yes.

[00:39:04] Trevor Long: That doesn’t make any sense. Are you aware of that?

[00:39:06] Michele Butti: No, I’m surprised that you are surprised because you just said that. You just said you’re using your Prime benefits a lot. We always meant to make Prime the best subscription in the world. I think— I’m not 100% sure, but I think it was Jeff who said that it has to be irresponsible for a customer not to get Prime because You have every single benefit that can be more valuable than the price of Prime. You can watch so much content, free content on Prime Video that is way more valuable than the price of Prime itself. You can get so much faster free shipping that is much more valuable than the price. And the same is going to be with Alexa Music, right? So every single benefit could be independently more valuable than the, the, the price of Prime membership. And what is interesting is that, uh, we also feel it’s a great deal for us because now you feel like you want to buy more on Amazon, right? So, so I, you know, it works pretty well on both sides.

[00:40:06] Trevor Long: You’ve been with Amazon for 20 years, which I’ll be honest with you, I think is unusual in, in executive world. Often when I asked you earlier how long you’ve been there, I, especially you say 5 years, 6 years or something, because people move around jobs. That must be a good sign about the company, the, the life that is working for Amazon.

[00:40:27] Michele Butti: I think it is. And honestly, when I look at my peer group in Alexa and devices, the large majority are quite tenured. I’m not the only one. And in part, it’s difficult to get bored with these new technologies coming out. I’ve I mean, you’ve been in technology for a while and it feels very new every single day. And having a chance to work with generative AI today, or even machine learning 15 years ago, that was equally exciting. It keeps it very interesting.

[00:41:00] Trevor Long: Could you have imagined this 20 years ago?

[00:41:06] Trevor Long: I don’t know.

[00:41:06] Michele Butti: I have to say the vision was durable. So—

[00:41:08] Trevor Long: Star Trek.

[00:41:10] Michele Butti: The vision was there. I feel like we had reached the limit of what we could have done with the previous technology. We have clearly touched the ceiling of the technology. And now, luckily for us, there’s a new technology that allows us to get closer to the original vision. But the vision, again, if you think about the Star Trek computer and the things that you could do with your voice from wherever you were, in your bedroom, on the deck, wherever. You know, that’s actually where we’re getting with now Alexa Plus.

[00:41:40] Trevor Long: Last question, and to bring it back to Alexa Plus, for people hearing this, seeing this, who have an Alexa speaker or an Echo speaker that’s reasonably new and we’re confident with Alexa Plus, what’s the thing they should go and ask it right now to really get the sense of that, wow, this is different?

[00:41:57] Michele Butti: I think they should try almost everything, and they should even ask Alexa+ for what to do, because then you start the conversation. You immediately realize that it’s not scripted, it’s generative, it’s going to be different every single time. And actually, what is fun is that I think customers find ways to use it that I had not thought about. I made the example about asking Alexa+ advice on how to negotiate for your raise with your boss. That didn’t come to me. We saw that, you know, customers posting about that one. And yes, there’s almost unlimited questions you can ask Alexa now.

[00:42:36] Trevor Long: Congratulations, good luck with the launch.

[00:42:38] Michele Butti: Thanks a lot, thanks for having me.

[00:42:42] VOICE OVER: Be part of the show. Thanks to Vodafone, you can text 0477 657 657.

Michael — Graphics card warranty dispute

[00:42:54] Trevor Long: Love to help you out wherever I can. No guarantees, but we’ll do our best. Michael’s on the line. G’day, Michael.

[00:42:59] Michael: G’day, g’day. How you going?

[00:43:01] Trevor Long: Really well. What can I do for you?

[00:43:03] Michael: I’ve reached out because I’ve got a big problem. I have like a high-end gaming graphics card that I bought in April of 2023.

[00:43:15] Trevor Long: So you got a bit of a beast of a computer you built yourself or was it included?

[00:43:19] Michael: Yeah, I built it myself. Nice. Using, um, like the Whirlpool forums and things like that.

[00:43:24] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:43:26] Michael: Um, and just suddenly the other day, um, after, after like a night of gaming, I shut down the PC as normal, and then the next day I went to turn it on and, and the computer wouldn’t load at all. And so through a process of elimination, I isolated the motherboard, the RAM, the CPU, and I’ve now got it to a point where I can, I can plug the monitors into the motherboard onboard graphics.

[00:43:58] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:43:59] Michael: And I’m able to use my computer.

[00:44:00] Trevor Long: So you buy— you’re not using the onboard— your graphics card, you’re having to use the onboard and you’re not getting advantage of the high-priced graphics card you bought, I’m assuming.

[00:44:10] Michael: Exactly. Yeah. I thought I thought it might have short-circuited, so I went out and bought, uh, like a 1000-watt Platinum, uh, power supply, but that did nothing to improve. Um, the only sort of thing that I thought was weird was on one of the tests that I was doing, I, um, I accidentally didn’t plug the, you know, the 12V HP WR cable from power supply to the, um, to the graphics card. I accidentally didn’t plug that in. It was only plugged into the PCI slot. Um, and when I did that and loaded it up, the graphics card seemed to work. However, it, um, it, it came on with a, like, a white VGA light on both, uh, motherboard and the graphics card. Yeah.

[00:45:09] Trevor Long: Where did you buy the, the, the parts?

[00:45:13] Michael: A mixture of PC Game Gear and Centrecom, but this particular graphics card came from Centrecom.

[00:45:20] Trevor Long: And have you reached out to them for support?

[00:45:23] Michael: No, I haven’t. So from what I believe, the, the warranty on the graphics card ran out in April.

[00:45:34] Pete: Yeah.

[00:45:35] Michael: And also, if I look, I’m pretty sure I did this, but when I bought the graphics card, I registered it with Gigabyte. And if I’d have done that within 30 days of purchase, it would have given me an extra year of warranty. Yeah, but it’s saying that the warranty was maybe expiring in, in January, whereas my receipt says that I bought it in March of 2023. I’m not— I am a bit confused. I’m— because the warranty’s expired, it’s kind of thrown me and I’m just kind of thinking, do I— is it worth contacting Senecom still when the warranty’s expired or—

[00:46:18] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:46:19] Trevor Long: Okay.

[00:46:20] Trevor Long: If you hand on heart did nothing wrong, did you know you didn’t have a power surge? You know, there’s no— I mean, they’re going to be able to check some things with it. So you need to be very confident in what you believe happened. And if it just failed, then I believe, and I think you would understand this from listening to me for a while, I believe you should have some form of coverage under Australian Consumer Law.

[00:46:41] Trevor Long: Okay.

[00:46:42] Trevor Long: Now, Australian Consumer Law is a very broad and unspecific thing. So what would happen here is I think you should reach out to Sendacom and say, I’ve got an issue with my graphics card, and you tell them everything you know. You know, you’ve narrowed it down to the graphics card because everything works when I don’t use the graphics card, and you need it fixed. And you believe that, you need to say this upfront, you believe that a graphics card should have a healthy, you know, 5 to 7 year life. That’s, you gotta kind of put that out there. Given the investment, ’cause it’s not a cheap one, is it? This was top end stuff, right?

[00:47:23] Michael: Yeah, $2,800.

[00:47:25] Trevor Long: You should say to them, given the level of investment in this and the, quality of this card, I believe it should have a long life, 5 to 7 years, without any question. So I believe this fault falls under Australian Consumer Law, which is your way of saying to them, don’t just tell me it’s out of warranty, right? Because when they reply and say, sorry mate, you bought it 3 years ago, it’s out of warranty, you reply and say, as per my original email, I don’t believe warranty applies here. I believe this is covered by Australian Consumer Law.

[00:47:58] Michael: And I would like to call them, uh, I would email them.

[00:48:02] Trevor Long: I’d be putting all this in writing, mate, um, because it’s— here’s the thing, and this is the challenge with Australian consumer law claims, not going to be easy, not going to happen tomorrow, not going to happen quickly. Um, they’re, they’re going to fight you from the get-go. They’re going to go, no, mate, sorry, your graphics card doesn’t last that long, or, you know, you probably caused it yourself. They’re going to push back on you. And so what I would say is, I’d say, fine, can you take a look at the PC ‘Help me understand what’s wrong with it.’ And so if they come back then with a quote, then A, is it fixable, or B, is it only replaceable? Then you can fight the fight around what caused the problem. And mate, my point, my point here is it’s going to take time. This— if you don’t have the, I guess, the ability to be without that PC for a reasonable duration, you know, a couple of weeks at least, for them to look at it then it’s going to be problematic for you because they— I’m not suggesting Centrecom would hold it hostage, but they can spend as much time as they want analyzing it while you’re fighting for Australian consumer law coverage. And you maybe— I think at the same time in that first email, you need to be super diplomatic. I’d use ChatGPT here or Claude, mate. I’d be like, I want this to feel— the mood of the email. So I’d write whatever you want. And then I’d say to ChatGPT or Claude, I’d say, I want this to feel knowledgeable, somewhat forceful— no, not forceful is the wrong word— so knowledgeable and firm, but at the same time it’s an introductory email, so I want to not come off as if I’m an angry, frustrated customer. I just want to get there. I just want their help, but I want them to know full on that here’s where I stand on Australian Consumer Law, and also that I believe there’s some disparity between when I bought the PC, when I registered the PC, and whether or not it should actually have more than 3 years warranty. So all of those things together, basically what you’re saying to them is, this is your problem, I want you to fix it for me. Yeah, and then you would say that on the first email. Yes, mate, get it all out there, don’t muck around. Like, let’s not sugarcoat it, let’s just put it all out there and say, listen, I’m at my wit’s end, I’ve tried, I’ve tried updating drivers and all these things, nothing’s working, it’s clearly faulty. How and when can I get it fixed, please?

[00:50:20] Michael: Okay.

[00:50:20] Trevor Long: So, you know, basically get ChatGPT to help you with making sure it comes off as polite yet firm. There you go. That’s what I’m looking for. Polite yet firm.

[00:50:29] Michael: Okay, I’ll try and give that a go.

[00:50:31] Trevor Long: Keep me in the loop, mate. Let me know what they say. And yeah, try and keep it in writing where possible. So if they ring you, make your own notes of the call so that you’ve got a constant record, because if it does if they absolutely push back on Australian Consumer Law and you need to go to your Department of Fair Trading, then that’s when you need to have all these records. You need to be able to say to your department— I don’t know who it is in Victoria— but you need to be able to say to them, you know, I’ve done everything by the book and here’s the record of that.

[00:51:02] Michael: This happened, something similar like this happened about 5 years ago where you helped me out, and it was when a TV that I bought for my mum had it got like dead pixels.

[00:51:15] Trevor Long: All right.

[00:51:15] Trevor Long: Okay.

[00:51:16] Michael: And we went back and through, back and forth from JB Hi-Fi for about a month and they basically came back and said, we can’t do anything. And under your advice, we contacted the ACCC and they told us to fill in one of their emails, email like templates online.

[00:51:37] Trevor Long: Yep.

[00:51:38] Michael: Within, within 15, 20 minutes of me sending that email, the same guy that said no rang me back and he said, you’re going to hate me for saying this, but I needed you to send that email before we could give you something.

[00:51:50] Trevor Long: I— and you know what? I, I respect his, his honesty in that sense, you know what I mean? But let’s be clear, JB Hi-Fi and Centrecom, two very different companies. Yes.

[00:52:00] Michael: Yes.

[00:52:01] Trevor Long: And they— you may get it could be to the point where it’s just, oh cool, totally, we get that, and they’ll just fix it. Or it may be much greater pushback. So you just need to be ready for everything in your arsenal. As a consumer in Australia, you have these protections, and you know, as long as you did nothing to cause this problem, you should have the faith that you will get support.

[00:52:23] Michael: Okay, cool.

[00:52:24] Trevor Long: All right, Michael, good luck. Let me know how you go, mate.

[00:52:26] Michael: I will, mate. Thank you.

[00:52:27] Trevor Long: Cheers, buddy. No worries at all. Um, yeah, not an easy one and a very niche one, you know, a computer graphics card at a computer graphics retailer. Who, you know, may not have many of these kind of claims may push back. And they look, as per the original JB Hi-Fi person, maybe well within their kind of means. But I think there’s at least some sort of leeway there. There’s got to be some sort of assistance given in some way.

[00:52:51] VOICE OVER: This is the EFTM Podcast.

[00:52:53] Trevor Long: All right, thank you for listening. I’ve been using Alexa Plus now for a couple of weeks. And I’ll say this, and I kind of, it’s kind of one of those ones I wished I’d been able to use for some time before I had that conversation with Michele Butti, because I’ve got this real challenge with it. I know it’s meant to be smarter. I know it’s meant to be smarter, and it is, but I only use it here at the office. I’ve had to I think I’ve muted all my Alexas, but we’ll soon find out. When I walk in the door, I say, Alexa, I’m here, and all the lights and the TVs in front of me, everything turns on. When I grab my car keys and I start walking down the stairs, I say, Alexa, I’m leaving, and all the lights turn off and the TVs turn off. I like it, it’s cool. However, Alexa Plus is so smart She’s personable, and I say, ‘I’m here,’ and she goes, ‘Lovely to see— lovely to have you here again.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I’m leaving.’ She goes, ‘Have a nice day.’ I’m like, ‘I know that’s not what I want.’ So I’m having to say, ‘Alexa, run the routine I’m here,’ or ‘Alexa, run the routine I’m leaving,’ and it’s like, that’s not what I want to do. So it’s actually— it’s actually hamstrung cobbled the very feature I love most about Alexa at this point. So that’s, that’s been a challenge for me. So I need to investigate that a little further. So anyway, I’d love to hear your feedback. If you’ve been mucking around with Alexa for many years and you’ve now got Alexa Plus, let me know what you think. I’m curious to know whether you think it’s good, how you’re using it. I’ve struggled to find ways to demonstrate it that are more like that are truly advanced AI features. So yeah, I’m trying to hear— I want to hear examples from real people about how you’re interacting with Alexa Plus. I would love to hear those, so get in touch anytime. You know how to do that, folks. Otherwise, um, all good, and we’ll talk to you next week here on the EFTM Podcast.

[00:55:03] VOICE OVER: Join the conversation, head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.