If you live in the UK and got someone a new Amazon Echo speaker, that might not have been the best idea. Amazon’s Alexa assistant went down just about an hour ago, with the assistant failing to respond to user queries on any of the devices.

Users on Twitter started reporting the issue around 09:45am, stating that their existing Echo devices aren’t working — and those who gifted a new Echo speaker to someone, aren’t happy about it. At all.

@AmazonUK I saved to buy my parents an Alexa and now the whole service is down on Christmas Day?! Wonderful.

— Sarah (@sarah_aslannnn) December 25, 2018

Thousands of users are reporting the downtime across the country, too.

It looks like the downtime is likely caused by all the new Echo speakers people have bought for Christmas. Amazon does promote Echo speakers quite a lot in the UK, and the demand shouldn’t be surprising. Still, it’s quite unusual to see Amazon not scaling its service to handle this kind of demand, especially on such a big day like Christmas. New customers aren’t going to be happy about the ruined first experience.

Merry Christmas!

Tagged with Alexa