Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Buyer Beware!!! We bought an Echo in Nov of 2016 and we bought a Dot shortly after. We subscribed to the Unlimited Music service. We were able to play any Amazon music we wanted on either of the Echoes and have different music streaming to both at the same time. We added more Echo Dots in other rooms so my wife and I can listen to different things in different rooms all over the house. We have had this setup for months. We would put music on for our young kids while they slept and listen to something else in the kitchen while we talked. Well, all of a sudden on August 29th we lost the ability to stream to more than one device unless it was the same stream using the multi-room playback feature. We thought this was a bug since it happened on the same day they rolled out multi-room playback. It turns out that it is not a bug and they made the change on purpose. The multi-room playback ONLY allows you to listen to the same music stream on multiple devices. We can no longer play music for the kids and listen to our own stuff. In order to return this functionality, we are being told we must subscribe to the Unlimited Family plan. Well, here is the kicker, now you must pay for Prime and the Unlimited Family Music plan in order to use more than one Echo at a time which means you are paying an extra $70 a year above the Unlimited Music plan for a total of $248 a year to use multiple Echoes in a single home if you want more than one playing at a time with a different Amazon stream. You could try to use the other streaming services that the Echo supports for a combination of streams running on other devices but to get commercial free those cost money too. Oh, and don’t get me started on how kids under the age of 13 are not even allowed to use the Unlimited Family Music Plan…great planning on the feature removal Amazon. No we shouldn’t have to lie about our kids age to get what we want. We never would have bought the other Echoes had we known they would change the way the service works. Limiting a product after they have been purchased is a complete rip-off. I’ve never owned a product before where major features are removed instead of added. We were not given any warning nor any compensation for the change. Now we have a bunch of useless Echoes all over the house. Well, not completely useless, they have been reduced to hockey puck looking alarms clocks and timers. I’m currently looking into the cost of moving to Google Home. We will also be significantly reducing our spending on Amazon. You have been warned.