Mine started a few weeks ago. So Amazon whats the fix???? Tried everything on the web and its a no go. Getting a bad rap on social media and web isn't good for business. Maybe the competition may be better!!!!!!
So, I am not alone. Bought it here from Amazon India in April 2018. Started flickering in late August 2019. Have done multiple resets and reboots. The thing which has helped a bit, is keeping it unplugged overnight. In the morning today when plugged again, it flickered at boot but is stable now. I am almost sure, this solution is not permanent. My guess is that a with recent software update, the ambient light sensor (don't know if its the camera itself, or a separate light sensor). Amazon India unsurprisingly offered nothing and told me to send it for a paid repair, since its out of warranty.
One of my Echo Spots started flickering today at approx. 14 month old!! Called Amazon and went through the recommended fixes to no avail. I was then offered 20% discount on a new one which I refused. I then found that I wasn't alone in this. Its appalling that so many of these products appear to be suffering when just out of warranty. I have reported the issue of the inferior product and lack of repair option to the ACCC and see where that gets me. As I purchased with a Mastercard I may also look at claiming through the 1 year extended warranty offered by most Mastercard's and leave it to them to seek compensation from Amazon.
My Spot started flickering/jumping every few seconds as of around a few days ago. It’s doing it even when the screen is dim, though it’s worse when bright. I bought mine in July 2018, so it’s just outside of warranty.
Tried a factory reset and it was flickering during the boot up process before I even did anything.
I tried turning the brightness down which helps, but doesn’t get rid of it. The only thing that does is to enable night mode and turn the brightness all the way down. Nothing else helps.
Edit:
I posted a review on the Spot product page mentioning this problem and Amazon reached out to me and told me that because this problem is happening so much, they are authorized to replace the device outside of warranty. As such they are sending me a new Spot. I just need to send back the broken one.
The echo spot after numerous resets and restarts and overnight unplugging, seems to have stopped flickering now. The screen has been stable for past 3 days. (There was flicker of the amazon logo at the boot up after which, it remained stable. I didn't reboot It, once I discovered it was stable) Yesterday it received an update. Obviously it had to restart to install the update. I noticed that now after the update, even the amazon and echo logos which appear at boot up were also stable and not jumping or pushing duplicate images above them as they did previously. It seems amazon had in recent months pushed an erring software update that caused echo spot screen to flicker. May be it was a software glitch. I kept checking manually for any update from settings menu, till luckily I got one, yesterday.
Sadly after running fine for 3 days (with numerous reboots and resets) , the problem has cropped up again ☹️. Anybody else has seen the problem resurfacing after sometime?
Early adopters should be rewarded, not penalized. I've factory reset and tried doing without adaptive brightness (which I shouldn't have to do). Amazon needs to address this. I have no doubt that thousands of people have this problem but aren't reporting it. Thought that Amar was more responsible and responsive than this.
For what it's worth, what I did was factory reset twice.The first time, I went through the whole process of doing a factory reset and found it still jumping.Then I factory resetted again and when the "Amazon" or "Echo" logo came up I didn't continue on with the process and just left it on the logo.Initially it was still jumping but eventually after awhile it stopped jumping when it was still on the logo stage.I then proceeded to complete the reregistering and it's been up and running with no sign of the problem for 2 weeks.
I've had a software update during this time and still OK.
What I have seen is that once the screen stabalizes using various techniques and methods like multiple reboots and resets, the problem may come back again, when there is a power failure or when u restart the echo spot for any reason or even randomly.
What has seemingly worked for me is quite unique. Make sure that adaptive brightness is turned on. Switch off the echo spot. Put the echo spot face down to make sure no light enters the ambient light sensor (or camera). Then switch on the power supply while the echo spot is placed face down. Wait for about 5 minutes. Pick it up. U might see the issue resolved. Please users let me know if that works for u as well. This is a temporary solution but definitely this hints that something has gone wrong with the ambient or light sensor with some rogue software update on our devices. Once the display is stable, I have turned off the Adaptive Brightness. Don't know if that's helping or not. Screen brightness is little over 50%
Looks like all the folks here are the early adopters of echo spots. We are here because we are just past our warranty period and have been denied adequate compensation. There's a possibility that many others who are within the warranty period might be facing the same issue but since Amazon would be prompt with their replacements, they might not be searching for such forums. Other possibility could be that the initial manufacturing batches may have certain components sourced differently which now got affected with some crappy software update.
These devices are set to auto update. There isn't even an option to turn off auto update. It's extremely unacceptable that Amazon can play havoc with our devices remotely via a software update and ask us to pay for a mistake which essentially is theirs. We have no control over the device we paid for, because of the auto update feature. If they update to stay competitive in market, they should take onus of making our devices unusable and faulty. This very much amounts to planned obsolescence, if they don't rectify these devices. With so many cases of screen flickering around the globe, on echo spots, the company should have done a recall and should have issued a statement. Atleast, if they acknowledge it, we can wait for a software update, if that can rectify this. Otherwise, they have no bussiness meddling with the devices, we have already paid for.
Surprisingly my Echo Spot seems to have fixed itself.
I unplugged it for a couple days - plugged it back in and it still flickered so I just left it overnight.
Next day it was prompting me to renter my wifi password?
Strange! I'm assuming it updated and rebooted by itself overnight.
All previous forced updates and reboots failed so ??
Anyway working fine for the last few days now!!
My Spot "appears" to be fixed as well. Unplugging and plugging in only made things worse. I did a factory reset yesterday and there was a little flickering during the setup but afterwards it stopped. At one point last night, my screen was black and unresponsive so I unplugged and plugged the Spot back in and was prompted to enter my WiFi password during the reboot, which I was never asked to do before. Everything came back okay. I just hope the issue is permanently resolved!
Traded my spot in for the Echo Show 5. Total cost to me was $41. A much better product. Check out the Amazon trade in program if you haven't already. Also traded in my 8" Fired HD for a 10" Fire HD. Total cost to me $87.
Traded my spot in for the Echo Show 5. Total cost to me was $41. A much better product. Check out the Amazon trade in program if you haven't already. Also traded in my 8" Fired HD for a 10" Fire HD. Total cost to me $87.
Out, damned spot!
Just watch out for the Show 5 video camera not working issue. A few of us had issues where the video camera was not working when it was set to On. It happened on 2 of my Show 5 devices within a week of each other (it was probably a firmware issue). The only way to resolve the issue was to do a factory reset.
The quality of some of the Amazon products is disappointing, to say the least!
Wow this is interesting, I thought I was the only one where my echo spot started flickering at 14 months of life, bought in July 2018 and started flickering Sep 7 2019, contacted customer service and was very disspointed with the outcome, I was offered a 15% discount to buy another one which would probably become defective in another 14 months, just out of the warranty period, it seems like these devices are programmed to become defective at 14 months so customers have to fork out more money and buy a new device, there should be a recall on these devices!
Mine started a few weeks ago. So Amazon whats the fix???? Tried everything on the web and its a no go. Getting a bad rap on social media and web isn't good for business. Maybe the competition may be better!!!!!!
me too, 2 months after warranty expires how convenient...
So, I am not alone. Bought it here from Amazon India in April 2018. Started flickering in late August 2019. Have done multiple resets and reboots. The thing which has helped a bit, is keeping it unplugged overnight. In the morning today when plugged again, it flickered at boot but is stable now. I am almost sure, this solution is not permanent. My guess is that a with recent software update, the ambient light sensor (don't know if its the camera itself, or a separate light sensor). Amazon India unsurprisingly offered nothing and told me to send it for a paid repair, since its out of warranty.
One of my Echo Spots started flickering today at approx. 14 month old!! Called Amazon and went through the recommended fixes to no avail. I was then offered 20% discount on a new one which I refused. I then found that I wasn't alone in this. Its appalling that so many of these products appear to be suffering when just out of warranty. I have reported the issue of the inferior product and lack of repair option to the ACCC and see where that gets me. As I purchased with a Mastercard I may also look at claiming through the 1 year extended warranty offered by most Mastercard's and leave it to them to seek compensation from Amazon.
My Spot started flickering/jumping every few seconds as of around a few days ago. It’s doing it even when the screen is dim, though it’s worse when bright. I bought mine in July 2018, so it’s just outside of warranty.
Tried a factory reset and it was flickering during the boot up process before I even did anything.
I tried turning the brightness down which helps, but doesn’t get rid of it. The only thing that does is to enable night mode and turn the brightness all the way down. Nothing else helps.
Edit:
I posted a review on the Spot product page mentioning this problem and Amazon reached out to me and told me that because this problem is happening so much, they are authorized to replace the device outside of warranty. As such they are sending me a new Spot. I just need to send back the broken one.
The echo spot after numerous resets and restarts and overnight unplugging, seems to have stopped flickering now. The screen has been stable for past 3 days. (There was flicker of the amazon logo at the boot up after which, it remained stable. I didn't reboot It, once I discovered it was stable) Yesterday it received an update. Obviously it had to restart to install the update. I noticed that now after the update, even the amazon and echo logos which appear at boot up were also stable and not jumping or pushing duplicate images above them as they did previously. It seems amazon had in recent months pushed an erring software update that caused echo spot screen to flicker. May be it was a software glitch. I kept checking manually for any update from settings menu, till luckily I got one, yesterday.
Sadly after running fine for 3 days (with numerous reboots and resets) , the problem has cropped up again ☹️. Anybody else has seen the problem resurfacing after sometime?
Early adopters should be rewarded, not penalized. I've factory reset and tried doing without adaptive brightness (which I shouldn't have to do). Amazon needs to address this. I have no doubt that thousands of people have this problem but aren't reporting it. Thought that Amar was more responsible and responsive than this.
18 month old spot flickering here in Denmark.
Have tried ALL the suggestions on this forum no luck yet - STILL FLICKERING Doh!!
Flickering again now, badly. Tried all of the fixes to no avail. Loosing patience.
K
For what it's worth, what I did was factory reset twice.The first time, I went through the whole process of doing a factory reset and found it still jumping.Then I factory resetted again and when the "Amazon" or "Echo" logo came up I didn't continue on with the process and just left it on the logo.Initially it was still jumping but eventually after awhile it stopped jumping when it was still on the logo stage.I then proceeded to complete the reregistering and it's been up and running with no sign of the problem for 2 weeks.
I've had a software update during this time and still OK.
My Spot had been jumping for about 3 months.
Hope this helps.
What I have seen is that once the screen stabalizes using various techniques and methods like multiple reboots and resets, the problem may come back again, when there is a power failure or when u restart the echo spot for any reason or even randomly.
What has seemingly worked for me is quite unique. Make sure that adaptive brightness is turned on. Switch off the echo spot. Put the echo spot face down to make sure no light enters the ambient light sensor (or camera). Then switch on the power supply while the echo spot is placed face down. Wait for about 5 minutes. Pick it up. U might see the issue resolved. Please users let me know if that works for u as well. This is a temporary solution but definitely this hints that something has gone wrong with the ambient or light sensor with some rogue software update on our devices. Once the display is stable, I have turned off the Adaptive Brightness. Don't know if that's helping or not. Screen brightness is little over 50%
Looks like all the folks here are the early adopters of echo spots. We are here because we are just past our warranty period and have been denied adequate compensation. There's a possibility that many others who are within the warranty period might be facing the same issue but since Amazon would be prompt with their replacements, they might not be searching for such forums. Other possibility could be that the initial manufacturing batches may have certain components sourced differently which now got affected with some crappy software update.
These devices are set to auto update. There isn't even an option to turn off auto update. It's extremely unacceptable that Amazon can play havoc with our devices remotely via a software update and ask us to pay for a mistake which essentially is theirs. We have no control over the device we paid for, because of the auto update feature. If they update to stay competitive in market, they should take onus of making our devices unusable and faulty. This very much amounts to planned obsolescence, if they don't rectify these devices. With so many cases of screen flickering around the globe, on echo spots, the company should have done a recall and should have issued a statement. Atleast, if they acknowledge it, we can wait for a software update, if that can rectify this. Otherwise, they have no bussiness meddling with the devices, we have already paid for.
Surprisingly my Echo Spot seems to have fixed itself.
I unplugged it for a couple days - plugged it back in and it still flickered so I just left it overnight.
Next day it was prompting me to renter my wifi password?
Strange! I'm assuming it updated and rebooted by itself overnight.
All previous forced updates and reboots failed so ??
Anyway working fine for the last few days now!!
My Spot "appears" to be fixed as well. Unplugging and plugging in only made things worse. I did a factory reset yesterday and there was a little flickering during the setup but afterwards it stopped. At one point last night, my screen was black and unresponsive so I unplugged and plugged the Spot back in and was prompted to enter my WiFi password during the reboot, which I was never asked to do before. Everything came back okay. I just hope the issue is permanently resolved!
Traded my spot in for the Echo Show 5. Total cost to me was $41. A much better product. Check out the Amazon trade in program if you haven't already. Also traded in my 8" Fired HD for a 10" Fire HD. Total cost to me $87.
Out, damned spot!
Just watch out for the Show 5 video camera not working issue. A few of us had issues where the video camera was not working when it was set to On. It happened on 2 of my Show 5 devices within a week of each other (it was probably a firmware issue). The only way to resolve the issue was to do a factory reset.
The quality of some of the Amazon products is disappointing, to say the least!
Wow this is interesting, I thought I was the only one where my echo spot started flickering at 14 months of life, bought in July 2018 and started flickering Sep 7 2019, contacted customer service and was very disspointed with the outcome, I was offered a 15% discount to buy another one which would probably become defective in another 14 months, just out of the warranty period, it seems like these devices are programmed to become defective at 14 months so customers have to fork out more money and buy a new device, there should be a recall on these devices!
Same here. I returned the first one 3 months ago and got a replacement (363 days old the original device).
Now the screen on the new one has also started flickering. Looks like a hardware issue