You can buy just about anything using Amazon’s Alexa, including apparently four pounds of cookies and a doll house without having to ask your parents first.
WFAA reports that a Dallas family’s favorite Christmas present continued to give this week when cookies, a doll house, and a $162 bill unexpectedly showed up on their Amazon account.
Turns out, the couple’s children had been playing with the newly gifted Echo Dot, asking it knock-knock jokes and commanding Alexa to sing when they decided to go on a bit of a shopping spree.
“I just asked her if she could order a doll house and some cookies, and she said, ‘Do you want this?’ and I said ‘Yes,'” the family’s six-year-old daughter recalls.
A short time later, the girl’s mother received a notification from Amazon saying the order had shipped.
“I thought, ‘That’s interesting,’” the mother tells WFAA. “I had not made an order.”
It’s unclear why the family didn’t cancel the order after receiving the notification. Typically, Amazon offers a short window in which customers who have placed an order can make changes, including cancellations.
The family says they plan to donate the doll house to a local children’s hospital, and want their experience to be a lesson for others on the importance of reading the owners’ manual and using parental controls.
Amazon has an unfortunate history of making it too easy for children to run up bills in their parents’ names. Last year, the company was found liable for its allegedly too-hands-off approach to potentially costly in-app purchases for Kindle Fire devices.
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