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I don't think I understand the problem, in part because I'm not sure what you mean by Alexa "recognizing amazon as a word and not a company." Perhaps you could fill in a bit of context. Are you trying to write a skill or use an existing one? What are the sample utterances you're using? Are things working some of the time? When do you get a valid response? etc.... Steve Message was edited by: Steven Arkonovich

My interpretation of the problem is that the word "Amazon" is heavily weighted towards existing functionality and always causes the intent parsing logic to default to some first party behavior, rather than to the third party skill (like stock ticker) being built. Is that correct, emilyandcory?

Yes, that is what I mean galactoise. I apologize for the confusion, I should have said that I want "amazon" or "Amazon" to be recognized as a simple word in a sentence or as a custom intent, not as a wake word or with some other pre-determined meaning. For example, in a stock skill the utterance might be: "getStock {TickerName}" and I want the user to be able to simply say "Amazon." By essentially hardcoding an utterance with "getAmazonStock amazon dot com" the user is able to get the Amazon stock information, however, I was wondering if it was possible to just say "Amazon" and override the existing functionality. I have tried adding amazon as a custom slot to the Ticker intent, as well as simply putting getStock amazon in my sample utterances, but neither approach seemed to work. If I simply say "amazon," or in the test module type "amazon," I get an invalid input response. Message was edited by: emilyandcory

It seems to me that once within a skill, you should be able to use "amazon" to your heart's content. It shouldn't activate any built-in functionality. (I just tried a few skills that take free form text, and they all just treated "amazon" as a regular utterance.) So a conversation like: You: "Open [skill name]" Alexa: "What company would you like a stock quote for?" You: "Amazon" ....that should work fine. There's a general concern that recognition is better if you give Alexa some "partitioning" words before and/or after the words you want recognized. So, getStock get {TickerName} might be easier to work with than getStock {TickerName} But in principle both should work. Steve

Using getStock {Ticker} as the sample utterance and just saying "Amazon" did not work, but getStock get {Ticker} worked just fine, thank you. I still can't use "amazon" as a one word answer, but will keep trying. Thank you.

Glad that helped. Should be able to use "amazon" as a one word answer, but in my experience it a) doesn't work as well and b) will only work if it is the only slot that doesn't use a "partitioning" word. So, in theory getStock {Ticker} updateStock update {Stock} can bet gotten to work. But getStock {Ticker} updateStock {Stock} would be considerably harder, with tight constraints on the values of Ticker and Stock. Best, Steve

Thanks everyone, we are aware of this issue and are working on a fix.

Thanks everyone, the fix has been implemented. To clarify, this change fixes issues where the wake word being ignored in the utterance is not the user's active wake word. For example, if the user's wake word is 'alexa', then saying 'alexa, tell me the amazon stock price' will work, while 'amazon, tell me the amazon stock price' will not be supported. Thanks!