Amazon has noticeably increased the number of invitations going out to customers to purchase the Echo smart home speaker, but an ongoing backlog means that even those who receive invites and purchase the device will have to wait as many as four months to receive it.
How do we know this? Back when GeekWire first wrote about the limited supply of the device, we asked readers to let us know when they received Echo invites, and many of you have been very diligent about keeping us posted. Initially, we were only receiving a few messages a week from readers, but over the past couple weeks, we’ve received dozens of messages from readers who finally got their Echo invites.
In fact, at long last, I finally received my own Echo invitation this morning. The only catch: “Due to strong customer response, new orders may take several months to ship,” the company warns in the invite. And yes, when I put the item in my shopping cart, Amazon estimated that it wouldn’t be delivered until May 27, at the earliest.
Fortunately for us, GeekWire columnist Frank Catalano has already received and reviewed the Amazon Echo, and we’re going to have some fun this week on the GeekWire radio show by having “Alexa” — the digital personality behind the device — as our guest in the studio, giving her a mic and asking her questions on air.
Tune in to hear the fun on Saturday at 7 p.m. on KIRO Radio (97.3 FM) in the Seattle region or subscribe to the podcast using this RSS feed, iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher. The show will also be available on GeekWire.com starting Saturday morning.
