Amazon's Alexa for Shopping Can Now Skip Subscriptions, Change Delivery Instructions and Chase Refunds
Amazon said on Oct. 29 that Alexa for Shopping, the assistant in its shopping app and website, now handles more than 100 new actions, including editing lists and registries, managing Subscribe & Save deliveries, updating delivery instructions and answering billing and refund questions. It is available to all U.S. customers. Amazon says 400 million customers used the assistant in the past year; usage figures are Amazon's own.
Most of what Amazon added to its shopping assistant is customer service, not shopping. Of the more than 100 new actions Amazon announced on October 29 for Alexa for Shopping, the headline examples are account chores: skipping a Subscribe & Save delivery, changing delivery instructions, checking a refund or querying an unrecognised charge. That puts the agent in front of the support queue as well as the product search.
What it can do now#
Amazon says customers can now ask the assistant to create and edit lists and registries and move items between them; skip, pause or change the frequency of Subscribe & Save deliveries; check Prime benefits and savings and Audible renewal dates; update delivery instructions; and resolve billing questions, view gift card balances and check on refunds. The features are available to all U.S. customers through the Alexa icon in the Amazon Shopping app or at the top of the screen on desktop, the company says. TechCrunch reported the same set of list, subscription and delivery-instruction features.
The assistant already researches products, tracks price history and can buy an item automatically when it reaches a customer's target price, Amazon says.
Amazon's numbers#
More than 400 million customers have used Alexa for Shopping in the past 12 months, and the number using its agentic features has grown more than eightfold since the start of the year, Amazon says. "Alexa for Shopping can now help with more than 100 brand-new shopping actions," said Rajiv Mehta, Amazon's vice president of conversational shopping.
Assistants that complete purchases are spreading beyond retailers' own apps, as Microsoft showed with Copilot Checkout. Amazon's version works inside Amazon's own account systems, which is where these new actions live.
Limits#
- The 400 million users and eightfold growth figures are Amazon's and are not defined further; "used" may include brief interactions.
- The "100+" count is Amazon's own tally of capabilities.
- The release does not say whether any actions require confirmation before they take effect.