If you’re looking to call friends and relatives on your Alexa-enabled devices, you’ll first need to set up your device and share your contacts with the Alexa service.
Open the Alexa app on your smartphone, tap the “Communicate” icon on the bottom menu. Confirm your name, allow access to your contacts and verify your phone number. You can now ask an Alexa-enabled device such as an Echo Dot or Echo Show to call the name of someone in your contact list. For example, “Alexa, call Grandma George.”
If you’d like to complete the call using Alexa’s service on your mobile phone, open the Alexa app, tap “Communicate” on the bottom menu. Tap the “Call” icon (phone symbol) on top. Select someone from your contact list, if that person is able to receive calls from Alexa, you’ll have the option to make an “Alexa audio call” or “Alexa video call” to your selected contact. If you tap “video” you will be able to interact face-to-face on your mobile phone, in the same manner you would from a device like an Echo Show or Echo Spot.
If you’d prefer not to allow Alexa device owning contacts to contact YOU on your Alexa device, you can stop them from doing so by blocking them. To block certain contacts (a former colleague, distant relative, etc.) from contacting you on your Amazon Echo devices, open the Alexa app on your smartphone, tap the communicate balloon at the bottom, tap the person icon on the top right, tap the three dots on the top right, tap “block” next to the desired contact’s name.
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