With smart home devices becoming move prevalent, Amazon believes landlords and building owners are looking at ways to offer a more connected experience to their renters that are controlled by their owners. I, frankly, think they’re wrong. For so, so, so many reasons.
Alexa for Residential allows residential buildings and communities to deploy and manage Alexa-enabled devices and experiences with the help of solution providers
If there was ever a product I wanted less it would be beaten by this. Colour me mortified, Alexa for Residential sounds like an absolute nightmare scenario for both the renter and the landlord.
The idea behind it of offering a way of someone controlling and connecting to the devices within a rented home have merit. You move it, there’s a fridge, you can ask Alexa something that IoT connected fridge is capable of. “What’s the weather fridge?” for example. That’d be cool and useful if you wanted to ask your furnished apartment’s fridge something.
What you don’t want is listening or “smart” devices in your home controlled by someone you’ve never met (and likely never will) nor allow Amazon into your life without your explicit consent.
Amazon would like to point out that Alexa for Residential doesn’t pass on any of the details of the persons using it to the property managers or landlords, but as we’ve seen time and time again Amazon themselves will always be listening.
Perhaps I’m just being a grizzly old man and people actually want to rent an apartment that has smart bulbs and integrated listening devices in every room instead of providing their own? For now, we don’t have to really worry though because the program is only available in the US, but it could be here very soon.