Google Home Mini won't recognize contact and place a call, saying it, "didn't catch that--is that percent one dollars, percent two dollars?"

Question

What can I do about my Google Home Mini not successfully placing calls I try to make to some of my contacts? It works for most contacts I tell it to call, but mysteriously some calls won't go through and the Mini gets stuck, telling me it, "didn't catch that--is that percent one dollars, percent two dollars?"

After many months of searching the Internet for a fix, I still have the same issue. I have not tried any solutions because I've found none yet. It seems to happen to some contacts and not others. Mom and Dad, for example, have the same number listed in my contacts. Google Home finds Dad and calls him, but not Mom. Every time I try it saying "call my Mom", it says, "Didn't catch that. Is that percent one dollar, percent two dollars?" Meanwhile, if I say "call my Dad," it dials their home just fine. If I ask, "what is my Mom's home phone number," it gives me the same number answer as when I ask, "what is my Dad's home phone number." It's the right phone number! So it knows the right thing. Yet Google Home gets stuck when I try to call her and not him.

As a developer, it is clear to me that the Google Home Mini is improperly evaluating some %$1 and %$2 variable references in a scripted prompt within a string variable in its code, but no one has done anything about it. The issue's been reported to Google at I asked Google Home Mini to call someone and it won't work. Still, because of how the issue appears to be tied to the way unique contacts are set up in my address book, I think there ought to be a way that this could be corrected by us, the users--perhaps by changing the way our contacts are set up. I'm putting this out there in hopes that someone has come up with a solution!

Answer 1

A workaround that I have just found today is that usually when the Mini asks, "is that percent one dollars, percent two dollars," it actually already knows the right person you wish to call so just answer, "YES!" It then goes ahead and makes the call I wanted to make to the right person I had requested it be made to!

Also, if I specifically say, "OK Google, call my Mother AT HOME," it works! It seems that the only time gets stuck saying, "Didn't catch that. Is that percent one dollar, percent two dollars?" is when I say, "OK Google, call my Mother."

It would appear that the "%$1" variable might stand for "Mother" and the "%$2" might stand for "HOME" in this scenario. It's just Google Home is not properly evaluating those variables and matching it with the words in my request. This would explain why it only spits out that cryptic, generic-sounding question, "Didn't catch that. Is that % one dollar, % two dollars?"