Hello William,
The DropDownList does support seaching items by repeating character. Like the SELECT element, the widgets loops through items which starts with the pressed character - in your case "A". When "Al" is pressed the widget will show the first occurrence in the list, not the next available. This is expected behavior. If you need to change in the current behavior I will suggest you share your thoughts on our Kendo UserVoice page.
Regards,
Georgi Krustev
Telerik
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