Eight Sleep Launches ‘Outage Mode’ After AWS Glitch Froze Smart Beds
▼ Summary
– The AWS outage disrupted Eight Sleep smart beds, leaving users with stuck temperature and incline settings.
– Eight Sleep CEO apologized for the service disruption and acknowledged it wasn’t the intended customer experience.
– The company’s smart bed features require cloud connectivity and previously lacked offline control options.
– Eight Sleep introduced an “outage mode” allowing Bluetooth control of basic functions during cloud outages.
– Customers had complained about the lack of offline controls for years before this incident prompted a solution.
A recent disruption in Amazon Web Services left many owners of high-tech smart beds facing an uncomfortable night, as their temperature-regulating and adjustable mattresses became temporarily unresponsive. The widespread AWS outage on Monday caused Eight Sleep’s Pod systems to freeze, locking users into preset temperatures and bed positions without any ability to make manual adjustments. Reports quickly surfaced on social media platforms, with one Reddit user describing how their bed remained fixed at a scorching 110 degrees Fahrenheit, while others woke up to find their mattress stuck in an upright incline.
Eight Sleep CEO Matteo Franceschetti publicly addressed the issue, stating, “The AWS outage has impacted some of our users since last night, disrupting their sleep. That is not the experience we want to provide and I want to apologize for it.” The company’s Pod mattress toppers, which start around $2,000 and require a monthly Autopilot subscription beginning at $17, depend entirely on cloud connectivity to function. Without an active internet connection, the accompanying app could not communicate with the bed, leaving customers unable to change temperature or flatten the mattress base during the service interruption.
In response to customer frustration, Eight Sleep has now developed and begun distributing a new “outage mode” feature. According to co-founder Alexandra Zatarain, this update enables the app to connect directly with Pod devices via Bluetooth whenever cloud services are unavailable. She confirmed that during any future outages, users will still be able to open the app, power the Pod on or off, adjust temperature settings, and return the bed to a flat position.
During the AWS incident, many customers reported being trapped with whatever settings were last active. One Reddit user shared, “I woke up too hot in the middle of the night last night and kept double-tapping like a maniac to adjust the temp down since I wasn’t getting any haptic feedback. I only found out why after I got up in the morning.” They added that while Autopilot features relying on backend servers might reasonably fail, the inability to make local adjustments felt “ridiculous and completely unacceptable for such a high-end (and expensive) product.”
Franceschetti assured users that all Eight Sleep devices were operational again by Tuesday and emphasized the company’s commitment to implementing a permanent solution. “We will work the whole night+24/7 to build an outage mode so the problem will be fixed extremely quickly,” he stated. This swift response comes after years of customer feedback requesting offline control options for the premium smart bedding system.
(Source: The Verge)
