Customers rage after ‘smart beds’ overheat during AWS outage

A late-night Amazon Web Services outage earlier this week caused an uncomfortable sleep for those with subscription bed services.

At around 3 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday, Amazon said it had an operational issue at one of its northern Virginia centers that was affecting 14 of its services.

While AWS hosts only 6.3% of all websites, many major app providers and online companies are reliant on the service, causing a domino effect when a wide range of its tools went offline.

‘Now, weak and fallible, I sweat.’

Not only were apps for Snapchat, McDonald’s, and even Ring doorbell cameras rendered useless for a short period, but some users of “smart beds” were put in a rather sweaty situation.

As reported by Dexerto, owners of Eight Sleep mattresses found themselves in an awkward situation when they realized their beds could not connect to their servers.

Eight Sleep provides smart mattresses that range from $2,500 to $7,000 and require a monthly subscription. It comes with a hub that powers the whole system and connects to company servers, a temperature-adjusted cover that monitors your sleep, and optional features like temperature-controlled pillow covers and blankets.

When the AWS servers went down, customers reported that some of those features were thrown out of whack.

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“Tonight I learned 8Sleep runs on AWS,” a customer wrote on X. “Now, weak and fallible, I sweat on top of my +9 degree mattress which won’t cool.”

Another comment reported by multiple outlets was from an apparent tech enthusiast saying, “Backend outage means I’m sleeping in a sauna.”

“Eight Sleep confirmed there’s no offline mode yet, but they’re working on it,” the man added.

While more customers complained about heating issues, others cried out that their beds were “stuck in an inclined position.”

Matteo Franceschetti, Eight Sleep’s CEO, was quick to assure customers that a “fix” was incoming. Franceschetti immediately apologized for the AWS dependency and said the company would roll out a correction that would involve “outage-proofing” the smart furniture.

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On Wednesday, the CEO announced Eight Sleep’s new “Backup Mode,” which allows the hub to connect through Bluetooth when “cloud infrastructure or Wi-Fi is unavailable.”

“When an outage is detected, Backup Mode kicks in automatically, allowing you to open the app and access critical functionalities, making sure your experience is not disrupted,” Franceschetti explained.

While the new update seemingly renders online connectivity unnecessary, users were quick to point out the mass amount of data transfer that comes with an annual subscription between $200 and $400.

One X user showed that his app was shockingly transferring over 16 gigabytes’ worth of telemetry data per month.

At the same time, others showed off their own solutions to the outage, such as connecting a fish-tank cooler to a series of tubes and feeding them through a mattress.

“Fish tank cooler does not run on AWS but i do turn it on locally with a $10 homekit plug,” the budding engineer wrote.

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