When Amazon’s cloud servers went dark this week, thousands of people discovered an uncomfortable truth: their premium smart beds had stopped obeying commands.
Eight Sleep customers found themselves trapped with their high-tech mattress systems locked at whatever settings happened to be active when the outage began.
The disruption left users sweltering under blankets or awkwardly propped up at angles they couldn’t adjust. Social media platforms and online forums quickly filled with frustrated posts from customers who had paid upwards of $2,000 for their temperature-regulating sleep systems, only to find them completely unresponsive during the Amazon Web Services failure.
“The AWS outage has impacted some of our users since last night, disrupting their sleep,” Eight Sleep CEO Matteo Franceschetti acknowledged in a statement on Tuesday. “That is not the experience we want to provide and I want to apologize for it.”
The problem highlighted a fundamental design choice that had long troubled some customers. The company’s Pod mattress toppers require constant cloud connectivity to function, with all temperature and elevation controls running through the Eight Sleep app. When Amazon’s infrastructure faltered, that connection vanished, leaving no way for users to make adjustments locally.
One customer described desperately tapping their device throughout the night trying to lower the temperature, receiving no response. Others reported being stuck at extreme heat levels, with one claiming their bed had locked itself at 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Even senior tech reviewers weren’t spared the inconvenience, with some waking up to find their beds frozen in an upright position.
The company moved quickly to address the vulnerability. Within 24 hours, Eight Sleep began rolling out what it calls “outage mode” to all Pod devices. According to co-founder Alexandra Zatarain, the new feature enables the app to communicate directly with the mattress systems via Bluetooth when cloud services become unavailable.
“During an outage, you’ll still be able to open the app, turn the Pod on/off, change temperature levels, and flatten the base,” Zatarain explained.
The swift response represents a notable shift for the company, which had faced complaints about the lack of offline controls for years. Customers who pay monthly subscription fees starting at $17 to access their Pod’s advanced features had questioned why such expensive equipment required constant internet connectivity for basic functions.
By Wednesday, Franceschetti confirmed that all Eight Sleep devices were operational again and assured customers that the company was working around the clock to deploy the outage protection across its entire product line.