The AWS Outage Bricked People's $2,700 Smartbeds

[littlemissmartypants]

The AWS Outage Bricked People’s $2,700 Smartbeds
Matthew Gault

Oct 22, 2025 at 9:40 AM

Sleepers snoozing in Eight Sleep smartbeds had a bad night on Monday when a major outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) caused their beds to malfunction. Some were left with the bed’s heat blasting, others were left in a sitting position and unable to recline. One woman said her bed went haywire and she had to unplug it from the wall.

At around 3 a.m. ET on Monday morning the US-EAST-1 AWS cluster went down and screwed up internet connected services across the planet. Customers for the banks Lloyds and Halifax couldn’t access their accounts. United Airlines check-ins stopped functioning. And people who rest in Eight Sleep beds awoke to find their mattresses had turned against them.

An Eight Sleep bed is a smart bed that starts at $2,700. Users provide their own mattress and Eight Sleep sells them a mattress cover and a “Pod” that acts as the brain of the system. If customers want to spend a few thousand more, they can get a base that adjusts the position of the mattress, provides biometric sleeping data, and heats and cools the sleeper. Customers must also subscribe to a service for Eight Sleep, which ranges from $17 to $33 a month.

Eight Sleep runs on the cloud and when the servers go down or the customer’s internet goes out it bricks the bed. There’s no offline mode. Customers have complained about the lack of an offline mode for a while, but the AWS outage focused their rage.
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https://www.404media.co/the-aws-outage-bricked-peoples-2-700-smartbeds/

[Attilatheblond]

1. Seems to be a lot of people eager to throw money at devices that do not assure them privacy or personal freedom

'Alexia, get your snooping ass outta here, and take all your overbearing 'smart' devices with you!'

[ananda]

4. I know. It seems insane to me when..

you can always use an electric blanket.

[Zackzzzz]

7. I'll take the Alpaca Blanket, Please.

You only need one.
Our electricity is unreliable where we live and I don't tolerate wool.

[ananda]

9. I have some like that too.

They are also attractive.

[Raven123]

5. Exactly! I avoid "smart" devices if possible

Smart = loss of control, privacy and your money.

[Midnight Writer]

2. Why the hell would anyone want their damned mattress connected to the internet?

And pay a monthly fee for the privilege?

Uh, oh. My inner curmudgeon is coming out again.

[democratsruletheday]

3. Entitled and obtuse is a bad combo...

I laugh at their 'misfortune'

[Ocelot II]

6. Well, there's a product I didn't know existed and I still know I don't need or want.

And even if I did need or want it, it seems really stupid to make it controllable only via the Internet, for reasons that are obvious now if they weren't before. If you really need a bed that does those things why not have a backup mode where you could control it with a direct Bluetooth connection?

[Attilatheblond]

8. America needs an antidote for "Gadget Addiction"

We cut services to the less economically blessed.
We do nothing about the issue that minimum wage, or even most wages, do not allow for a safe standard of living.
We cut taxes for the people who need tax cuts the least.
But BIG BUSINESS is always finding ways to relieve foolish people who are economically blessed of their spending money.

A carnival of crazy.

[TheBlackAdder]

10. Dang! When my Sleep Number data mines, it does it for free. No stinkin' $33 a month.