AWS crash causes $2k Smart Beds to overheat and get stuck upright

A major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on October 20 had the unexpected side effect of causing chaos in bedrooms across the US, as owners of Eight Sleep’s $2,000+ ‘Pod’ mattress covers found their smart beds had no offline mode and were stuck at high temperatures and odd positions in the night.

The outage began around 3 am ET, when AWS reported “increased error rates and latencies” in its US-EAST-1 region. By mid-morning, Downdetector had logged more than eight million reports of disruptions affecting apps, games, and banking platforms.

Eight Sleep’s products rely on cloud connectivity to control temperature and track biometric data. When AWS went down, users lost access to the app that manages its water-cooled coils, leaving them stuck with whatever setting was last active.

Some beds overheated, others stopped cooling altogether, and several users said their devices became completely unresponsive.

One viral post from tech enthusiast Alex Browne summed up the absurdity after his Pod locked itself nine degrees above room temperature. “Backend outage means I’m sleeping in a sauna,” he wrote. “Eight Sleep confirmed there’s no offline mode yet, but they’re working on it.”

Another user explained their bed was stuck in an inclined position.

Some described the beds as being “bricked” and demanded a fallback option that works without an internet connection. The company has previously faced criticism over security flaws, including a 2024 report that found exposed AWS keys could have allowed remote access to customer devices.

AWS said normal operations were restored by around 6 am ET, with most affected services back online soon after.

CEO Matteo Franceschetti said, “We will work the whole night+24/7 to build an outage mode so the problem will be fixed extremely quickly.”