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Wink's smart home platform faces a days-long outage

The timing couldn't have been much worse.

Wink

Wink’s switch to a subscription service for its smart home platform hasn’t had the best start. The company has confirmed reports (via Android Police and The Verge) of a wide-ranging outage affecting its services, including integration with Amazon Alexa and Google Home/Nest services and even Wink.com (initially reduced to a basic landing page). The problems appear to have started on September 10th.

The company’s status page indicated that fixed had been put in place for at least some issues. However, there were still “partial” outages listed for most support as of this writing (September 12th), and “degraded performance” for both the Core and Hub frameworks.

We’ve asked Wink for comment. It’s not immediately evident what led to the problems, but the company stressed that it was “not under attack.”

The timing couldn’t be much worse for Wink. It sparked an outcry from customers when it surprised them with a subscription requirement, and it only just made the switch on July 27th. A days-long outage wouldn’t exactly endear customers, especially if they were already considering subscription-free smart home hubs.