Petlibro accused of "gaslighting" users over smart feeder outage
After an overnight server outage disrupted its smart pet feeders, Petlibro faced criticism from users over poor communication and conflicting claims about whether devices kept feeding pets while offline.
On Wednesday night, Petlibro's development team identified a cache issue and temporarily disabled service to fix it. Around 11:43 pm PT, a fix was implemented and service was reactivated. Company representative Wu said the team monitored performance overnight as devices reconnected, with full pre-failure performance confirmed the next morning after observing a complete demand cycle.
Criticism over communication
Multiple users online said they were unaware Petlibro was experiencing technical issues because they received no emails, with one Reddit user calling the response "atrocious customer service." Wu's blog post stated that during the outage, Petlibro sent five emails to active customers with connected devices and posted four updates across Reddit and Instagram. The company also created a status page, which it said would remain online going forward.
Dispute over offline feeding
One of the most contentious issues involves Petlibro's claim that its smart feeders carry out scheduled feedings even without an internet connection. Several users reported that this did not happen during the outage. Wu wrote that pre-scheduled routines, including feeding and self-cleaning, functioned independently of the app for the vast majority of devices, and that the company was reviewing isolated reports where a routine may not have worked as expected.
Given the conflicting accounts about emails and offline functionality, some users accused Petlibro of "gaslighting" its customer base. Critics argued that during a crisis, a company should avoid downplaying the scope of an incident, since telling affected users that offline schedules continued running when theirs did not only fuels further frustration.
