We understand that the recent outage caused serious concern, especially for those of you who rely on our products to care for your pets while away from home. Below are our answers to the questions raised most frequently by this community.
This FAQ is based on the information currently confirmed by our teams. We will update it as additional technical findings and customer-support policies are finalized.
1. What caused the outage, and why did the service fail again after the initial recovery?
Based on current confirmation, the outage was caused by an issue with our cloud services. A backlog of data requests overloaded system memory and interrupted device services.
After we initially restarted the cloud service, a large number of devices reconnected and the system began processing the accumulated requests from the outage. This sudden surge overwhelmed connection capacity and caused the system to fail again.
We then conducted a broader investigation, identified and patched an underlying cache issue, and restored services incrementally instead of bringing everything back online at once. We marked the incident resolved after traffic returned to normal levels and the system remained stable through a full peak-usage cycle.
2. When was the main outage resolved?
According to our published incident timeline, normal demand levels and system stability were restored on August 12. We changed the incident status to resolved at 7:39 PM Pacific Time after the system had completed a stable peak-usage cycle.
However, we recognize that some devices continued to experience secondary connectivity or operational issues after the main cloud outage was resolved. We are continuing to review these individual reports.
3. What should I do if my device remains offline or does not work normally?
The outage disrupted communication between devices, the App, and our cloud services. After the main service was restored, some devices did not reconnect correctly and continued to appear offline.
If your device remains offline, press and hold the device’s Reset button, then bind it to the Petlibro App again.
For the AF109 Polar Wet Food Feeder, feeding schedules must be set up again after the device is reset and rebound. For other feeder models, schedules previously saved to our servers should synchronize with the feeder again after it reconnects.
If the device still cannot connect or operate normally after rebinding, please submit a support request through Petlibro App → Me → Feedback. When possible, select the option to upload device logs so our technical team can investigate the issue more efficiently.
4. Why did some feeders miss or delay meals if feeding schedules were stored locally?
After receiving reports of missed or delayed feedings, we conducted a deeper investigation and found that offline behavior varied depending on the feeder model and device state. Schedules successfully stored on some feeders could continue to run, but several conditions may have affected their execution:
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A scheduled feeding may have occurred without a corresponding record appearing in the App. Because reporting and logging services were disrupted, a missing or “Unknown” record does not necessarily mean food was not dispensed.
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Some feeder models have limited local timekeeping while offline. Without a cloud connection, their internal clocks may become less accurate over time, affecting when scheduled feedings occur.
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Some feeder models rely more heavily on cloud connectivity to maintain accurate time, so scheduled feedings may not have continued correctly while offline.
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If a feeder was unplugged or lost power while offline, scheduled feedings may have been delayed. Repeated power interruptions over a longer period could cause these delays to accumulate until the device reconnected and synchronized its time.
We have identified underlying issues and are prioritizing improvements to make scheduled feeding more reliable in situations like this. We understand how serious a missed or delayed feeding can be. If your feeder did not operate as expected, please contact Customer Support so we can review your device individually.
5. Can the App reliably confirm whether a scheduled feeding actually occurred?
During the outage, affected feeding records would generally appear as “Unknown,” “Failed,” or may not appear at all, rather than being shown as “Successful.”
However, an App record alone cannot confirm whether food was actually dispensed. Depending on the feeder model and device state, a scheduled feeding may have occurred, been delayed, or not run correctly while the device was offline. Power interruptions may also have affected scheduled feeding.
While cloud services are unavailable, feeding can be confirmed only by checking the food bowl directly or using a separate camera that does not rely on Petlibro cloud services.
We understand how important it is to know that your pet has been fed on time, especially when you are away.
6. Could resetting, unbinding, reconnecting, or restarting a device affect its feeding schedule?
Yes, but the effect varies by feeder model and action taken.
For most dry-food feeder models, resetting or rebinding the device may clear the schedule stored locally. However, schedules previously saved to our servers should synchronize with the feeder again after it is successfully reconnected.
For the Polar Wet Food Feeder, feeding schedules must be set up again after the device is reset or rebound.
Simply unplugging or restarting a feeder does not normally remove its schedule. However, if this occurs while the feeder is offline, it may affect the device’s timekeeping and delay scheduled feedings. Repeated power interruptions over a longer period may cause these delays to accumulate until the device reconnects and synchronizes its time.
Schedules created or changed during the outage may not have been saved successfully. We recommend reviewing your current schedule in the App once the device is back online.
7. Can missing feeding records, activity records, notifications, or videos be recovered?
No.
During the outage, some device information was not successfully generated, reported, or written to the cloud. This may include feeding records, operation history, litter box records, notifications, cloud recordings, and highlight videos.
If the original data was never successfully generated or uploaded, we may not have the source information required to reconstruct it. In some cases, a device may have completed an action even though the corresponding App record cannot be recovered.
8. What should users do if cloud storage, AI features, or subscription benefits are still unavailable?
After the App was restored, we identified and repaired a number of related cloud-service and account-entitlement issues.
If cloud storage, AI features, video services, or subscription benefits are still not working normally, please contact Customer Support. We will review each affected account and device individually and work through the remaining cases one by one.
9. Why did some registered users not receive outage emails?
During the outage, our email updates were primarily sent to customers who had at least one connected device and had recently used the Petlibro App. For the final resolution email, we expanded the recent-activity window to reach a broader audience.
Not every registered account was eligible to receive these emails. Users who had previously unsubscribed were opted out of all Petlibro emails, including service updates. Some emails also could not be delivered because of missing or invalid addresses, previous hard bounces, spam classifications, or other email-suppression conditions.
Across the five outage updates, the average delivery rate was approximately 99.27%. The final resolution email had a delivery rate of approximately 99.24%. This indicates that the primary limitation was email eligibility and reachability, rather than a widespread delivery failure after the emails were sent.
We are reviewing how to improve email preferences so customers can receive critical service updates separately from marketing communications.
10. Why were notifications delayed, and how will customers be informed about future incidents?
The App itself was affected by the outage, which limited the reliability of in-App communication. We subsequently activated a status page and linked it from our website homepage.
We have committed to maintaining our Service Status Page as a permanent website feature. We are also working on improved monitoring, capacity forecasting, and earlier warning mechanisms so we can identify incidents and communicate updates sooner.
11. What are we doing in the short term to reduce the risk of another outage?
We are putting clearer incident-response, escalation, and rollback procedures in place so teams can act faster and restore service more safely.
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Improving our incident recovery procedures. We are strengthening our incident-response SOPs so we can respond faster to issues, including unexpected AWS infrastructure failures.
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Expanding service redundancy. We are adding backup capacity to reduce the number of services affected by a single failure and restore them more quickly.
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Continuously improving and optimizing service reliability to reduce the likelihood of similar incidents.
12. What are our longer-term infrastructure plans?
Our longer-term goal is to make essential pet-care services more resilient and prevent a problem in one area from affecting the entire platform.
We are working on:
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Separating critical services, so an issue in one function is less likely to spread to others.
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Adding rate limits, circuit breakers, and service degradation controls to protect essential device functions during abnormal traffic or system failures.
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Improving monitoring and alerts so we can detect, locate, and respond to problems earlier.
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Strengthening message processing to reduce server pressure and ensure critical device commands are prioritized.
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Expanding performance testing and incident drills before releases and infrastructure changes.
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Upgrading or replacing higher-risk services and components to reduce the likelihood of similar incidents.
13. Will we provide a truly cloud-independent fail-safe?
We understand how important it is for pets to be fed on time and for pet parents to have peace of mind, especially when they are away. We are considering ways to improve the experience and provide greater reassurance when cloud services are unavailable.
14. Was this outage caused by a cyber attack? Were there any data breaches during the incident?
The confirmed cause was a cloud service issue involving a backlog of data requests, system-memory overload, connection-capacity pressure, and an underlying cache issue.
Based on the investigation conducted to date, no evidence has been found that this incident was a security incident or that any customer information was exposed.
