Amazon yanks Sengled’s Alexa skill after a series of service outages

After more than a month of sporadic outages that left many Sengled smart bulb users struggling to control their lights, Amazon has opted to pull the skill that allowed Sengled users to control their bulbs with Alexa. 

Some Sengled bulbs may still offer Alexa control directly via Zigbee, Matter, or Bluetooth connectivity, thus bypassing the yanked Alexa skill. But Sengled bulbs that can’t be connected directly to Alexa will no longer be controllable via the voice assistant, Amazon said. 

Sengled lights and devices may still be controllable using the Sengled app or other smart home platforms, although the status of those connections still appears to be spotty. 

“We hold a high bar for the Alexa experience,” an Amazon spokesperson told TechHive. “Sengled’s Alexa skill has experienced a series of prolonged outages over the past few months that have not [been] resolved, preventing customers from being able to use Alexa to control their light bulbs. The skill will no longer be available in our skill store starting tomorrow [Thursday].” 

We’ve reached out to Sengled for comment. 

In a message on an Amazon support forum, an Amazon staffer noted that the change is “permanent,” and advised users to try connecting their Sengled bulbs directly to Alexa by turning the lights on and off five times in a row and they saying, “Alexa, discover devices.” 

Users have been complaining for weeks about spotty connectivity with their Sengled bulbs, with Inside Lighting reporting that the outages spanned the Alexa, Google Home, and Sengled apps. 

Earlier this month, Amazon sent an email to users of Sengled’s Alexa skill, nothing that the smart lighting manufacturer was having a “new” service outage and warning that Sengled bulbs might not be controllable via Alexa or the Sengled app “until the outage is resolved.” 

Over at the Sengled subreddit, users are variously pointing fingers, trading workarounds, and making plans to swap out their Sengled devices for another smart home brand. Some Sengled users blamed Amazon for the spotty performance of Sengled’s Alexa skill, others blamed Sengled, and still others are simply resigned to switching to a new smart lighting ecosystem. 

Sengled manufactures a wide range of smart lights and related accessories, including devices that connect via the Zigbee, Wi-Fi, Matter, and Bluetooth Mesh protocols. 

Sengled also offers a Zigbee hub that allows up to 64 of its Zigbee-enabled devices to connect to the Sengled Home app, as well as to Alexa, Google Assistant, Samsung SmartThings, and Apple HomeKit.