A Cheltenham man remained trapped in his own bathroom for seven hours yesterday after a BT broadband outage rendered every device between him and freedom completely inoperative.
Marcus Webb, 34, entered the bathroom at 6:47am for what he described as a “routine morning situation.” By 7:03am, when his internet connection dropped, he had become a hostage to his own購investment in the connected home ecosystem.
The bathroom door, fitted with a Yale Conexis L2 smart lock controlled via the Yale Access app, requires a stable internet connection to communicate with Webb’s phone. The lock costs £279. It has a 3.2 star rating on Amazon.
Webb’s attempts to manually override the system were thwarted by the room’s Philips Hue smart lighting, which had automatically dimmed to his preferred “morning routine” setting of 12% brightness. The light switch, which previously performed the traditional function of turning lights on and off, had been replaced with a Lutron Aurora dimmer that connects only to the Hue app.
“I could just about make out the door handle in the gloom,” Webb said from his living room sofa, where he has remained since his eventual rescue. “But the lock mechanism is entirely electronic. There’s a small panel you’re meant to press. I pressed it 340 times. I counted.”
The situation was compounded by Webb’s Toto Washlet smart toilet, which refused to flush without confirming his identity through the Toto app. The device had cost him £1,850 during what he described as “a vulnerable period during lockdown.”
“It has a heated seat,” he added. “Five temperature settings.”
Webb’s partner, Jennifer Rothwell, eventually freed him using the manual key override, a small metal object that came with the smart lock and which Webb had stored in a kitchen drawer beneath several instruction manuals he had never read.
“I heard him shouting around 1pm,” said Rothwell, a pharmacist. “I’d been working a shift. I assumed he was on a work call. He does a lot of unnecessary shouting on work calls.”
BT confirmed that broadband services in the GL50 postcode area had been interrupted between 6:58am and 2:14pm due to what they described as “routine maintenance.” They had sent Webb three emails about the planned outage. All three remained unread in his inbox.
Webb’s smart home system also includes app-controlled radiators, a video doorbell, two robot vacuum cleaners, and a fridge that sends him push notifications when he is low on milk. The fridge has never been correct about the milk.
“I’m not going backwards,” Webb said when asked if he would be reconsidering his approach to home automation. “I’ve ordered a smart mirror for the bathroom. It shows the weather.”
The mirror costs £340. It requires Wi-Fi.
