They can happen, they do happen, the question is how often.
My own personal requirement for MFOP (maintenance free operating period) for these type of use cases in this price range is at least six months, and preferably 12. Which is the same kind of performance I would expect from a dishwasher or another home appliance. I don’t expect it to be perfect and I don’t expect it to last forever, but I do expect it to be “set and forget” for much of the time.
I do get that kind of performance from Amazon echo, the Phillips hue bridge, Lutron Caseta switches, Logitech Harmony, and Apple HomeKit.
But since November 2015 I have yet to go more than 10 days without smartthings requiring some kind of hands on maintenance or having some kind of outage. (I myself am quadriparetic with very limited hand function, so I have to pay someone else even to pop the batteries in a device. That makes me very aware of maintenance requirements. )
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Bug:_First_Reports
Even if you just check the official status page, they’ve had at least one outage a month in that time except I think for January 2017. And that’s not counting the planned outages where they shut things down in order to do firmware updates (which cannot be delayed or refused by individual users).
So over that time I have moved all of my critical use cases to other systems.
I still like SmartThings for convenience notifications, which it does better than pretty much any of the competition in the same price range. Stuff like getting a reminder if the guestroom window is open and the guest has left the house and rain is expected. But I no longer use it for anything where reliability is required.
Obviously this is a decision that each person has to make for themselves, but SmartThings’ own product usage guidelines say it’s not a good match for anything that requires high accuracy or reliability, and I’ve learned to accept that as true.
https://www.smartthings.com/guidelines
Data accuracy and consistency from SmartThings sensors, including those provided by SmartThings directly, resold by SmartThings, or supported by SmartThings, is not guaranteed. Therefore, you should not rely on that data for any use that impacts health, safety, security, property or financial interests.
So I do expect this outage to be resolved in a day or two. But I also expect there will be another outage next month, if not before. Not everyone is affected by every problem, but most people are eventually affected by some.
So each person has to make their own assessment as to how SmartThings will work best for them. It is a very powerful, flexible system at low-cost with a great vision. When it works as intended, it is hands down my favorite Home automation system (pun intended ).
But for use cases which need to have high reliability day in and day out, I use other platforms. They all have pros and cons, but there are some where I am trading off flexibility for reliability, and that just works better for me in some specific use cases. And I don’t attach anything to SmartThings which would be unsafe if unexpectedly left on/off for 24 hours unattended. But that’s just me.
FWIW