On the evening of the 12th, an office worker, a person surnamed Kim (32), tried to turn on the living room air conditioner through LG Electronics' smart home platform "LG ThinQ" app but failed to control it remotely as the message "server consolidation failure" appeared. That same day, a person surnamed Kang (38) also could not set the scheduled shutdown feature due to an app error. Kang said, "The app wouldn't run, so I fell asleep with the air conditioner on and woke up at dawn because it was cold."
As smart home services that control home appliances with a single smartphone spread, consumer inconvenience is growing as errors continue to occur on the key platform that consolidations appliances and users.
According to online communities on the 15th, the LG ThinQ app experienced access disruptions from 9:30 p.m. on the 12th to 1 a.m. on the 13th, and the error recurred from 10:30 p.m. on the 13th to midnight on the 14th. For some users, an error screen appeared instead of the app's main screen, or they could not connect at all.
During the heat wave on the 13th–14th, about 400 reviews were posted on Google Play Store complaining of app access and air-conditioner control errors. Users claimed that for the past two to three weeks, nighttime app access delays and appliance linkage errors had repeated. The main symptoms were infinite loading, registered appliance consolidation disconnections, and repeated notices of "server maintenance."
As errors were concentrated mainly from nighttime to dawn, not only air conditioners but also the remote control and detailed settings of ThinQ-linked appliances such as washing machines, air purifiers, stylers, and refrigerators were disrupted.
LG Electronics identified the cause of the outage on the 12th as insufficient server capacity and the cause on the 13th as a program error. An LG Electronics official explained, "Because users flocked in the heat, server capacity was insufficient on the night of the 12th, so we immediately expanded it, and on the 13th, even after the expansion, users flocked again, causing a program error."
However, LG Electronics believes that some complaints raised after the 14th likely stemmed from individual communication environments or usage conditions rather than the company's servers.
LG Electronics regards the ThinQ app's remote-control function as an auxiliary feature rather than the appliance's original performance. However, experts note that in a situation where Internet of Things (IoT) appliances have become commonplace, app and server errors should not be viewed merely as disruptions to an add-on service.
Kim Siwol, a consumer studies professor at Konkuk University, said, "In the past, the app was an auxiliary means that replaced a remote control, but in today's IoT environment, consumer perceptions and product usage patterns have changed," and added, "If app errors can lead to financial burdens such as electricity bills, improvements must be made more quickly."