CHENNAI: After repeated complaints about poor service fail to resolve the issues that they were facing, a customer adopted an innovative move to take telecom major Bharti Airtel: she/he started a website airtelblack.com where unhappy customers can share their own “Airtel horror stories”.
Such was the impact of the move that it soon went viral, even entering the world of memes, as the issue seems to have resonated with a large number of frustrated customers.
After the webpage became popular, its owner took to social media platform Reddit to explain why such a step was taken. According to the post, the customer tried to resolve this issue with the company but the issue was not solved – “for nearly 30 f**king days straight”.
“I have 3 ISPs, so my work didn't die. But my office network (running on their Static IP) was completely useless. So I decided to return the exact pain they gave me - with interest,” the person said in the post.
The experience was an “Airtel horror story”, it said, which led to the creation of the webpage to highlight similar complaints from fellow Airtel users. It invited people who have faced problems with the customer service to share their experience with factual evidence.
After airtelblack.com went viral, the telecom company's HQ contacted the person, refunded the 30 days, "and begged me nicely to take the site down. I said 'sure'... kinda," said the post.
It said the site would automatically log out on June 19, 2026, but would return if it receives more verified complaints from the customers. The website's creator claims that the complaints will be checked before publishing. The message said that automated online tools have been set up to gather and to show such complaints online.
“They gave me 30 days of pain. I’m returning 3x the pain, automated and on autopilot."
Airtel is yet to issue an official statement to the claims made on the website so far. The identity of the person who created the site and dependability of the complaint remains unclear. But that has not stopped the social media post from going viral. It does seem that the issues he raised has found a lot of resonance.