The Yelp mess

Yelp has made a mess in San Francisco.  The S.F. Chronicle ran a piece about the imperious way that Yelp has been removing business listings because other businesses have written positive referrals. 

Sheer stupidity.  Small business people appreciate other small businesses more than ordinary people and they understand the value of recommendations, so they help each other.  That is honesty that only a bureaucratic incompetent could fail to recognize.

Most Internet companies are started and run by managerial incompetents.  You only learn management by working for a good manager and these bimbos have never had a job before.

According to the S.F. Chronicle a law suit is on the way, but that is irrelevant.  Thousands of people sued Pay Pal for the same type of business malpractice and it had no effect.  The suits take too long, only the lawyers make money and Peter Thiel and his crooked partners sold the company to eBay for $billions long before the lawsuit got to court.

Yelp has plenty of money and will not waste time responding to a law suit.

The best strategy for the small businesses involved is get together and agree to have each person and their friends send a comment to every blog, every website, that could possibly be relevant to the subject of Yelp.

Not only will that keep a big staff at Yelp busy, it will cost Yelp money and will destroy their reputation in less than three months.

Comments

[Popeye Mover]

I work for a moving company in Los Angeles and my boss actually paid to have sponsership. Now, as with most businesses we have good reviews and bad ones. However, in the past month I have watched 3 different 5 star reviews from happy customers of ours be taken off our profile within 48 hours of them being posted. When I call our account manager at yelp to explain why this is I get told that it's because either the customer removes it themselves (which they didn't because I asked the people who posted it if that were the case and they said no) or it was due to account inactivity from the poster. So that leads me to believe that the only way a review (especially a postive one) can stay on the profile is that the poster has to log ito their account everyday.

Now I got on a conference call with the account manager and their engineering supervisor and asked them this. I was told that the program used to filter reviews is an algorithm based program and that they don't know how the process works. Furthermore it is proprietary information that they aren't allowed to share with me. So basically, they don't know how it works nor would they tell if they did. In the mean time, our reviews that are positive which could have an impact on business for us goes down the toilet while negative reviews stay one there even though those to posted the negative reviews haven't even logged in to their Yelp account since they posted it.

Help me make sense of this bullshit!!!!

[Mike Jorgenson]

I agree with most of the comments here. However, don't you people work and have real lives? Who has the time to write all of these meaningless reviews? No wonder the U.S. is on its way to becoming a Third World country.

[Janet]

Yelp is a complete racket! I have had eight 5 star reviews removed but one disgruntled associate loses her job and spend the next two months becoming an elite yelper just so she can post a negative review about my business. And, it will never be removed. Now they call weekly to get me to advertise on their site. They want me to pay them money to facilitate a blank bitching board for any peon to write any biased review about my business without any verification or recourse? Oh Yes, now businesses can respond but that doesn't affect the star rating which is what clients see when they do a search. I am astonished that there is no legal recourse. I am so looking forward to Yelp going down. They are greedy bastards and deserve to be sued into oblivion.

[Krissy]

At first I really liked Yelp, and I wrote lots of reviews. They made me "Elite." I went to an Elite event and I thought it was really awful and cliquish so I never went again. They keep making me Elite, though!

A few months ago, I had a negative experience at a computer repair shop in spite of all the reviews on Yelp being stellar. The computer repair shop owner is obviously in bed with Yelp, because each time someone left his store, he'd say, "Review me on Yelp!"

I wrote a bad review, and a few other bad reviews popped up as well. Within weeks, the other bad reviews disappeared, but mine remained. I think that the only reason mine remained was because I'm Elite. The other reviews were legitimate and it bothers me that they're gone. Now this computer repair shop has almost flawless ratings (aside from mine) and they shouldn't.

It's a bad site, and their reviews can't really be trusted. I wish more people knew about this.

[Rick S.]

Yelp's practices do not differ much from the "protection money" extortion practices used by the mob...and that earns them federal racketeering charges.
Hmmmm...

[Sarah]

Yelp calling for the millionth time to get my business. I told them to email details of what they had to offer. Nothing except another note saying we'd like to talk to you. So I wrote back.

Thanks, Alexander. But, several of my business friends have been burned by Yelp, and frankly I am too dumb to understand Yelp business practices. Yelp has businesses pay to be on top, you leave up all their reviews up (bad regulated to the bottom), but for businesses that do not pay Yelp, their reviews are removed, and the worst reviews brought to the top. So how is Yelp consumer driven? I can't see it.
When I put up legitimate reviews of other businesses that I use, I was vilified for having opinions about businesses that I do regular business with all the time. It was absolutely ludicrous in my mind that I would support bad businesses and that I played some kind of game. If I five star a bad business that reflects on me and my business. If I have a doctor I refer to, it's for very specific reasons, one being that I trust that person to care for my patients, not because that person is driving business my way (in the end I would harm my business and my patients if I didn't have competent, trustworthy business that I refer to).
So again excuse my incompetence, I don't understand Yelp's business model. I don't understand how it dislikes small businesses, tauts itself as a consumer run business and still says it's apart of our community. Please clarify.

Thank you,
Sarah

[Jordan Rothstein]

Yelp 'pay to play' pitch makes shops scream for help
User Generated Discontent
from: The Register

Tells how Yelp ad sales reps offer to delete negative reviews, if a small business spends 1,000s on advertising.

[Jordan Rothstein]

Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0
Local business owners say Yelp offers to hide negative customer reviews of their businesses on its web site ... for a price.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/yelp_and_the_business_of_extortion_2_0/Content?oid=927491

A friend of mine told me Yelp called her, wanting her to pay for an ad. When she didn't, her positive reviews disappeared. Just like the people in the East Bay Express story above. I had one great review on my listing, it disappeared. May have been a technical glitch, but why bother asking clients to review you, if their efforts may be wasted? Now Yelp has started calling & emailing me, to "help" me with my listing. I don't want to talk to them.

[Rick S.]

Who the heck would wear this tacky stuff anyway?
http://www.yelp.com/store

They couldn't even spring to get decent models.
They look like "Models for the Blind".

The caption for the "Make Me Yelp Hot Shorts" should instead read : "I have no ass whatsoever".

[BurtonH]

Yelp's site sucks. These children should have a playhouse of their own so they can play and boost their egos. They should not be allowed to play with adults until they learn a little class.

[Rick S.]

Thanks Michelle M -- I just calls 'em as I sees 'em.

[Michelle M.]

I meant to say Rick S. Rick S. gave the most accurate account of Yelp I've heard yet.

[Michelle M.]

Thank you for this site. I wanted to see if anybody else out there felt like I do about Yelp. What Art said was spot on (the first poster).

[Art]

if a business doesn't agree to pay their fees, yelp removes your good reviews also! Countless good reviews have disappeared while competitors seem stacked with them still. check out the businesses with 100's of good reviews versus those with only a few. Undoubtedly, the numerous reviews are for the business that succumbed to paying fees for enhanced listing services. So shockingly not only are there no or few bad reviews now, but also only a few good ones allowed to remain on some of the business listings. while others still get to keep theirs from 2 years ago and have new ones posted, competitors see their reviews drop off and go stale for declining to pay them. How can yelp.com have any credibility left as a "review" site?

[Rick S.]

I am really starting to despise Yelp.
The worst things they could have done....they did:

1) Allowing people to add others as "Friends".
2) Instituting an "Elite" class of users.

The above two has led to a cliquish society, wherein people are no longer
submitting reviews for the sake of providing information, but to appear
clever and cute to their "Inner Circle".
If Yelp members were a "lone wolf" society, a little in the way of individual
thinking might be present.

"Review of the Day" (ROTD) : What a coincidence it is that the best written,
and most informative review is usually penned by a leggy, good looking Asian lady (just sayin').

Restaurant Review Drinking Game: Take a shot each time someone:

* Chimes on and on about what is and isn't "Authentic (insert country here) Food".
Who *cares*? -- Did it TASTE good?
These grousers will slam say, Mexican food that is "Americanized", but if you
call it "Mexican - West Coast Fusion", then *that* is OK.

* Whiny wimps lamenting how their delicate and sophisticated palates were
left disappointed because their precious "Fro-Yo" was lacking (these people always
like *the* worst toppings as well).
Wow, those starving people in Africa got nothing on you.

* A mention of "Fresh Ingredients" is thrown in.

"Today in Talk" : Heaven forbid anyone seek any real advice here, because this section
is where the Rabid Mob...err...I mean "Elitists" really come into their own.
Here, they can exchange in their preferred form of journalism: "The Rapid-Fire Snark-fest"!
The one appearing the most callous and using the most "F-words" ummm..."Wins".

"Elitists" in General : Unless there is some unknown correlation between concise, clear, objective thinking and communication and Drunken Fratboys and Hot Spoiled Girls, then take their reviews for what they are: Young People Showing Off For One Another.

[drbone]

I would agree that yelp.com sucks. I also think their claim that millions of dollars have been invested into the site is a funny one.

I would advise people to stick with the established sites like citysearch, and there are new sites cropping up like fairplayreviews.com More & more of these business review sites are cropping up every day.

[Morris G.]

Yelp is so desperate to keep their review counts climbing, they allow people to write reviews about anything, not just local businesses.

For example, there are thousands of reviews of things like PMS, a newspaper boy, the moon, my mother, my penis, websites (not local), other yelp members, ad infinitum.

It’s ridiculous and no wonder people think that yelp is a humor site and not a real review web site. Nothing on it can be taken seriously any longer.

[ANGRY IN DETROIT]

OMG I turned down Yelp last week and all of a sudden bad reviews started showing up! They were VERY high pressure. One I know is from a competitor that had been deleted 2 years ago!

[A Responsible Person]

Yelp is a joke. Any numbnut can leave uninformed rants with no repercussions.
*One idiot customer's GPS couldn't lead him to my business, so he rated us one star (What?).
*We held a big "One Day Clearance" and had advertising and a phone message and a greeter at the door that emphasized "come early, limited quantities" and some genius Yelp user showed up at closing time when we were pretty well cleaned out, then posted "not much to choose from, everything looked pretty well picked through and rated us one star (you didn't come early like we suggested, Einstein).
*A customer received their product, then called their credit card company claiming they never received the item, causing a chargeback of about $350. We called her several times, and she claimed that she straightened things out with her credit card company. She never did this, she was trying to steal from us. She eventually tells us to get off her back and then says she left a negative review on Yelp and Yahoo as revenge (revenge for her trying to defraud the credit card company?). Her rant on Yahoo never took hold, but it's still there on Yelp. We didn't even know that Yelp existed when she made her threat. This b***h, Manisha Chiulani of Sunnyvale, is the one who registered us on Yelp to start with. Like everyone else, we get our 4 star reviews, but somehow, only the one star reviews, including this fake one, show up regularly. It'll stay this way until I pay to advertise on Yelp, I suppose. Maybe I can pay Yelp with Manisha's credit card, he-he.
*Twice we've had customers order merchandise and then left bad reviews on Yelp because "I haven't received my stuff". Turns out they left the reviews BEFORE the estimated arrival dates of their orders, clearly written on their receipts, and clearly explained verbally to them when they made the purchase.
So these idiots can say whatever they please, and the business can't defend itself? What a bunch of hooey! Yelp sucks!

[Buckster SF]

These people must have no clue. How the heck can they determine what reviews are "legit"? And the fact that they leave ridiculous ones up is insane. My wife got her 2 stars review (not even anything bad - just a so-so review) removed for no reason. Oddly enough all of the 5 star reviews from one time writers were left in place.

Its a scam and I don't know anyone anymore who takes it seriously.

And i love the idiot who says they "have avoided bad doctors" because of Yelp. if you're yusing Yelp for medical referrals you generally get what you deserve.

[gaetano]

PHILLY YELP! is a pathetic place.
http://phillymarketcafe.blogspot.com/2009/02/yelp-philly.html

[Jay]

I agree that yelp seems to have some very suspicious activities going on. I run a small business in Los Angeles and everytime a yelp sales rep calls and we do not take the call or we decline to pay, we can count on a negative review to pop up on yelp by the next day or two. This has happenned at least 6 times, maybe more.

Also, we used to get mostly only 4 and 5 star reviews, a few 3's and little to none 1's or 2's.... that is.... until we started to get calls from yelp sales people in June of 08. We have decided to not advertised with them and since then we have recieved thirteen 1 star reviews in 6 months, again usually right after a decline to give yelp any money.

Coincidence? - I highly doubt it. I used to think it was just that, but it started to get pretty obvious after the 3rd time.

We have been in business for over 35 years and our product did not suddenly go sour in 6 months. We used to let it bother us because we thought it was real, but now we just wait for the 1 star review to come... yup, right after the yelp sales call.

[Kathy]

My husband and I are both small business owners. Yelp has removed ALL of his reviews and all but one of mine now. They gave me the same response when I questioned. Thease were all legit reviews. As a member of Yelp for Business, I can see on Yelp's charts that this has greatly affected how many clicks our businesses get.

I have also found that businesses that are "sponsored" meaning the business is paying Yelp to be higher up on the list are not having the reviews removed. Additionally, I have seem business that have posted on the web that Yelp offered to remove bad reviews or place them at the bottom of the reviews if they paid the sponsor fee. This information was obtained be reading posts online and on yelp.

I am really beginning to question the ethics at Yelp.

[ingrid]

YELP staff/management/employees are the most AWFUL.
My neighbor worked there and hated it, she stated they ARE irresponsible!
Support techs and staff play around with business profiles by
"claiming the business" so owner is not able to REMOVE listing(bad reviews).
They play around with photos added (switching).

I did read there TERMS of SERVICES which only states
there right under the First Amendment.
BUT HAVE NO MENTION of TORT LAW (defamation/slander/liable).
Especially for reviews written with:
"INTENT TO HARM and DAMAGE" an individual character (punitive damages).

Haha, and they know better not put place any phone numbers on there website,
or any contact information for RISK MANAGEMENT.
Fraud Accounts are setup by reviewer with intent to purposely
harm a business or business owner. So the "claim your business" link is pointless.

I am apalled and some of the horrendous reviews which are obviously written to damage
a busness owner credibility.

YELP (company values)REALLY REALLY SUCKS!

[noname]

As a 'disgruntal customer' Yelp is a ripoff.
ALL the places that have great reviews, and I went to were crappy and had rude employees. I wrote my negative review and it got deleted, even if it was in the guidelines.
AS for the places with bad reviews, *who actually cleaned up there act* I had a great experience left a positive review and it was deleted. Totally unfair.
Yelp.com os a ripoff both ways.