When I opened my own office a couple of years ago, one of the first things I did was sign up for a bunch of online registries....to include Yelp. Seems like a no brainer to help get your name out there. That is about the extent of my involvement with Yelp, until yesterday.

Toward the end of the day I get a call from them congratulating me for my first "five star review" and now being a "five star business." They wanted to set up a 25 minute appointment to show me how I could better use Yelp to work for me (sell me ads).

So, I had 25 minutes at the moment, let's do it now. Sure enough, there is a great review from a client I had about a month ago, completely unsolicited.

Well this 25 minute consult turned into more than 1.5 hours as they gave me the hard sell on their advertising matrix. Could not skip to the price point despite my requests. And the pricing was far beyond what I was willing to pay, and they wanted a year long contract, which in and of itself would have been a deal breaker for me.

So, I go back and look at my Yelp listing today, and sure enough the review is gone. I long in, and I find it hidden as "not recommended." They have an explanation that their computers know how to spot suspicious reviews and they hide them. So their computers didn't spot it when they were looking to sell me advertising, but when I politely declined, suddenly that review is no longer good enough.

What a disgraceful way for a business to conduct itself.

> ✔


DMc : l

Can you post a review of Yelp itself?

Based on this, I'm sure if you could they wouldn't post it!

My facebook and google are getting lit up with yelp ads to add to the insult. A lot of folk comment on the facebook adds with similar complaints. What a shady way to do business. EFFem.

The same thing happened to us with our restaurant around ten yeas ago. We had several five star reviews and they wanted to come over to discuss advertising with them. I said no thanks and they hid all of our five star with the same excuse that they could not confirm the truthfulness of the reviews. They told me they now thought I had written them. Needless to say I do not put much trust in Yelp.

There is nothing more infuriating than everybody "yelping" a place they haven't tried in the past.

How about this? Try the fugking hamburger, and if you don't like it, you can eat something else four hours from now.






Clark

This has been happening for many years now. I'd personally not put myself on yelp, because now that you have denied them their extortion fees, I can almost guarantee that you will be getting baseless, negative reviews. If you confront them about this, they will say, "since you are not a 'premium member' or whatever, that they cannot do anything", but if you agree to pay them, they will allow you to remove negative reviews... It's typical jewry.

I had no idea that's the way Yelp operated until someone mentioned it a few weeks ago. It's pretty easy not to use Yelp.

I have never used yelp.

I signed up. I used their reviews and provided a few. Interestingly just after I posted earlier in this thread I got an email from them. I clicked unsubscribe. They asked for feedback, so I let them have it.

Yelp is for idiots

South park did an episode on yelp that pretty well mirrors my opinion of their reviewers.

Actually, it's not. I use it all the time for restaurants. Have found many a little Mom & Pop with great food, as well as good new joints that pop up. Have found it be one of the best ways to search out and find new places to eat, without being a slave to the chains.

Plan on using it on the road trip Mannlicher and I have coming up very soon to Wyoming.

I use it to for reviews for businesses on occasion, but not much.

Just think, one of those little Mom and Pop restaurants will have Yelp try to extort money from them holding your 5 star rating hostage until they get it. If they don't get the money, your rating gets killed!

So YOU'RE the guy who responds to sales calls and keeps them bothering the rest of us....

I thought this was going to be a turkey thread. 🤔

Damned near everything is that way. I worked for a place that strove for JD Power awards, and to this day anything that says highly rated by JD Power I steer away from.

Have an orchard, order many of the trees online. This year, I get two runt trees, pruned like [bleep], and left a review stating such...and have also left good reviews on other trees. Only the good reviews made it. Done with them too, it's just not being honest.

I have this friend. He's recently retired early from a cushy job with a big software company. He and his wife sold all their possessions and are traveling. They have become preferred Yelpers. Their reviews are so highly esteemed that they get invited to openings and special appreciation parties at restaurants. They're living the life on the weight of their opinions of food.

Yikes! What the restaurant owners must have to do to make folks like that happy!


BTW: I was hoping this was going to be a turkey hunting thread as well. My favorite bunch of hens have come back to roost about 200 yards from the back of the house. They gave me a serenade at flydown the other morning. There must be too many hens of the same age in that bunch-- can't make up their pea-brains whose in charge.

See

What's funny to me is that so many apparently believe their opinion matters. Who gives a flying f&ck about a stranger's review of a something?

Sure there could be reviews done by honest, well meaning, albeit self absorbed people. Or they could be left by old pricks like Manlicker.

To a degree, I gotta agree with Scott.

Anyone with an axe to grind immediately gets on the internet and blares it out to the world. When I see a bad review I weigh it with the number of good reviews, plus what I know about dealing with the public....which is a chore on any given day.

Ingwe and steelhead nailed it. Yelp is the biggest scam and review site for complaints. We have a family run business that's been in the service industry since 1905, same location for 62 years. First thing a new potential customer says is they've heard great things, but our yelp reviews aren't great! Try to explain we attempt to make things right, but general public sometimes only hear what they want. Yelp doesn't exactly let you lay out a rebuttal and no chance it will be at the top. If we don't meet a customer's demands, first threat is yelp. We just laugh it off now, never have had one reverse the review after they had issue resolved. We had a customer use us, go on yelp and bitch. Four months later used us again and went and bitched. Found out who he was.....since most hide under some name. He never personally made an attempt to discuss any issues. Mind you, this is the same guy who yelped the [bleep] hot dog at Costco........you talk about WTF.

TFF

Yelp is a 'voice' for voiceless idiots.

I once gave RepairClinic.com an online review because they were able to Yelp me out!!!

I don't either but Yelp must be paying Google a lot of money because a search for almost anything will start off with a lot of Yelp reviews.

See what? That you're some jagoff troll who thinks his angry elf opinion matters more than the sum of everybody else's?

GFY.

Never seen that personally and I've been using Yelp for restaurant lookups for years.

Not saying it couldn't happen.

It's a tool. It gets missused often, like many tools. Certainly doesn't mean it has no merit.

Reminds me of folks that bitch about social media.......on social media. Lol.

Sounds like Fraud to me.

Yelp is what it is, simply a reflex. Stub your toe and you yelp, just like your dog does when it runs into a wasp nest. There is no thinking involved.

Seems pretty close to a "protection racket" to me, if you really think about it.....

"you wouldn't want something horrible to happen to your reputation, would you?".

Just use google.