Why Some Businesses Really Hate Yelp (thehustle.co) 115
An anonymous reader quotes Slate:
The overall argument of Billion Dollar Bully, the new documentary about Yelp released on Amazon and iTunes in May, is that Yelp extorts small business owners for advertising fees in return for helping to manage and improve reviews on their platform... Yelp has fought back against the allegations made in the film, arguing that "There has never been a connection between ratings and reviews on Yelp and buying advertising...." But the issue for small business owners has always been broader than advertising: Local businesses feel that Yelp offers no due process to resolve disputes and misunderstandings. That's because the company's standard position is to absolve itself of any responsibility to get involved....
Yelp is combating the claims made in the film by purchasing the domain BillionDollarBully.com and redirecting it to a Yelp page that explains that the company does not extort local businesses to manipulate ratings.
The Hustle argues that despite "legions" of anecdotal evidence from business owners, "the linkage between these two things ultimately can't be proven without transparency around Yelp's filtering algorithm." This is apparently leaving some restauranteurs feeling powerless and angry: In isolated bids to circumvent the "oppression" of online reviews, business owners have plunked "NO YELPERS" signs in their windows, shamed rude reviewers on Instagram, and launched anti-Yelp websites. Dan Neves, a waiter at a fine dining establishment in Austin, Texas, created YELP BULLIES EXPOSED, a private Facebook group that tracks down rude Yelpers and sends them a one-pound bag of animal feces... "I've had friends get fired over bad Yelp reviews, even if the review was untrue," says Neves.
ReviewFraud.org investigated the people interviewed for the documentary, and suggested that in some cases the real victims may be Yelp's unsuspecting reviewers. "A few negative reviewers claimed that the owner harassed them or contacted their employer to have them fired." Billion Dollar Bully raised money on Kickstarter. I was excited to see this film see the light of day. Sadly, I was disappointed... not all businesses are good, not all business owners are reputable, and not all pieces of investigative "journalism" are credible. Had the filmmakers taken a closer look at these business and other review platforms, I doubt that this movie would have been made. I've made that clear by looking at the reviews of those claiming extortion. For me, this was a massive failure and should be titled A Billion Dollar Scapegoat.
Yelp is combating the claims made in the film by purchasing the domain BillionDollarBully.com and redirecting it to a Yelp page that explains that the company does not extort local businesses to manipulate ratings.
The Hustle argues that despite "legions" of anecdotal evidence from business owners, "the linkage between these two things ultimately can't be proven without transparency around Yelp's filtering algorithm." This is apparently leaving some restauranteurs feeling powerless and angry: In isolated bids to circumvent the "oppression" of online reviews, business owners have plunked "NO YELPERS" signs in their windows, shamed rude reviewers on Instagram, and launched anti-Yelp websites. Dan Neves, a waiter at a fine dining establishment in Austin, Texas, created YELP BULLIES EXPOSED, a private Facebook group that tracks down rude Yelpers and sends them a one-pound bag of animal feces... "I've had friends get fired over bad Yelp reviews, even if the review was untrue," says Neves.
ReviewFraud.org investigated the people interviewed for the documentary, and suggested that in some cases the real victims may be Yelp's unsuspecting reviewers. "A few negative reviewers claimed that the owner harassed them or contacted their employer to have them fired." Billion Dollar Bully raised money on Kickstarter. I was excited to see this film see the light of day. Sadly, I was disappointed... not all businesses are good, not all business owners are reputable, and not all pieces of investigative "journalism" are credible. Had the filmmakers taken a closer look at these business and other review platforms, I doubt that this movie would have been made. I've made that clear by looking at the reviews of those claiming extortion. For me, this was a massive failure and should be titled A Billion Dollar Scapegoat.
The problem with Yelp is ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... people using Yelp. Just stop.
Oh, and #deletefacebook
Re:The problem with Yelp is ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Eh, I like Yelp. Lets the dumb people avoid the great local spots that tell Yelp to fuck off, allowing the rest of us to dine there in peace.
I travel a bit for work, and my strategy goes like this:
1) Find a bar with a great beer selection and good food offerings.
2) Chat up the bartender about their great beer and food.
3) Inquire where else I might find good food and beer.
4) Go there, repeat.
Want to find great food in a city? Ask someone in the food service industry. They know. But you need to get a little on their good side before they'll tell you.
I'm happy to let everyone else use Yelp.
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I can confirm your method works. A couple years ago we made a stop in Savannah on our way to Orlando. We had dinner reservations at a well-known restaurant, but went out to do some day drinking and exploring. We wound up in a perfect little dive called the Rail Pub. After a couple rounds and plenty of friendly conversation with the staff and a handful of locals, our reservations were thoroughly mocked and we were instead redirected us to place called Treylor Park. It did not disappoint!
Re: The problem with Yelp is ... (Score:4, Informative)
The problem I have spent time monitoring and reporting to Yelp is 100% fake accounts set up explicitly for the purpose of +5 and +1 starring in massive strings of the SAME EXACT REVIEW, obviously for pay.
That is THE major problem in plain sight that Yelp has yet to deal with IMO. It's a showstopper. It 100% undermines ANY possible use I have for Yelp besides maybe seeing the business hours or getting a phone number.
That's it. I would never advertise, pay to be on, look through for advice, or use their service as they would have me use it. Fuck Yelp, fuck FB, fuck Kendall. Worthless shills destroy any chance of usefulness.
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The problem I have spent time monitoring and reporting to Yelp is ...
I would never advertise, pay to be on, look through for advice, or use their service ...
Xanax, when used as directed, is a safe and effective palindrome.
Never odd or even (Score:5, Insightful)
The posting of reviews online merely exacerbates the age old problem of small business. Folks who have a negative experience with your company will be many times more likely to share a review than customers who had a good to great experience.
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I'm not convinced that's true. ...Because for some reason many people feel obliged to leave a review, and their default review is 5 stars if the place was at least ok. In fact, for that reason, only the negative reviews are useful. Of those, one must cull out people with bugs up their ass, which in my experience is about 1/3.
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And its effects are completely reversible ;)
Extortion (Score:5, Informative)
Yelp runs an extortion racket targeting small businesses. Of course people hate them!
I've seen a business get its clear and honest reviews taken down, and all of the negative ones left up despite complaints or hearsay reviews. This happened in the couple of months after the business told Yelp "No" when asked to pay for some promotional fee of some sort.
Yelp reviews are therefore unreliable.
Bad experiences (Score:2)
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Blame the reviewers. They're a bunch of know-nothings intent on posting every chance they get just to feel important. No one ever says a business is adequate and safe to use, instead the reviews treat them as either the worst experience ever or the greatest place on earth. Yelp has never had good recommendations that I felt were worth paying attention to.
Why people feel compelled to go there is beyond me. If you don't know anything about a restaurant, then just go visit it instead of worrying that there
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Most of the reviewers are from the business owner or staff. The astroturfing on Yelp is actually depleting world petroleum supplies.
Re:Extortion (Score:4, Insightful)
If Yelp's business model involves monetizing those reviewers, then there's no reason they should get a pass. They're the ones that set up the incentives within which the reviewers operate.
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So, what's a good way to address that? The basic idea of getting people to rate things (not just in extreme situations, but in common/mundane situations too) isn't a bad idea. If people actually did it, and honestly (i.e. you could somehow
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The way to address it is to not take it so seriously. Ie, the people who visit yelp should not take these reviews as gospel, so that you can't put a place out of business by putting up bad reviews. And Yelp shouldn't be a one-stop-shop for reviews, instead look around some more, ask friends what they think, see what the newspaper thinks, etc. Just look at the pictures of the food, if it looks good then go without. Maybe go to a restaurant that The problem perhaps isn't with Yelp or Amazon, but with the
Re:Extortion (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: Extortion (Score:1)
Yelp as a weapon? Third parties maybe. For every business Yelp could profit from by threats there is a legitimate business asking for service from Yelp. You'd have to be a local extortionist and you'd get noticed pretty quickly. Maybe a traveling extortionist could make a living but it's easier for criminals to find people who actually want to pay to be protected than randomly extorting people.
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I can't prove it, but I've heard reports that they do. It may well not be official policy, but some salesman who is pissed of that his commission isn't better or some such. It's still and extortion racket operated by and maintained by Yelp, whether they officially sanction it or not. (And do you have any doubt that some salesmen are pricks?)
Re: Extortion (Score:1)
Exactly, this is the issue. In November 2018 a rep calls. I tell him itâ(TM)s not right to pay to be #1, we are #1 cuz we are good. All of a sudden 80% of reviews disappeared. This is the issue. These reviews have been up for 7 years. thats a bit fishy?
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While I don't doubt that there are businesses who have had honest reviews taken down, my experience with business owners is that they will make this claim, even to their friends and family who trust their word, even when the review was in fact fake, simply because they don't think that it could have been proven to be fake.
Never ever ever ever ever believe the stories that the people in your bubble tell you. None of those stories are literally true and included all the relevant data. They were all heavily sp
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Our Facebook and Google are 4.8 and 4.7.
Why the huge difference?
In the business admin it shows that Yelp has ignored most any positive review. A small sampling... They notify us that an out of town shopper who visited us and posted a 5 star was questionable because they think we "asked" for the review (we didn't). They notify that about 20 positive reviews from locals who interact with us a lot "can'
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In the business admin it shows that Yelp has ignored most any positive review. A small sampling... They notify us that an out of town shopper who visited us and posted a 5 star was questionable because they think we "asked" for the review (we didn't). They notify that about 20 positive reviews from locals who interact with us a lot "can't be trusted to be unbiased."
That is exactly what Yelp did to the business that I mentioned. Positive reviews that had been there for a year or two came down. New reviews that were positive came down very quickly. Bad ones stayed up no matter when they were posted.
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Same Business Model as the BBB (Score:5, Interesting)
Yelp extorts small business owners for advertising fees in return for helping to manage and improve reviews on their platform
That's basically the same business model as the BBB. The BBB is 100% funded by member businesses. If a non-member gets a complaint, the BBB goes to that business and says "if you join up and pays dues then we will expire unresolved complaints after X months" (typically 12-18 months, it varies by local chapter). But if they don't pay up, the complaint stays on their record permanently.
In a perverse way, that makes business who advertise their good standing (i.e. dues-paying status) with the BBB less trustworthy than non-member businesses. Sure, occasionally there will be a dues-paying BBB member that is just so egregiously bad that the BBB can't cover it up. But that's the exception, not the rule.
If a rating organization is in any way funded by the companies they rate, their ratings aren't worth jack shit.
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The nice thing about yelp is that they edit your reviews for you, so if you are bad at grammar, it will get cleaned up for you. I'm not aware of any other service with such a feature.
So we can't actually tell that an incoherent moron is an incoherent moron and ignore their reviews.
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It's a nice business you've got there... (Score:2)
Online reviewers are so mean. But if you pay us, we will protect you from that horrible fate.
Otherwise the bad reviews could accumulate and be the first ones to show up. Nobody wants that, do you?
Yelp does a lot of scummy stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Last week my wife and I wanted to go to a restaurant and they used Yelp for reservations. OK, so we go online and make a reservation.
Two days ago we get a request to verify the reservation. We open the link and it is Yelp requiring us to sign in to confirm the reservation. Nope. We don't have Yelp accounts and don't want to be forced to download the app.
We ended up calling the restaurant and they were able to accommodate us. But, wow, I hate how more and more these companies are trying to force you to sign into their stupid service.
Re:Yelp does a lot of scummy stuff (Score:4, Informative)
You should contact the restaurant owner and let them know of your experience. They might not know that Yelp is using reservations at their restaurant to force people to get Yelp accounts.
closed account (Score:2, Interesting)
A friend of mine ran a legitimate massage/spa (yes, they exist) and was using yelp! to advertise.
One day, we went to place an ad only to discover the account had been closed. When we inquired why, we were told because someone felt it was inappropriate. No specifics. No chance for appeal. No way to reestablish on Yelp!
She only ran stock photos - no nudity and had a real website set up that was tasteful. The ads was along the same lines as one of the larger âoespasâ. She had no formal complaints
Only Yelp? (Score:1)
That's a nice business you have there (Score:1)
Customers...but probably not. (Score:4, Interesting)
The big problem I have with Yelp, and why I advise my clients to NEVER use it, boils down to actual customers. I know of at least three local businesses that either folded or had to change their names because of onslaughts of bad reviews from people who never actually did business with the companies. One can totally make shit up and Yelp doesn't seem to have a problem with that.
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And yet right up in the body of the article, there are instances given of businesses that are actively choosing to NOT associate with Yelp.
Your mafia operation won't work, junior.
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One can totally make shit up and Yelp doesn't seem to have a problem with that.
Yeah, but then neither does Google, or Amazon for that matter.
Not believable (Score:1)
Who has the time to make up shit about restaurants?
Maybe restaurant owners should stop being assholes and their reviews would improve
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If a business has to close its doors from an onslaught of shitty Yelp reviews - good. It was a shitty business.
It's true that if bad reviews force a business to shut down it was probably not a great business, this discounts the effect of fake reviews on a business. In the short term a small business can be devastated by an onslaught of bad reviews even if they're not true.
Ever heard of fake reviews, kid? Your generation writes plenty of them and thus clearly has the time to do so.
Who has the time to make up shit about restaurants?
Are you really suggesting there are no such thing as fake reviews?! Wow - that is a level of either cluelessness or naivety that I
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Apparently plenty of people. They find complaining to be recreational and make them feel important.
In some cases they do it to punish businesses that didn't give them free stuff when they complained that the literally still steaming soup was cold.
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Why were they getting the reviews? Were the in the news for some other reason, and it resulted in fake reviews?
Power corrupts. (Score:2, Interesting)
Give people the power to hurt businesses and they will use it. Your restaurant is not vegan? Here, have a one star review. Doesn't matter that the guest indeed got a vegan meal and more than their fair share of customer service to help with the selection, and that nobody claimed that the restaurant is vegan: one star.
All online ratings are rigged. We know the people who rate other restaurants in the area, and let's just say they're not quite impartial. That's on top of the people who just use ratings to get
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That's OK because those sorts of reviews will be broadly distributed, and the rate is low. You don't need a perfect rating. Nobody cares that much about the average rating either. They usually look at recent individual reviews, and then go to the restaurant, or not. If the reviews are 1 star with no good reasons given, those get skipped over.
It is actually difficult to write a persuasive bad review. Most bad reviews only sound like bad customers.
Maybe the dish isn't Authentic enough for some visitor, but th
There are some things more frustrating (Score:2)
than trying to find a restaurant home page and being deluged with links for yelp, yellowpages, trlpadvisor, and so on.
The actual restaurant page isn't even usually on the first page of results.
I sometimes click on the yelp link to check hours, and maybe a menu, but other than that, they're usually worthless.
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I'll click on Yelp/Tripadvisor just to find the f***ing REAL homepage.
They do extort business owners. (Score:1)
Just look up Louis Rossmann on Youtube and what he has to say about Yelp.
Why? (Score:3)
Because sometimes they get bad reviews.
Yes, sometimes those bad reviews aren't fair, but, news flash, the businesses with bad reviews don't like the fair ones just about as much as they don't like the unfair ones.
Yelp is the ultimate spammer (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the biggest mistakes I ever did was put my business listing on Yelp.
Since then at least one a week, sometimes every day, I would get a never ending stream of annoying sales calls. It's been years and they still call and bug me. It's like a plague.
And not once, have I ever been able to trace any traffic or business from their listings.
So you are a helper... (Score:1)
Another reason to hate all review sites. (Score:5, Insightful)
hu prime rib are steaks (Score:2)
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You are nitpicking (Score:2)
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I just had a discussion yesterday about how steak is supposed to be the English word for the Dutch "biefstuk", but whereas "biefstuk" can only be entrecote, tournedos or rib-eye, steak can be literally anything.
So either it's a really poor translation, or it's a sign of the differences in food standards between the US and Europe.
They're extortionists, plain and simple (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife's business is on Yelp, and I was getting 3 or 4 calls a week from a Yelp Account Rep named Anthony who was trying to get us to buy advertising.
I kept declining and I would tell him not to call back, we're not going to buy any advertising.
And yet he persisted, calling and calling and calling. I finally told him that if he called me again I was going to "hunt him down and beat him to death."
The calls stopped, but lo and behold, a couple days later we got our first bad review in over 2 years of business. And the review came from someone who supposedly lived over 1,000 miles away. Hmmm, what an amazing coincidence.
And whaddya know, Anthony called a couple days later and explained that if we bought advertising they could "push the bad reviews down the page" so people wouldn't see them.
My reply: "No thanks, fuckface, and don't call me again."
Haven't heard from them in over a year. Sometimes you just have to tell them to fuck off.
I've heard this same story line from over a dozen people who have businesses that I know personally. So yeah, Yelp is run by a bunch of fucking extortionists, no two ways about it.
The cool thing about this (Score:4, Informative)
Yawn (Score:1)
An unhealthy percentage of sales people are scum.
The Internet is a cesspool of nonsense.
Outfits like BBB and Yelp are little more than extortion rackets.
Is anyone surprised...even a little? This is how people who want things and or have power typically behave.
I Have Some Sympathy For This (Score:3, Interesting)
A few months ago a (local) news story hit the airwaves.
The setup was this. A customer went into a restaurant, wasn't happy, and left a negative review at one of these review sites. What was the issue?
Apparently, they had several concerns, but the one that got all the attention was that the restaurant charged them $5 (roughly) for a pop. Seems like a lot, right? And the other issues all seemed to come back to cost too.
Now here is where the business had a beef. The customer raised their concerns with staff at the time of service and they got their issues addressed. The high cost drink was entirely removed from their bill. And still the customer posted a bad review. Nor did the restaurant avoid the issue afterwards, they went and were interviewed to get their side of the story out there.
Also, that high cost drink? Who goes in to a sit-down restaurant and orders one pop? No one, that's who. The restaurant rightly viewed (and views) the entire meal as the customer interaction and they aren't in the business of selling cheap drinks like a soda pop machine. If you want that experience, go to a fast food joint or better yet, a soda pop machine.
Now, the theory of review sites is that for a thriving business, good reviews will swamp bad reviews and so the unjustified bad reviews will not matter. And let's be honest, even a good business won't always succeed in delivering a good experience to all customers. Sometimes the business will really let a customer down.
However in this case it seemed like the customer had totally unrealistic expectations of what this restaurant could do for them, and what the price of service should be. And having been heard by the restaurant and having their bill adjusted, they turned around and rewarded the business by stabbing them in the proverbial back. Not cool! Not cool at all.
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A business that overcharges you unless you call them on it is slimy and deserves a bad review for it.
This is not a valid point. Selling fountain drinks is almost 100% profit. Are you saying the drink would have cost less if they had ordered it with a meal, or that the $5 would have been a negligible part of the cost of the meal? Either way, the restaurant is a slimy price gouger and deserves bad reviews.
You're kidding, right?...
As far as I know all restaurants have this gadget called a menu. Most often that menu device has prices listed on it. If there isn't a price then you can simply ask what the price for the food and drink items are and they'll tell you. And if you don't like the prices then you're free to leave or not order certain items you think are not priced reasonably.
So in this scenario the unhappy customer either: a) ordered the drink knowing the cost in advance, or b) ordered the drink with
Pocahontas, where art thou (Score:2)
Facebook, Google, Apple all provide actual products and services -- of disputed value -- to everybody. But when we keep hearing stories about regular, non-technology based businesses with thin margins being shaken down, all similarly and what appears to be repeatedly, where's the outrage from our legislators?
Trust (Score:2)
'extortion' is too nice (Score:1)
Can't do reviews AND sell ads to the reviewed. (Score:2)
This is also an issue with real-estate sites like Zillow, that claim to help find "the best" agents in the area. Those "best" agents are the ones who pay to advertise.
It's all a giant scam.
Both sides are wrong and right (Score:2)
There's a lot of shitty customers out there, and a lot of shitty businesses.
They all come together on Yelp.
Just the nature of customer complaints (Score:1)
Isn't it the saying that one good customer experience and they'll maybe tell one or two friends, one bad experience and they'll tell the world. Whether you agree or disagree with Yelp or any other customer review sites, it's the nature of retail and customer complaints. I say suck it up, learn from the complaints, interact with people on Yelp or wherever; You'll be better for it.
OTC (Score:1)
Sounds like bad actors on all sides (Score:2)
Obvious Yelp bullying businesses to buy ads and hiding their entries if they don't is bad, and makes Yelp less reliable for users. Restaurants bullying customers over bad reviews is also bad and means everybody should avoid that restaurant. And if someone sends you a pound of poo, it's time to get the police involved.
Bad actors all around. This situation sounds like Yelp and restaurants are working together to undermine the market they both rely on.
Latest WhatsApp Status & Quoutes (Score:1)
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Yelp calls us one day asking us to advertise. We honestly don't get much (if any) business from Yelp being an online storefront, so we declined. Flash forward two months and we get three critical reviews that cannot be linked to any order in our system, and all of our five star reviews have been disapproved. Our rating goes from a 5 to a 2.5.
They call us again and offer to "help" with those reviews if we advertise with them.
Isn't this blackmail? Report it to the police. This kind of extortion should be extremely illegal. If true, it's time for Yelp to die and their managers to go to prison.