Yelp

Yelp’s business practices are harsh, at best. It is ironic that a company that is in the business of reviewing businesses is oblivious to its own reputation. I am an attorney who foolishly signed a contract with Yelp based upon representations by Yelp’s salesperson that my business would benefit from advertising with Yelp. With 20/20 hindsight, Yelp did nothing for my business. I cannot imagine Yelp advertising could possible help any professional of any kind. Maybe Yelp works for pizza parlors and massage therapists, but it’s simply the wrong vehicle for professionals. Yelp ADMITS it does one thing very well: Yelp FILTERS OUT POSITIVE REVIEWS. Yelp admits it magically filters positive reviews, but Yelp cannot explain what methodology it uses to remove positive reviews. After talking with several “knowledgeable” Yelp employees, I was told they don’t understand it themselves or it’s a secret, or I was given some other disingenuous explanation. Next, the number of “User Views” and “User Actions” on my Yelp ad DECLINED each week to almost zero after two initial months that were pretty good. What did Yelp do to either inflate my initial statistics or deflate my statistics later on? In any event, why would any business person spend good money to receive zero “User Actions”? The answer is it is because Yelp promises to drive potential clients to your website and business. Isn’t that what they tell you when you call them and inquire about advertising with them? The last straw was when Yelp billed me almost three month’s worth of monthly charges as a “cancellation” fee (a) after I raised questions about Yelp removing positive reviews, (b) after I notified Yelp that I disputed Yelp’s charges and expressed an interest in closing my account, and incredibly ( c) after I emailed Yelp instructions directing Yelp not to charge my credit card any more until my dispute was settled. Over my objections and a legitimate complaints, Yelp ignored my good faith effort to dispute their charges (for breach of contract and false advertising) and charged my VISA card. I have no reason to believe I am the first person, or will be the last person, Yelp shears this way. My only hope is that by writing this review I might save countless others the fate I have suffered. In my opinion, Yelp cannot deliver that which it is selling: an increase in traffic to your business. Bottom line for professionals: Do not waste your advertising dollars on Yelp. more

Yelp is becoming a site for blackmailers and extortionists... We received a false review, then was contacted by the reviewer demanding 1500 cash in order to remove the review. Yelp was no assistance at all! We paid the 1500. Review was deleted. Lawyer said there was little that could be done. Yelp is anti-business, pro blackmailers. more

YELP is a bunch of extortionists.. pay the fee and the post your positive reviews, you do not pay the fee, they ""filter"" the results. more

yelp has a 38% negative reviews on YELP.. thats with them filtering out tons of them.. IM sour on YELP. more

Yelp is nothing more than a pitiful cyber-bullying site. This company is poison to any business. Yelp will post fraudulent reviews on a business, eliminate any positive reviews, list the particular business as closed, and THEN yelps will contact them and demand that business buy expensive advertising from yelp. Yelps days are numbered. more

I HATE THESE B****** AND I WISH 1 DAY I CAN GO AND MEED THEM PERSONALLY AND THEN I WILL NOT LET THEM RUN TILL THEY TELL ME WHY ********* ITS NOT FAR I ALREADY BEEN 7 TIMES TO SAN FRANSISCO TO THERE OFFICE AND I CAN'T FIND THEM, THEY ARE TAKING MY KIDS FOOD AWAY FROM US more

Yelp is nothing more than a scam to build their business and then sell it for millions to someone like google. They could care less whether the reviews are biased, illegitimate, or real. I am a small business owner who has been extremely affected by yelp. I have 36 four and five star reviews which they have 'hidden' with no explanation as to why. They have kept visible 2 one star and 1 five star reviews. There is no algorithmn in math that would remove every positive review written in the last year but leave up the negative ones written in the same time period.???? more

The Yelp Commandments as designated by Yelp. \r \r Small businesses with a couple of bad reviews will eternally suffer because Yelp will highly publicize those few bad reviews and filter out the good ones. \r \r Small businesses are not allowed to have grumpy customers who lash out just because they need to vent. \r \r Yelp will decide what is truth and what is not based on algorithms. \r \r All business with bad reviews are REQUIRED to have customers that write Yelp reviews or suffer from low ratings being publicized greatly. (Maybe customers don't want to write reviews good or bad. Why should we expect them to use Yelp?)\r \r Suffer the meek and small who are not savvy or do not participate in the world of Yelp. \r \r You will be FORCED to use Yelp if you are suffering from bad review publicity created by Yelp. \r \r Supreme Court, Class Action Lawsuits, Please Help us All!!!\r \r more

While trying to be fair about yelp, I have to say that they seem to be in the business of hurting small business and ruining lives. The fact that over 60 positive reviews have been written about my business (all filtered) and (Yelp) has allowed five false reviews to remain about us on their site seems negligent at best and reckless and careless at worst. Yelp, will not answer their phones, will not respond to written complaints and flat out cannot even explain thier flawed process to their own employees, so it remains that Yelp really should be stopped. I have invited Yelp to be interviewed for a Bay Area TV show to explain their process and their purpose, yet calls and messages go unanswered, so, I will perform the interview with an empty chair with their CEO's (Jeremy Stoppelman) picture taped to the back of the empty chair. I intend to be fair and ask only questions related to Yelp and how they can stay in business and even remain a public company, when it appears their only mission is to hurt the public. Look for the show to be aired in late June or July in the SF Bay Area. more

YELP IS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. As I take it, most of the reviews here about Yelp are from business owners such as myself. However, Google, City Search, and other rating sites have ways you can contest reviews left by competitors or in my case (attorney) people who I have beaten in Court. However, Yelp doesnt and they call it ""real people, real reviews"" yet says a ""computer"" does the filtering? lol ""real bs"" the truth is that Yelp has its employees write horrible reviews about businesses and then contacts the business and tries to get advertising dollars. Also, if you post things (like this review) they flag your business so no matter how legitimate the review or reviewer, your business will NEVER get a positive review. Yelp is a horrible company and run by horrible people. We need to flood Yelp with lawsuits to the point the company crashes and the people who started it are penniless and have to start over and can build their savings a legitimate way. more

I was the owner of small retail business with 17 years of continuous service. Yelp contacted me to sell advertising, I declined. Immediately following this, our good reviews disappeared, and a horrible rant against my business appeared as the only review!!! Any and all attempts to rectify this with Yelp were in vain. I have since been forced to close my store due to lack of business. These callous crooks use mafia tactics to extort money and are getting away with it. Your business could be next! more

After seeing first hand how deceitful their supposed review filter works, I wouldn't trust a review from yelp to save my life. Yelp is not trustworthy and they knowingly and maliciously place false reviews higher than the good ones. Then remove the good reviews even when real so that only the bad one is left. I could prove the review was from a competitor who had the nerve to email me prior to posting. And then when I did...yelp says that unfortunately their lies are their opinion so it stays. But, somehow good reviews are NOT the opinion of those people who reviewed positively only negative reviews are relevant. I can't stress enough how Yelp needs to go down. more

Yelp Sucks, I cant keep a positive review up on my site it seems the hundred times they call me right after I tell them I cant afford them an anonymous review comes up! more

Shame on you Yelp! You hide legit reviews, and point it to your crooked review filter! I offered coupons for customers who review my business on Yelp, yet after I sent the coupons, Yelp ""filtered"" customer reviews days later! You are the monument of fraud and dishonesty and claim rightfulness and consumer protection? BS If you think that we will pay for ads in order to settle this issue, IN YOUR DREAMS! We will just redirect more traffic to yahoo, Google and Bing. more

Yelp may indeed be the new Mafia. Extortionate. Protection racket. Similar words come to mind. A business has no choice about being listed or unlisted on Yelp. Yet Yelp is free to manipulate data and reviews about a business with NO oversight WHATSOEVER to increase their own profits REGARDLESS of any harm done to your business in the process. Yelp DOES, however, maintain an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau (Northern California). But they have over 300 complaints in the past 3 years, 200 of them in the past 12 months, 1/3 of them ""unresolved to the satisfaction of the customer,"" but none, according to BBB, in which Yelp did not make a ""good faith effort"" to resolve the customer complaint. I understand there's a class-action lawsuit that'll probably go all the way to the SCOTUS before this question is finally resolved. Untrue info on credit reports can ruin lives, as can untrue info on Yelp. If credit rating agencies are required by law to remove untrue info from your credit file, why should sites like Yelp NOT be required to remove untrue info that they publish to the entire world about you and your business? Sometimes innocent small businesses and individuals' entire careers are DESTROYED by this ""fox guarding the henhouse"" set up that allows Yelp to do just about whatever it wants to do with you business's data and reviews with TOTAL IMPUNITY ... even if what they do is dishonest and fraudulent. Sounds like a job for congress. Great ... more

After removing an offensive and personal attack of me on one of their review pages FIVE times...they decided to leave it in place. It is slanderous and abusive. And their content guidelines prohibit such language. But they do what they want. more

Eek! Methinks not. The majority of my reviews are filtered for no reason. They're perfectly legitimate. (I see that they're back now, but that proves that it is possible to reverse engineer the filter, unlike what they say. In other words, I'm still not impressed.) I tried flagging reviews that clearly violate the guidelines a while back, and they're still there. For example: Castle Lanes - Atwater, CA 95301 (on Yelp): The rumor of the dog in the kitchen... You're supposed to write reviews about your experience, not what you heard from somebody else. Besides, who's the ""her"" that she mentioned? The Bellevue Bowl part sounds like advertising more than a recommendation. If the computer and lanes didn't work, how were they open in the first place? It sounds like somebody from the competitor writing fake reviews to get the business. Dollar Tree - Merced, CA 95348 (on Yelp): This one explains itself: ""I come here for work. If not for that, I would never return."" She's writing reviews about her own business. I will not be using Yelp again, which explains why I'm here on Citysearch. more

Yelp allows people to rate services without proof of such services. Yelp allows crazy poeple to comment bogust statments and does not allow any counter explaination from businesses. yelp is a scam to get money from companies and should not be allowed such bad business practices. more

Just Google ""Yelp extortion"" They regularly hide or delete all together legitimate reviews, both positive and negative, in order to manipulate ratings, and manipulate small businesses into advertising with them. They also encourage their paid employees to write reviews and a certain segment of the ""Yelp Elite"" get special perks for writing reviews that can be manipulated by Yelp to intimidate small business owners into advertising with them. more

Yelp is a SCAM!@ Don't get fooled if you think you are getting true reviews. They have built a system that is biased towards a few, high energy, ranters. This ultimately dominates the public opinion about their business. It's an unfair system, but of course they won't make it fair, because they won't make as much money. more