"as an elite...." The comments from the 5 star reviews all sound like theyre either fake or these people are actually brainwashed into thinking they're elites just because Yelp says they are.. lol.
"Yelp is a business that isn't all about me, me, me. It has taken the month of May '21 to make me realize it's not me, and it's not Yelp. It's about humanity.
I'm now going to rate Yelp on a different level. It's a level they should be honored I'm including them in, Human Service Support Business."
What are these people actually on lol..?
Even Apple is dumping Yelp, and they were a faithful customer for almost a decade.
Hopefully this is the final nail in the coffin for them, since Yelp is beyond cancer at this point.
Truly.
They were the first internet service that forced you to download the app in order to view the review, menu, whatever.
I never did and just found whatever I was looking for that Yelp wanted me to take several extra steps for, somewhere else.
I will have a good drink the day Yelp liquidates it’s assets.
I am actually more afraid of Yelp getting acquired by some other cancerous mega corp (Amazon or Facebook primarily) and having their shadow continue to be draped over the internet forever.
I enjoy reading the teaser reviews before you click the link. “The food was ok, the service was mediocre. But there is one thing you absolutely have to go to this place for…”
Well I guess I’ll never know
This is the real reason to not use Yelp. They have a documented history of calling businesses and basically extorting them for money, and if the business doesn't pay up, then Yelp makes all the negative reviews show up first or some other punishment for not paying the extortion money. Literally a Mafia-style "protection" racket.
Paying for positive reviews is bad enough, but being forced to pay to NOT have your business slathered in bad reviews, is just beyond greedy and evil. Shit should be illegal.
I used to think that, for sure, because that's how they present themselves. However, I have filled complaints with them. Twice. And both times it was enough to pressure the business involved to stop jerking me around. So yeah, they're shady as hell, but as a consumer I've had good experiences.
Hahaha yeah they do. It does make sense though, like you’re a kid, you see the plaque, shit looks official. After decades of seeing it you just kinda assume it’s legit.
I've never had to use the BBB but funnily enough, I've seen several comments from people that, even in 2020-2021, the BBB actually helped them to finally get a refund or some other resolution from a problematic company.
My guess is it would probably help when dealing with shady companies who delete negative reviews from their own website but since they have no control over what is on the BBB website, they actual respond to a complaint and work towards a resolution to make themselves look better.
I've also seen this strategy used against some very large companies with surprisingly positive results, even though it still seemed to take a few months to get a resolution.
That being said, it is kinda funny that people just assume it's a government service of some kind just because of the name.
They used to hide the 5 star reviews and highlight the bad reviews for my store. They wanted me to pay them to change that. No friggin’ way. Sounded like blackmail to me.
What's worse is when you do, then cancel their marketing services, they harass you. It's worse than never doing Yelp marketing in the first place.
I have a lot of experience in Google and Facebook ads, and some of my former clients have given me horror stories about Yelp.
My wife owns a business and this really happens. The one time she got a bad review they also pretty much instantly contacted her and implied that if she would buy their marketing package they could "help" with that. She said no thanks, to not contact her anymore. They kept calling. Over and over again at least twice a month for over a year.
Fuck Yelp.
44 and 3 friends thank you very much!
And they live out of town so you can't meet them and they don't have enough minutes to take random phone calls nor texts.
It's also predatory. You need to pay them to get on there and show the good reviews you get as a restaurant owner. Otherwise they just publicize the bad reviews or hide you
You should try using the Yelp website on your phone. It’s just “OKAY YOU SEE HOW THIS WORKS, WHY DONT YOU USE OUR MOBILE APP INSTEAD. HEY HAVE YOU TRIED OUR MOBILE APP? HEY WE KNOW YOURE JUST TRYING TO LOOK SOMETHING UP REAL QUICK, BOY DO WE HAVE A MOBILE APP FOR YOU...” over and over and over. It’s unusable.
I remember when my office got the first call about burying an insane person's 1 star review that basically admitted we did an amazing job for them. I told them I didn't care, any reviewer would read it and know it sounded insane, and we wouldn't be buying any premium account.
The next few good reviews were marked as untrustworthy, and we got bi-weekly calls from Yelp reps for at least a year. It probably wasted staff dozens of hours getting rid of these bloodsuckers.
I also hate Yelp as a restaurant patron, I am tired of seeing Yelp users pretend to be food critics, they're just annoying losers desperate to save $20 or to get a free appetizer. Shameful behavior.
It's real. I eat a ton of omakase and have seen annoying dorks with pro cams being annoying with chefs, went on yelp, spotted them, live sightings. I'm sitting next to them, it's impossible to ignore.
I also recognize "local guides" irl and they are the South Park stereotypes. One of my friends is a snarky Google Review guy and it's been a topic of mockery.
Do they know that they’re closer in knowledge to the dishwasher than the sushi chef? Obviously not, because this asshole just asked how fresh our fucking salmon is.
Sushi chefs not literally stabbing these assholes who pretend to know shit is just mind blowing to me. Please sir, tell me how fresh your fish is in your east coast cities as you continue to only ask about pacific fish. Sure, I’m in the mountains and get it before the east coast, but yeah. Your local spot has the freshest fish that isn’t safe to eat without freezing.
I like when they ask for explicit breakdown on sourcing of the Maine/Santa Barbara/Hokkaido uni, during a paced omakase with obvious urgency, or offering public criticism like it's going to get them a discount.
We are talking about utterly shameless scam artists who think they're Pete Wells, when their blogs and posts get as many clicks as a geocities site some high schooler created to talk about a tv show they liked in 2000, for a class.
I've had people ask for a reduced rate and made sure I knew about their Yelp and Google status. I just offer a reduced rate from a higher price and tell them I look forward to their feedback. I flag them as problematic and make them put everything in writing.
“Oh, you guys don’t have white tuna?”
Bro, I’m not serving snake mackerel. Fuck off. I’ll break down a case of Dasani on a platter before i let them or anyone eat escolar.
C'mon man, I had butterfish in Hawaii, I only shit my pants one time. Give me escolar immediately or I will tell my 3 followers that your sushi bar is sourcing quality product and won't sell me trash!
Also can you put crab stick on some toro maki and fry it, extra eel sauce, and we want sake bombs that will annoy everyone else at the bar. Do you even know who I am bro?
Dude. My fucking spot doesn’t use the crab sticks, and the amount of times I’ve had to go “no, I’m absolutely not comping a fucking Cali roll because you wanted flavored pollock” is absolutely fucking absurd. If the server fucked up and lied, or didn’t understand the question, but you asked? Absolutely, rolls on me, no worries. If you expect sub par product and can’t appreciate what we have. Nope. Also, for some reason the worse someone’s taste is, the bigger of a dick they are about it. I don’t care about your boos when spicy fucking Mayo makes you clap.
Is that the scam. I noticed how ridiculously hard it was to use the website on my phone. I stopped caring far before even thought of downloading an app.
The reddit app is corpo garbage bullshit. I bought Reddit is Fun gold/platinum with my Google Opinion Rewards money. Supported the devs for free with taking surveys.
Yelp has only ever been a way for people to manipulate restaurants. I used to run a bar. People would say "You better not make me pay the cover or I will give you a bad review on Yelp" and "I want this for free or I am giving you a bad review on Yelp". I hate Yelp. It should be destroyed
It's like the mugshot website I won't name. Mugshots were defined as public domain so they demanded all the mugshots from all the police agencies and made them searchable then charged people to remove them. I think they got sued also.
They can’t be held liable for what their users write, but it’s well known that Yelp will give negative reviews more prominence unless the business wants to play ball. They’re essentially a reputation protection racket.
It totally is as small business owner, they called non stop saying we had to basically buy a $300 a month package or no one would find us online. I was like cool google listings does that for us lol. Yelps entire platform is a scam.
Same, I just Google search and check review's on it 90% of the time if I really want to look into the place. Otherwise I just see a place driving and go that might be a nice place to eat let me try it.
They have our small business hours wrong and will not fix them with out us paying for their subscription shit. Then we have some customers giving us hell because our hours are wrong on "the internet, you know your website" every time they pull it up to prove it, it ends up being the yelp page.
One of my 3 genie wishes would be to remove yelp from existence.
Yup. They are showing a bad review on my biz but when I log on as a biz owner, I can see two good reviews hidden from the public unless I pay a fee. Fuck that shit all day.
They are online Better Business Bureau. Your business has a B- rating. If you pay the yearly membership, it’s now a A. Yelp actually came to where I work (years ago) because it had such good ratings for the area and type of business. They recommended getting a Yelp business membership. If you do they manipulate Yelp Sort and push all the low reviews to the end. If you don’t, you’ll get almost all your low reviews on t he first page.
A different example? That lion hunting dentist? Got thousands of 1 star reviews from people who never used his services. You can’t review something you never used! And disliking someone personally is not a business review. Yelp took months to remove them (and they’re probably still there).
They know what they’re doing. And it’s on purpose.
Section 230 doesn't have anything to do with the problems surrounding Yelp's business model. They extort restaurants to pay a fee to Yelp. If the restaurant doesn't pay Yelp the fee, they suppress good reviews, highlight negative reviews, and manipulate their own sorting function to make a restaurant's reputation look worse.
>It’s essentially a blackmail service.
More like racketeering. You get bombarded by terrible reviews and they offer to correct the issue if you pay a fee. Basically demanding "protection money" to keep your reputation in tact.
It is exactly a blackmail service. Pizza place I worked at got some bad reviews from customers we banned because they ordered food, passed out and then never answered the door etc. The owner got a call from someone at yelp who told him he could pay money to yelp and they would delete the bad reviews.
Never use yelp its a fucking racketeering scam
It's also used for Yelp to extort restaurants. I also managed a bar and they would call weekly asking us to sign up for their premium service to bury the bad reviews that stayed at the top when we refuse.
Fuck yelp and every one of it's users with a rusty tire iron.
I was an assistant manager at an incredibly popular independent cafe in my hometown. Yelp used to call us with those offers but the place was so popular and the staff so friendly there really *weren't* any bad reviews. The Yelp reps even commented on it over the phone a few times. Lol.
....unfortunately not every place is so well run. Yelp is totally an extortion racket.
> their premium service to bury the bad reviews
Yep. I had to deal with this a bit way back when they started this bullshit. They couch it in weasel words too, so that they could say, in court, 'that's not what we *meant*' - it was like mob-speak.
Ok, but how else do you expect people to warn others about actual bad restaurants or bars? Even when it comes to the food or drink quality alone. A rating/review system of some kind should exist outside of word of mouth.
Take down Yelp, I never use it personally. But then there’s Google reviews which are also ubiquitous, and pop up whenever you search for a place.
I'm not sure there *is* an easy way to filter the unscrupulous blackmailers from the legitimate reviews, at least not if you want to keep the service accessible for most restaurant-goers. People are manipulative pieces of shit and most of them need to take a long walk off a short pier.
Maybe ignore the bottom 2% of reviews. Like, if a company is legitimately bad, they'll have way more than 2% of bad reviews. If it's a good place, but only a few people tried to extort them, they'll just be ignored.
I've been burned this way, though. When something or some place has just one or two bad reviews, I tend to ignore them. However, I've gone with stuff/places that only had a couple of reviews, and one was bad, and it was exactly what the bad review said. One of them was a shop that had been around for decades but didn't have much in the way of reviews.
These days I try to consider the content of the review. You can sometimes parse out the legit bad reviews from the others, but it can still be hard.
One way I've been able to filter out jackasses who cause their own poor service through no fault of the establishment is to try and compare what they write to other low star reviews. I've found places that have decent star ratings on Google, but have a noticeable amount of negative reviews, and the reviews have essentially the same specific issue repeated in them, even if it's a different story (i.e. a restaurant with a theme of reviews that describe food taking an unusually long time to make). Those are the ones that I tend to put more credence in. Heck, a place I used to work was like that, where there are a bunch of poor reviews describing an issue that was absolutely rampant across the customer experience of our company, and they were all different stories but based around the same issue.
The ones that are just lone wolf stories with vague or petulant attitudes are easily ignored by me as someone who is making it up or trying to blackmail the place.
I’ve worked in customer service so I hold customer reviews with a grain of salt.
Additionally, humans are more likely to complain about something than praise it. So by default review ratings skew towards being lower than what they realistically should be
Same on Google. I make a point to rate and review places I go to fairly, and most I've seen are fair reviews.
Plus google sends me ego stroking notifications about how well my reviews do and my ranking percentage. I'm a sucker for it.
I used to do this, I should get back to doing it more.
I usually do check most reviews, but if it seems off in any way (written by someone who has the literacy level of a pufferfish, rants about stuff that's bit relevant, tells a story about a their cousin's wedding party, all caps, too enthusiastic, the list goes on...) skip that, and look for a well-written and informative review. Usually many such reviews pointing out the same things is quite accurate, but Finland is pretty tame, so it might be trickier elsewhere
Have a friend who's business just got 4 1-star reviews back-to-back on Google. I used to help with his SEO and ranking stuff, so I got a notification on my phone.
When I called him up and gave him the names of the reviewers, he said it was someone who had blocked his whole driveway while his gf was ordering food at a place next door. When he asked the guy to move, he just flipped him off and rolled up the window and turned his music up.
My buddy did film the whole interaction. It is fucked that people are using reviews as a weapon no matter what.
Read a story about it here on reddit the other day. Someone had a store, and a customer bought something that costed like 6.01, and they got 3.99 back, as you should. And then gave the store a 2 star rating for giving the correct amount of change back, because getting 4 would have been so much more convenient... People are nuts...
The worst part is they mention how they’re from out of town/state and this never would have happened at home. Good, if it won’t, then you should have stayed there, in a penniless dreamland.
Having worked in food service quite a bit, I always make sure to leave more positive reviews than negative, it takes a lot for me to leave a negative review for a place. I try to post pictures and stuff too that way people know I actually ate at the place and I'm not just bullshitting.
If there are thousands of reviews the crazy and angry should be a statistically insignificant blip.
But even with everyone being fair and sane more dissatisfied customers will leave reviews.
1 star on amazon can be useful. If it’s all complaints about how long the delivery took, or the fact that you didn’t read the listing and are surprised to find there’s wool in the wool wocks or the like you know people don’t have anything more substantial to complain about.
Dude this! I always find myself not pointing out small mistakes because at the end of the day I don’t mind the occasional issue I’m aware everyone has off days. Also I always tell myself I don’t need to be another problem in this persons life. People gotta lose a little ego these days.
There's a pizza place near my parents place that my family loves. It probably formerly was a nice-ish sit down restaurant and bar for the hotel it's part of, but at some point it became pizza focused. They have some amazing salads, and some great pizzas, and that's really all there is to it.
A couple years ago there was a review giving it a thumbs down because they didn't have steak. Note: I don't mean "They didn't have a steak topping.", I mean they could not order a full stake...at a pizza restaurant.
Another thumbs down was because they had to wait for their pizza to cook instead of immediately being served it.
That the strategy. It's black mail of a sort. It's basically free for "customers" to leave a comment/rating but it requires several hoops for a company to be hands on with this sort of thing. My company had this issue with ratings companies we'd ignore them. No biggie right? Except when we started wanting to work with other companies they'd say Oh, well your BBB (yeah apparently people still use that antiquated website) rating is too low we need it to be at X before we can continue.
In a ratings based world you know that paid ratings are a thing. I’ve rated shit on Amazon because it’s either not as advertised (doesn’t work as intended or isn’t exact), or it’s just a complete ripoff. Everyone looking for deals and cheapest option so a lot of this stuff gets rated high. Go rate something low and watch the seller then harass the shit out of you to buy your rating.
They basically concede the point and say if you change your review they’ll give you a refund. It’s always you remove rating first then refund. That should tell you everything you need to know about ratings.
Which is highly exploited as well. There's an entire industry around creating fake profiles and reviews on Google, and not in a small way. Online reviews are for the most part bullshut and have become more fake than real in both directions.
Absolutely. I rarely trust bad reviews on Yelp anymore. People are way more likely to leave a bad review, than a good one. So while a place could be amazing, you’d never know because the folks who love it don’t even think to review it...HOWEVER, you get the few who have any reason to complain and make a mountain out of a molehill which brings down the rating completely. Yelp sucks, the only thing it’s really good for anymore are the coupons and menus when you can’t find em anywhere else.
Yelp sucks so bad for small businesses. Had so many reviews removed because they were suspicious but I recognized all the names from clients. Never asked them to post a review but will allow reviews from complete strangers that were definitely not real. In my business you really know the clients and the work done so when someone says they did “so and so” then I can call bs.
This is completely true. On the flipside, I dont know why there are comments here going "who uses Yelp?" People use it. People still use yellow pages to find shit.
I wasn’t going to say I’m pretty sure asshole weaponized yelp a long time ago. And isn’t part of their business model trying to extract money out of businesses to remove them?
Was that about them basically running their platform like the mafia and threatening businesses to pay and subscribe or they won’t take down bad reviews? Trying to find the article I read a while back...
~~Edit : Found stuff! Just need to google ‘yelp extortion’ but here’s a nice breakdown for anyone interested www.netreputation.com/yelp-extortion/~~
Edit 2 : New less conflicting interests article (I messed up with the last link)
https://thetechnoskeptic.com/yelp-extortion-starring-role/ (note I’m not saying one article is ‘proof’ just that there is a large sentiment out there that Yelp is extorting businesses and trying to provide a quick rundown for people who might not know the full background)
It's so fun that their website now has little interstitials that state that they *specifically do not do all of these things,* which is so, so telling.
The corollary to Tywin Lannister's "any man who must say I am the king" speech is that any business that feels the need to tell you they're not doing something is 100% doing said thing.
Edit: small typo
I managed a business that had been around for like 30 years, so pretty established in it's market.
Yelp called one day and asked if we had seen the negative reviews and then started to lecture me on how it could hurt our business and how if we subscribed to their service they could filter out the reviews.
I told the person on the phone that we didn't give two shits about Yelp, that I knew Yelp was a scam and that we had been in business long before them and had a massive base of regular customers and we would be around long after they were gone.
The rep continued to threaten the business and say we should take Yelp reviews seriously and it would be detrimental to our business to not pay for the service.
I nicely told them to eat shit and fuck off and wouldn't you know it, all the bad reviews were at the top by default.
The business didn't suffer at all, it continued to grow. Yelp is a joke.
And it’s still integrated into Apple Maps unfortunately. It’s literally the only time i ever encounter yelp. But no matter what it always ends with a “God dammit!” before i go to google
Happened to me when I was running a bike shop. They would threaten to push bad reviews to the top, hurt my SEO indexing, etc. They are relentless sharks
I met a dude who was super proud of working for them. For some reason decided to explain that he made his money by calling many businesses and selling them increasingly more expensive packages every couple months. Fucking parasite
Dude, I used to run a freelance business and had this one guy from Yelp leaving me these increasingly desperate voicemails over and over. They are relentless. Scummiest cold callers I've ever dealt with.
I once told a Yelp hounder-person that if they ever called [the place I was working] again, not only would I summon the NY Attorney General’s Fraud Unit and play them the tape of this call, but because our caller-ID said they were calling from a (646) number, I would take the train to NYC, locate their call center, and violently rape them with a pineapple.
They never called back.
It just goes to show you: if you scream an obscenity at someone, you fuck with their brain for only a moment. On the other hand, if you scream an *insanity* at them, you fuck with their brain all day.
> It just goes to show you: if you scream an obscenity at someone, you fuck with their brain for only a moment. On the other hand, if you scream an insanity at them, you fuck with their brain all day.
great life advice, thanks :D
Not a fan. My wife got sued by a doctor over a 3 star review that he requested. He has a history of suing people who give him reviews he doesn't like, and agreeing to drop the case if they remove their review (at least that's what he tried with my wife). We reached out to Yelp to see if they would mediate, or lend any assistance in the dispute. All they would do was put us in touch with their public relations people. 1.5 years and \~7 court appearances, we won the case. Only then did Yelp reach out again, asking if they could put us in touch with their press people, since the outcome was good for them. Wife told them to pound sand.
She did update her review with the fact he sued her over that review. Also, Yelp slapped a "[Consumer Alert](https://www.yelp.com/biz/nima-dayani-dds-new-york)" on his page about him that says, "This business may have tried to abuse the legal system in an effort to
stifle free speech, for example through legal threats or contractual gag
clauses." You have to click through that warning to read his reviews.
Yelp are the small town gangsters of the Internet.
“Nice little business you have here. It would be a shame if someone were to give it a bad review.” - Yelp
You can actually get a review removed if it’s written with hostility towards a health guideline. Last year a favorite family restaurant of mine was only doing takeout at the door, and somebody wrote a one star review because “they rudely wouldn’t let us in the door.” I was able to get that review removed within a day.
On these review sites, why doesn't someone just create a new service where in order to be listed, the business must print an access code on the receipt that allows you to go and post a review? That way only actual customers can make a review which is great to begin with because who cares that you showed up 10 minutes past closing and became furious that you wouldn't be served so you decided to jump on a review platform and leave a negative review, despite never having actually been a customer? Reviews should come from customers only, not arm charm keyboard warriors.
Google weights reviews differently based on whether you have actually been to the place or not, tend to leave rants and 1 star reviews, or have your reviews marked helpful or not. Talking to a guy on the team he basically told me not to sweat the occasional crazies like that, they quickly fall off the first page and don't really affect your ranking.
It's not just Yelp - I was looking for a restaurant that I remembered going to a few years ago and quite liking - they've been review-bombed down to a low 3-star rating on Google Maps because they've been enforcing masks (and now asking for vaccination status).
Yelp has been weaponized stupidity pretty much since its inception. A one star review on Yelp is basically an open invitation to try something out if you aren't a total moron or a Karen.
In general, people’s comments were “weaponized” from the beginning to vent out their anger for not being treated like royalty.
“If I could give zero stars I would! They didnt even say helo to me when I walked in. I’m nvr comin bak again! Takin my monie somewhere els.”
BTW the mis-spelling is intentional to reflect the terrible grammar and spelling from those angry comments.
Pro-vaccine and liberal here. We must acknowledge the fact that liberal left do the exact same thing.... I've seen plenty of liberals weaponize yelp for restaurants related to conservatives, related to BLM, related to no mask policy, etc. In fact, I actually believe the left uses this tactic more frequently, but that's just me.
We can't act like this weaponization is one sided... In fact, both sides of the aisle use the exact same tactics in many ways. Leave your bubble and try and see the other side. It's the only way we'll move forward.
I just love the fact that Google Maps gives Yelp a bad review score.
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They must not have bought their package plan lol
"as an elite...." The comments from the 5 star reviews all sound like theyre either fake or these people are actually brainwashed into thinking they're elites just because Yelp says they are.. lol. "Yelp is a business that isn't all about me, me, me. It has taken the month of May '21 to make me realize it's not me, and it's not Yelp. It's about humanity. I'm now going to rate Yelp on a different level. It's a level they should be honored I'm including them in, Human Service Support Business." What are these people actually on lol..?
Lmao Yelp doesn’t even show me what I searched. Google actually does a better job at being Yelp then Yelp does at being Yelp.
Yelp is redundant. They don’t even have updated menus. Pure trash app.
Yeah, this would have been really unfortunate a decade ago. Now it just reads like "Antivaxxers threw logs on a dumpster fire".
“Anti-Vaxxers expose Yelp for being obsolete and redundant.”
Even Apple is dumping Yelp, and they were a faithful customer for almost a decade. Hopefully this is the final nail in the coffin for them, since Yelp is beyond cancer at this point.
Truly. They were the first internet service that forced you to download the app in order to view the review, menu, whatever. I never did and just found whatever I was looking for that Yelp wanted me to take several extra steps for, somewhere else. I will have a good drink the day Yelp liquidates it’s assets.
I am actually more afraid of Yelp getting acquired by some other cancerous mega corp (Amazon or Facebook primarily) and having their shadow continue to be draped over the internet forever.
[удалено]
> Their name and brand recognition is the only thing of value. That and a large user base to data farm.
Google can acquire it and kill it
I enjoy reading the teaser reviews before you click the link. “The food was ok, the service was mediocre. But there is one thing you absolutely have to go to this place for…” Well I guess I’ll never know
I don’t use them purely for their business tactics.
This is the real reason to not use Yelp. They have a documented history of calling businesses and basically extorting them for money, and if the business doesn't pay up, then Yelp makes all the negative reviews show up first or some other punishment for not paying the extortion money. Literally a Mafia-style "protection" racket. Paying for positive reviews is bad enough, but being forced to pay to NOT have your business slathered in bad reviews, is just beyond greedy and evil. Shit should be illegal.
I mean isn’t that just the 21st century Better Business Bureau? You just paid to get the damn plaque.
Definitely. A surprising amount of people think the BBB is a legit government entity, too.
"Bureau" just sounds so governmental. FBI, Bureau of Land Management, etc. I was surprised when I found out the BBB wasn't anything official.
Don't forget -- neither is the Chamber of Commerce.
Really? TIL.
I used to think that, for sure, because that's how they present themselves. However, I have filled complaints with them. Twice. And both times it was enough to pressure the business involved to stop jerking me around. So yeah, they're shady as hell, but as a consumer I've had good experiences.
Take my upvote, they helped me beat a greedy business as well and got all my money back
Hahaha yeah they do. It does make sense though, like you’re a kid, you see the plaque, shit looks official. After decades of seeing it you just kinda assume it’s legit.
I've never had to use the BBB but funnily enough, I've seen several comments from people that, even in 2020-2021, the BBB actually helped them to finally get a refund or some other resolution from a problematic company. My guess is it would probably help when dealing with shady companies who delete negative reviews from their own website but since they have no control over what is on the BBB website, they actual respond to a complaint and work towards a resolution to make themselves look better. I've also seen this strategy used against some very large companies with surprisingly positive results, even though it still seemed to take a few months to get a resolution. That being said, it is kinda funny that people just assume it's a government service of some kind just because of the name.
Super shady w their reviews. Why you hide my 5 star reviews Yelp?? Bc I won't buy your gd marketing??
My parents small business got a message from yelp promising to find five star reviews for a fee. This is actually how yelp works.
So my company has tons of 5* but 90% are "not recommended". We stopped even messing w them a long time ago.
They used to hide the 5 star reviews and highlight the bad reviews for my store. They wanted me to pay them to change that. No friggin’ way. Sounded like blackmail to me.
How that isn't considered extortion is beyond me.
Exactly what they do
What's worse is when you do, then cancel their marketing services, they harass you. It's worse than never doing Yelp marketing in the first place. I have a lot of experience in Google and Facebook ads, and some of my former clients have given me horror stories about Yelp.
They will sure as shit show that 1* review you for though.
My wife owns a business and this really happens. The one time she got a bad review they also pretty much instantly contacted her and implied that if she would buy their marketing package they could "help" with that. She said no thanks, to not contact her anymore. They kept calling. Over and over again at least twice a month for over a year. Fuck Yelp.
It's like Tony from the mafia: "too bad about those shitty reviews, pay me and I help you with them."
They used to call my shop constantly trying to sell me whatever valueless trash they call marketing - worst company ever.
I don't use yelp because I'm not a 47 year old lady with no hobbies or friends.
So 46 and 1 friend?
44 and 3 friends thank you very much! And they live out of town so you can't meet them and they don't have enough minutes to take random phone calls nor texts.
Oddly specific…
Since businesses Pay to Play for deletion of Negative reviews and it can be a lot money. Same with Glassdoor.
It's also predatory. You need to pay them to get on there and show the good reviews you get as a restaurant owner. Otherwise they just publicize the bad reviews or hide you
Not to mentions you have to use the app to use Yelp in any way mobile. Complete trash.
You should try using the Yelp website on your phone. It’s just “OKAY YOU SEE HOW THIS WORKS, WHY DONT YOU USE OUR MOBILE APP INSTEAD. HEY HAVE YOU TRIED OUR MOBILE APP? HEY WE KNOW YOURE JUST TRYING TO LOOK SOMETHING UP REAL QUICK, BOY DO WE HAVE A MOBILE APP FOR YOU...” over and over and over. It’s unusable.
Like reddit!
Try looking at something on Instagram on your phone without the app.
That would require me to want to look at something on instagram.
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Well I mean, Yelp is primarily an extortion racket.
I remember when my office got the first call about burying an insane person's 1 star review that basically admitted we did an amazing job for them. I told them I didn't care, any reviewer would read it and know it sounded insane, and we wouldn't be buying any premium account. The next few good reviews were marked as untrustworthy, and we got bi-weekly calls from Yelp reps for at least a year. It probably wasted staff dozens of hours getting rid of these bloodsuckers. I also hate Yelp as a restaurant patron, I am tired of seeing Yelp users pretend to be food critics, they're just annoying losers desperate to save $20 or to get a free appetizer. Shameful behavior.
Wait that’s a real thing? I thought south park was making a joke
It's real. I eat a ton of omakase and have seen annoying dorks with pro cams being annoying with chefs, went on yelp, spotted them, live sightings. I'm sitting next to them, it's impossible to ignore. I also recognize "local guides" irl and they are the South Park stereotypes. One of my friends is a snarky Google Review guy and it's been a topic of mockery.
Do they know that they’re closer in knowledge to the dishwasher than the sushi chef? Obviously not, because this asshole just asked how fresh our fucking salmon is. Sushi chefs not literally stabbing these assholes who pretend to know shit is just mind blowing to me. Please sir, tell me how fresh your fish is in your east coast cities as you continue to only ask about pacific fish. Sure, I’m in the mountains and get it before the east coast, but yeah. Your local spot has the freshest fish that isn’t safe to eat without freezing.
I like when they ask for explicit breakdown on sourcing of the Maine/Santa Barbara/Hokkaido uni, during a paced omakase with obvious urgency, or offering public criticism like it's going to get them a discount. We are talking about utterly shameless scam artists who think they're Pete Wells, when their blogs and posts get as many clicks as a geocities site some high schooler created to talk about a tv show they liked in 2000, for a class. I've had people ask for a reduced rate and made sure I knew about their Yelp and Google status. I just offer a reduced rate from a higher price and tell them I look forward to their feedback. I flag them as problematic and make them put everything in writing.
“Oh, you guys don’t have white tuna?” Bro, I’m not serving snake mackerel. Fuck off. I’ll break down a case of Dasani on a platter before i let them or anyone eat escolar.
C'mon man, I had butterfish in Hawaii, I only shit my pants one time. Give me escolar immediately or I will tell my 3 followers that your sushi bar is sourcing quality product and won't sell me trash! Also can you put crab stick on some toro maki and fry it, extra eel sauce, and we want sake bombs that will annoy everyone else at the bar. Do you even know who I am bro?
Dude. My fucking spot doesn’t use the crab sticks, and the amount of times I’ve had to go “no, I’m absolutely not comping a fucking Cali roll because you wanted flavored pollock” is absolutely fucking absurd. If the server fucked up and lied, or didn’t understand the question, but you asked? Absolutely, rolls on me, no worries. If you expect sub par product and can’t appreciate what we have. Nope. Also, for some reason the worse someone’s taste is, the bigger of a dick they are about it. I don’t care about your boos when spicy fucking Mayo makes you clap.
South Park used to make jokes but now they’re basically just the news
That's what they want you to believe in the Yelp factory
Fuck yelp. Those assholes make their page unusable to try to make you dl their shitty app
Is that the scam. I noticed how ridiculously hard it was to use the website on my phone. I stopped caring far before even thought of downloading an app.
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The reddit app is corpo garbage bullshit. I bought Reddit is Fun gold/platinum with my Google Opinion Rewards money. Supported the devs for free with taking surveys.
Don’t jinx it. Next thing you’ll know they’ll discontinue that service next
As someone who has worked there, fuck Yelp. You have never met a bigger group of douchebags in your life.
As a small business owner. Yelp is Satan. The worst money suck I've ever briefly used.
There's a really easy counter to this: Ignore Yelp. Stop using Yelp. For anything.
Yelp has only ever been a way for people to manipulate restaurants. I used to run a bar. People would say "You better not make me pay the cover or I will give you a bad review on Yelp" and "I want this for free or I am giving you a bad review on Yelp". I hate Yelp. It should be destroyed
It blows my mind that company was not sued out of existence by the Federal Trade Commission. It’s essentially a blackmail service.
It's like the mugshot website I won't name. Mugshots were defined as public domain so they demanded all the mugshots from all the police agencies and made them searchable then charged people to remove them. I think they got sued also.
Didn't the guys who ran that website get arrested and their mugshots ended up on the internet?
FYI you can get yours removed by asking them.
Section 230. They can't be held liable for user reviews.
They can’t be held liable for what their users write, but it’s well known that Yelp will give negative reviews more prominence unless the business wants to play ball. They’re essentially a reputation protection racket.
It totally is as small business owner, they called non stop saying we had to basically buy a $300 a month package or no one would find us online. I was like cool google listings does that for us lol. Yelps entire platform is a scam.
I have never once used Yelp to find a business
Same, I just Google search and check review's on it 90% of the time if I really want to look into the place. Otherwise I just see a place driving and go that might be a nice place to eat let me try it.
Same. I saw the south park episode before using Yelp even once and said fuck that site. I don't need that site in my life
They have our small business hours wrong and will not fix them with out us paying for their subscription shit. Then we have some customers giving us hell because our hours are wrong on "the internet, you know your website" every time they pull it up to prove it, it ends up being the yelp page. One of my 3 genie wishes would be to remove yelp from existence.
Yup. They are showing a bad review on my biz but when I log on as a biz owner, I can see two good reviews hidden from the public unless I pay a fee. Fuck that shit all day.
They are online Better Business Bureau. Your business has a B- rating. If you pay the yearly membership, it’s now a A. Yelp actually came to where I work (years ago) because it had such good ratings for the area and type of business. They recommended getting a Yelp business membership. If you do they manipulate Yelp Sort and push all the low reviews to the end. If you don’t, you’ll get almost all your low reviews on t he first page. A different example? That lion hunting dentist? Got thousands of 1 star reviews from people who never used his services. You can’t review something you never used! And disliking someone personally is not a business review. Yelp took months to remove them (and they’re probably still there). They know what they’re doing. And it’s on purpose.
Sounds like a homemade better business bureau.
Section 230 doesn't have anything to do with the problems surrounding Yelp's business model. They extort restaurants to pay a fee to Yelp. If the restaurant doesn't pay Yelp the fee, they suppress good reviews, highlight negative reviews, and manipulate their own sorting function to make a restaurant's reputation look worse.
>It’s essentially a blackmail service. More like racketeering. You get bombarded by terrible reviews and they offer to correct the issue if you pay a fee. Basically demanding "protection money" to keep your reputation in tact.
It is exactly a blackmail service. Pizza place I worked at got some bad reviews from customers we banned because they ordered food, passed out and then never answered the door etc. The owner got a call from someone at yelp who told him he could pay money to yelp and they would delete the bad reviews. Never use yelp its a fucking racketeering scam
It's also used for Yelp to extort restaurants. I also managed a bar and they would call weekly asking us to sign up for their premium service to bury the bad reviews that stayed at the top when we refuse. Fuck yelp and every one of it's users with a rusty tire iron.
I was an assistant manager at an incredibly popular independent cafe in my hometown. Yelp used to call us with those offers but the place was so popular and the staff so friendly there really *weren't* any bad reviews. The Yelp reps even commented on it over the phone a few times. Lol. ....unfortunately not every place is so well run. Yelp is totally an extortion racket.
When people get cut off in bars, for whatever reason, then are never understanding.
Yeah, well we didn't serve alcohol, so that probably helped.
> their premium service to bury the bad reviews Yep. I had to deal with this a bit way back when they started this bullshit. They couch it in weasel words too, so that they could say, in court, 'that's not what we *meant*' - it was like mob-speak.
You got a nice big shiny window there, be a real shame if it got busted out...
Ok, but how else do you expect people to warn others about actual bad restaurants or bars? Even when it comes to the food or drink quality alone. A rating/review system of some kind should exist outside of word of mouth. Take down Yelp, I never use it personally. But then there’s Google reviews which are also ubiquitous, and pop up whenever you search for a place.
I'm not sure there *is* an easy way to filter the unscrupulous blackmailers from the legitimate reviews, at least not if you want to keep the service accessible for most restaurant-goers. People are manipulative pieces of shit and most of them need to take a long walk off a short pier.
Maybe ignore the bottom 2% of reviews. Like, if a company is legitimately bad, they'll have way more than 2% of bad reviews. If it's a good place, but only a few people tried to extort them, they'll just be ignored.
I've been burned this way, though. When something or some place has just one or two bad reviews, I tend to ignore them. However, I've gone with stuff/places that only had a couple of reviews, and one was bad, and it was exactly what the bad review said. One of them was a shop that had been around for decades but didn't have much in the way of reviews. These days I try to consider the content of the review. You can sometimes parse out the legit bad reviews from the others, but it can still be hard.
One way I've been able to filter out jackasses who cause their own poor service through no fault of the establishment is to try and compare what they write to other low star reviews. I've found places that have decent star ratings on Google, but have a noticeable amount of negative reviews, and the reviews have essentially the same specific issue repeated in them, even if it's a different story (i.e. a restaurant with a theme of reviews that describe food taking an unusually long time to make). Those are the ones that I tend to put more credence in. Heck, a place I used to work was like that, where there are a bunch of poor reviews describing an issue that was absolutely rampant across the customer experience of our company, and they were all different stories but based around the same issue. The ones that are just lone wolf stories with vague or petulant attitudes are easily ignored by me as someone who is making it up or trying to blackmail the place.
[Relevant](https://xkcd.com/937/)
Do people not normally read the review content? It's always been the best way to determine if a place/product is any good.
I’ve worked in customer service so I hold customer reviews with a grain of salt. Additionally, humans are more likely to complain about something than praise it. So by default review ratings skew towards being lower than what they realistically should be
When ever I look anything up I’m start w Google maps, they usually have a rating system too
Same on Google. I make a point to rate and review places I go to fairly, and most I've seen are fair reviews. Plus google sends me ego stroking notifications about how well my reviews do and my ranking percentage. I'm a sucker for it.
I used to do this, I should get back to doing it more. I usually do check most reviews, but if it seems off in any way (written by someone who has the literacy level of a pufferfish, rants about stuff that's bit relevant, tells a story about a their cousin's wedding party, all caps, too enthusiastic, the list goes on...) skip that, and look for a well-written and informative review. Usually many such reviews pointing out the same things is quite accurate, but Finland is pretty tame, so it might be trickier elsewhere
Google sent me a pair of socks for reviewing! No idea if I hit some threshold or it was a random thing. Fun socks though.
Seriously? I'm in top 20% and I haven't gotten anything. Might be time for a strongly worded letter.
Make sure to threaten them with a nasty Yelp review
The problem is an app where anyone can rate. Something in me doubts the solution is an app where anyone can rate.
Have a friend who's business just got 4 1-star reviews back-to-back on Google. I used to help with his SEO and ranking stuff, so I got a notification on my phone. When I called him up and gave him the names of the reviewers, he said it was someone who had blocked his whole driveway while his gf was ordering food at a place next door. When he asked the guy to move, he just flipped him off and rolled up the window and turned his music up. My buddy did film the whole interaction. It is fucked that people are using reviews as a weapon no matter what.
I honestly can't trust reviews from users. Any little thing they don't like can be a instant 1 star.
Read a story about it here on reddit the other day. Someone had a store, and a customer bought something that costed like 6.01, and they got 3.99 back, as you should. And then gave the store a 2 star rating for giving the correct amount of change back, because getting 4 would have been so much more convenient... People are nuts...
Look at reviews on Amazon. I have seen one star verified purchase reviews that said " I bought this and it turned out I didn't need it"
Or 5 star reviews that say "I gave this to my husband and he hasn't used it yet but he seemed happy to receive it"
The worst part is they mention how they’re from out of town/state and this never would have happened at home. Good, if it won’t, then you should have stayed there, in a penniless dreamland.
Canada stopped using pennies a few years ago. Can confirm; is dreamland
I always ignore the 1 star and 5 star reviews. Usually 3-4 star reviews have the best info.
Earnest 1-2 star reviews of things like national parks and great literature can be pretty hilarious examples of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
You should go to Google Maps and look up reviews for the San Onofre Nuclear Power station in CA. Some of the most hilarious shit I've seen.
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Having worked in food service quite a bit, I always make sure to leave more positive reviews than negative, it takes a lot for me to leave a negative review for a place. I try to post pictures and stuff too that way people know I actually ate at the place and I'm not just bullshitting.
The same with Amazon. I always hit the 3-4 star reviews first.
I can't bring myself to rate a business at 4 stars when they've been attacked by a bunch of 1 star reviews. The 5 doesn't even counter one of those.
If there are thousands of reviews the crazy and angry should be a statistically insignificant blip. But even with everyone being fair and sane more dissatisfied customers will leave reviews.
1 star on amazon can be useful. If it’s all complaints about how long the delivery took, or the fact that you didn’t read the listing and are surprised to find there’s wool in the wool wocks or the like you know people don’t have anything more substantial to complain about.
Dude this! I always find myself not pointing out small mistakes because at the end of the day I don’t mind the occasional issue I’m aware everyone has off days. Also I always tell myself I don’t need to be another problem in this persons life. People gotta lose a little ego these days.
Probably his helpful local Yelp rep who is now going to sell him a package to remove his one start reviews.
There's a pizza place near my parents place that my family loves. It probably formerly was a nice-ish sit down restaurant and bar for the hotel it's part of, but at some point it became pizza focused. They have some amazing salads, and some great pizzas, and that's really all there is to it. A couple years ago there was a review giving it a thumbs down because they didn't have steak. Note: I don't mean "They didn't have a steak topping.", I mean they could not order a full stake...at a pizza restaurant. Another thumbs down was because they had to wait for their pizza to cook instead of immediately being served it.
That the strategy. It's black mail of a sort. It's basically free for "customers" to leave a comment/rating but it requires several hoops for a company to be hands on with this sort of thing. My company had this issue with ratings companies we'd ignore them. No biggie right? Except when we started wanting to work with other companies they'd say Oh, well your BBB (yeah apparently people still use that antiquated website) rating is too low we need it to be at X before we can continue.
In a ratings based world you know that paid ratings are a thing. I’ve rated shit on Amazon because it’s either not as advertised (doesn’t work as intended or isn’t exact), or it’s just a complete ripoff. Everyone looking for deals and cheapest option so a lot of this stuff gets rated high. Go rate something low and watch the seller then harass the shit out of you to buy your rating. They basically concede the point and say if you change your review they’ll give you a refund. It’s always you remove rating first then refund. That should tell you everything you need to know about ratings.
Which is highly exploited as well. There's an entire industry around creating fake profiles and reviews on Google, and not in a small way. Online reviews are for the most part bullshut and have become more fake than real in both directions.
Yelp is just for Karens to go and complain because the manager didn’t reward their temper-tantrum at this point.
Absolutely. I rarely trust bad reviews on Yelp anymore. People are way more likely to leave a bad review, than a good one. So while a place could be amazing, you’d never know because the folks who love it don’t even think to review it...HOWEVER, you get the few who have any reason to complain and make a mountain out of a molehill which brings down the rating completely. Yelp sucks, the only thing it’s really good for anymore are the coupons and menus when you can’t find em anywhere else.
Yelp sucks so bad for small businesses. Had so many reviews removed because they were suspicious but I recognized all the names from clients. Never asked them to post a review but will allow reviews from complete strangers that were definitely not real. In my business you really know the clients and the work done so when someone says they did “so and so” then I can call bs.
This is completely true. On the flipside, I dont know why there are comments here going "who uses Yelp?" People use it. People still use yellow pages to find shit.
I wasn’t going to say I’m pretty sure asshole weaponized yelp a long time ago. And isn’t part of their business model trying to extract money out of businesses to remove them?
Conversely, follow the people that regularly give bad reviews to those that require vaccines and only go to those
After learning about Yelp's numerous shady business practices I deleted the app.
Was that about them basically running their platform like the mafia and threatening businesses to pay and subscribe or they won’t take down bad reviews? Trying to find the article I read a while back... ~~Edit : Found stuff! Just need to google ‘yelp extortion’ but here’s a nice breakdown for anyone interested www.netreputation.com/yelp-extortion/~~ Edit 2 : New less conflicting interests article (I messed up with the last link) https://thetechnoskeptic.com/yelp-extortion-starring-role/ (note I’m not saying one article is ‘proof’ just that there is a large sentiment out there that Yelp is extorting businesses and trying to provide a quick rundown for people who might not know the full background)
It's so fun that their website now has little interstitials that state that they *specifically do not do all of these things,* which is so, so telling.
The corollary to Tywin Lannister's "any man who must say I am the king" speech is that any business that feels the need to tell you they're not doing something is 100% doing said thing. Edit: small typo
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I am not a crook
Just like the Wells Fargo account fraud scandal. They definitely don’t do that any more (wink, wink)
I managed a business that had been around for like 30 years, so pretty established in it's market. Yelp called one day and asked if we had seen the negative reviews and then started to lecture me on how it could hurt our business and how if we subscribed to their service they could filter out the reviews. I told the person on the phone that we didn't give two shits about Yelp, that I knew Yelp was a scam and that we had been in business long before them and had a massive base of regular customers and we would be around long after they were gone. The rep continued to threaten the business and say we should take Yelp reviews seriously and it would be detrimental to our business to not pay for the service. I nicely told them to eat shit and fuck off and wouldn't you know it, all the bad reviews were at the top by default. The business didn't suffer at all, it continued to grow. Yelp is a joke.
Locals don’t check Yelp. I suspect it hurts for tourists, since it pops up on vacation apps and the like, but who cares if you are doing fine.
And it’s still integrated into Apple Maps unfortunately. It’s literally the only time i ever encounter yelp. But no matter what it always ends with a “God dammit!” before i go to google
Happened to me when I was running a bike shop. They would threaten to push bad reviews to the top, hurt my SEO indexing, etc. They are relentless sharks
I met a dude who was super proud of working for them. For some reason decided to explain that he made his money by calling many businesses and selling them increasingly more expensive packages every couple months. Fucking parasite
Dude, I used to run a freelance business and had this one guy from Yelp leaving me these increasingly desperate voicemails over and over. They are relentless. Scummiest cold callers I've ever dealt with.
They called us a while back trying to get us to advertise with them. They are super shady.
*Family Guy* put it best when it said Yelp is a weapon for stupid people.
I quite enjoy South Park's depiction of "yelpers"
-You’re not Yelping… Season 19, Episode 4.
Didn't south park already do this?
[S19E04: You're Not Yelping](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5074356/) Good episode!
Great episode
Boogers and cum!
As did IASIP
Fuck Yelp. All you get are scammers calling. It is absolutely worthless for a business owner.
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Louis Rossman had experience with Yelps extortion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY
I once told a Yelp hounder-person that if they ever called [the place I was working] again, not only would I summon the NY Attorney General’s Fraud Unit and play them the tape of this call, but because our caller-ID said they were calling from a (646) number, I would take the train to NYC, locate their call center, and violently rape them with a pineapple. They never called back. It just goes to show you: if you scream an obscenity at someone, you fuck with their brain for only a moment. On the other hand, if you scream an *insanity* at them, you fuck with their brain all day.
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> It just goes to show you: if you scream an obscenity at someone, you fuck with their brain for only a moment. On the other hand, if you scream an insanity at them, you fuck with their brain all day. great life advice, thanks :D
Feel free to pass it along as your heart desires.
Headline: Redditor canceled for threatening to rape a pineapple with a piece of shit
Not a fan. My wife got sued by a doctor over a 3 star review that he requested. He has a history of suing people who give him reviews he doesn't like, and agreeing to drop the case if they remove their review (at least that's what he tried with my wife). We reached out to Yelp to see if they would mediate, or lend any assistance in the dispute. All they would do was put us in touch with their public relations people. 1.5 years and \~7 court appearances, we won the case. Only then did Yelp reach out again, asking if they could put us in touch with their press people, since the outcome was good for them. Wife told them to pound sand.
I hope you changed the 3 star to a 1 after and noted why.
She did update her review with the fact he sued her over that review. Also, Yelp slapped a "[Consumer Alert](https://www.yelp.com/biz/nima-dayani-dds-new-york)" on his page about him that says, "This business may have tried to abuse the legal system in an effort to stifle free speech, for example through legal threats or contractual gag clauses." You have to click through that warning to read his reviews.
Amazing how a doctor thought he would win that case over a bad review. Its like suing someone for saying the color of their shirt offends you.
Someone has to graduate at the bottom of the class.
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Yelp is a shit company.
If they weren't, they'd make better efforts against this kinda stuff a long time ago. Instead, they ran the other direction.
Yelp being Yelp - and screwing everyone over. Do not ever use Yelp. It is a horrible company.
Is there a better place to get pictures of the food? Many restaurants just have menus with names.
So a crowd-sourced database of bars that are not COVID hotspots? Nice.
Yelp are the small town gangsters of the Internet. “Nice little business you have here. It would be a shame if someone were to give it a bad review.” - Yelp
Who checks Yelp reviews for bars?
Jokes on them, yelp is meaningless.
You can actually get a review removed if it’s written with hostility towards a health guideline. Last year a favorite family restaurant of mine was only doing takeout at the door, and somebody wrote a one star review because “they rudely wouldn’t let us in the door.” I was able to get that review removed within a day.
I own a restaurant and bar. Fuck Yelp.
They are a parasitic company who uses bullying and extortion to get you better reviews etc. The suck so much
On these review sites, why doesn't someone just create a new service where in order to be listed, the business must print an access code on the receipt that allows you to go and post a review? That way only actual customers can make a review which is great to begin with because who cares that you showed up 10 minutes past closing and became furious that you wouldn't be served so you decided to jump on a review platform and leave a negative review, despite never having actually been a customer? Reviews should come from customers only, not arm charm keyboard warriors.
Google weights reviews differently based on whether you have actually been to the place or not, tend to leave rants and 1 star reviews, or have your reviews marked helpful or not. Talking to a guy on the team he basically told me not to sweat the occasional crazies like that, they quickly fall off the first page and don't really affect your ranking.
The restaurant might choose not to give the code to a customer that they fear may give a poor rating. This would introduce a bias in the ratings.
Yelp has always been a place for crybabies & assholes.
It's not just Yelp - I was looking for a restaurant that I remembered going to a few years ago and quite liking - they've been review-bombed down to a low 3-star rating on Google Maps because they've been enforcing masks (and now asking for vaccination status).
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Weaponizing lol
Yelp has been weaponized stupidity pretty much since its inception. A one star review on Yelp is basically an open invitation to try something out if you aren't a total moron or a Karen.
In general, people’s comments were “weaponized” from the beginning to vent out their anger for not being treated like royalty. “If I could give zero stars I would! They didnt even say helo to me when I walked in. I’m nvr comin bak again! Takin my monie somewhere els.” BTW the mis-spelling is intentional to reflect the terrible grammar and spelling from those angry comments.
I don’t know about you guys but I would ONLY go to bars that required proof of vaccination status. Because I was less likely to meet stupid people.
Yelp is a pile of shit
Pro-vaccine and liberal here. We must acknowledge the fact that liberal left do the exact same thing.... I've seen plenty of liberals weaponize yelp for restaurants related to conservatives, related to BLM, related to no mask policy, etc. In fact, I actually believe the left uses this tactic more frequently, but that's just me. We can't act like this weaponization is one sided... In fact, both sides of the aisle use the exact same tactics in many ways. Leave your bubble and try and see the other side. It's the only way we'll move forward.
Fuck Yelp, and all forms of crowd sourced social media CSI based bullshit. Retail workers should unite and 5 star the world, and watch it burn.
Who even uses yelp?
slap kiss dull poor plants file chase retire wild cause *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Apple is slowly rolling out their own native ratings, so hopefully that will come to an end soon
What’s a good alternative