YELP = LEGAL EXTORTION SCAM

stuntman mike

stuntman mike

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Aug 5, 2007
i guess i'm really late on this but it still shocked me when i found out. i know yelp is filled with shills and i rarely use yelp but did you know that they will offer advertising fees to a business and if they don't pay, they delete positive reviews? i also understand what they are doing is legal but morally, it's downright dirty (and brilliant :lol: ) seriously, i'm deleting the yelp app from my phone :smh:

ONE EXAMPLE
A Connecticut restaurant owner is claiming that Yelp deleted positive posts about her eatery after she refused to purchase advertising from the consumer reviews website.

Kelly Calandro, co-owner of Verace restaurant in Shelton, Conn., said positive reviews about the business started disappearing shortly after she told a Yelp sales rep that she wasn’t interested in advertising on the site, WFSB reports. The sales rep continued calling, and Calandro claims each time she refused to buy ads, more reviews went missing.
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ANOTHER EXAMPLE
During interviews with dozens of business owners over a span of several months, six people told this newspaper that Yelp sales representatives promised to move or remove negative reviews if their business would advertise. In another six instances, positive reviews disappeared — or negative ones appeared — after owners declined to advertise.
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and here's a quick blurb from a reputable local business:
Anyway cutting to the chase last week she was approached by yelp salespeople to advertise. She thought it was too expensive and said no thank you. The following week all but one positive feedback were taken off.
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yelp. not even once :smh:
 
Dirty but its quite genius. Take care of me, I'll take care of you...
:smh:
 
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That's foul. I know there's yahoo reviews and yellow pages but is there any other similar things to yelp that have an app? I don't want to use this service if that's what they're doing.
 
It tells you on the website that they may or may not post/keep good/bad reviews at their discretion if it looks fraudulent. :lol: *shrugs*
 
the e-MOB..

pimp.gif


call me yelpie castellano.
 
As long as they arent posting negative reviews cant be mad at the hustle I guess.
 
i remember yelp would constantly call our store trying to sell us on advertising

there's also lots of fake reviews on there. im not sure if yelp is involved with that though, but companies can pay for positive reviews
 
lol hardly extortion

You don't pay us we won't promote you. Its just like ANY other advertising business.
They are in no way obligated to have the business up there in general, or let alone required to have positive reviews on it.

It is what it is, but small business can't expect yelp to help them "just because". Which is exactly what yelp does with its reviews.
 
Scumbag move by them. A lot of people use Yelp too so if small businesses want that publicity they'll have to fall in line or hope that word of mouth works.
 
:smh: that's dirty. I've been weary about Yelp lately since I submitted a negative review of this local place that ripped me off a while ago and they just buried my review by marking it as potential spam :smh: I have a few reviews on my profile too so I didn't even fit their description of people who submitted only a couple of reviews.

Regardless, I just deleted the Yelp app. I'm just going to stick to the reviews on Google maps which I have been doing lately anyway.
 
i remember watching the news and some small businesses ask to be removed from their site completely. not sure how it ended, though
 
I have heard of these situations happening, but beyond a couple articles, I couldn't find any business owners complaining about it besides a couple isolated instances. If there is anyone on here who has had their business' reviews removed because they wouldn't pay Yelp, please post it here. I am highly interested.

For the past year, we have basically been telling Yelp it's not in our budget instead of saying a flat "NO" just in case they wanted to downgrade us. Besides that, we have had a mostly positive relationship. Only 3 reviews have been hidden and that was because it was the first review for those clients.
ssjjfar said:
lol hardly extortion

You don't pay us we won't promote you. Its just like ANY other advertising business.
They are in no way obligated to have the business up there in general, or let alone required to have positive reviews on it.

It is what it is, but small business can't expect yelp to help them "just because". Which is exactly what yelp does with its reviews.
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The problem they have goes beyond paying for reviews. It is a credibility issue. While their customer is the business, if the consumer doesn't deem the reviews to be credible, then they won't use the website/app. If they don't use the website/app, then business will be increasingly less willing to pay to advertise because they won't be getting the views they could if they just did PPC with Google or Facebook.
 
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