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Tell Your Yelp Story
It’s time to share your story… stories will be chosen from the comments below to be profiled on the site with the truth of how Yelp has done you wrong.
If you really want to help, read through the comments and thumbs up or down the stories to help the media select the best stories to profile. This is a community to support local businesses, so please help each other, comment, and lend an ear/shoulder when needed.
Yelp is a criminal activity. I had a business that Yelp put up bad reviews but filtered out good ones. They were always calling to try to talk me into paying them for advertizing. I always refused so the bad reviews stayed up. I reported them to the washington state BBB and a case was opened. They revised the reviews on my site and the BBB closed the case. Yelp should be charged under the RICO act.
anti yelp movement
Google Blows Yelp away Yelp has so much garbage content on their site that i cant be leave google didn't banned them for spam.
When a yelp advertising agent calls you be nice and don't tell him or she that google blows yelp away it happened to me bingo first review was a 1 star review 2 another 1 star review they don't care. All they care about is how much money they are going to get from a small business for advertising. Yelp is corrupt and a lot of people know it. Jeremy Stoppelman he might be a good programmer but he is an A_S_S HOLE as well as who ever funds the company meaning YELP. It's sad to know that his YELP google cheaper and much more classier to advertise your business. You know why ill tell you I've researched about a third of negative reviews on yelp an a quarter of them assassinate small business owners. That tells you what type of person Jeremy Stoppelman is scum he's doing well with his company and small business owners are losing money every day because of bad reviews isn't that something. He trained his workers to harass small business owners to advertise you tell them no they call the next day and harass you again i cannot be leave JUDGES are letting them get away with this they are breaking the law and getting away with it. What happened to JUSTICE. YELP should be held Acanable for there actions. STOP SUPPORTING YELP The owner and investors are garbage the economy is bad as it is
I was told that yelp loves when competitors put up reviews about other businesses.
If you had any doings with yelp.com thats the place where the calls are coming from we have tested there app and its all advertisements they are harassing the country and getting away with it
https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2065394/su… https://disqus.com/home/channel/newsforeveryone/d…
When I started my surveying business, one of my client's posted a good review on Yelp. At that time I did not even know what Yelp was. Over the following five years, I received several positive reviews from clients who went out of their way to take time to post me on Yelp.
Then the lady from Yelp started calling. Holy crap, the pricing was outrageous!! So after the first time she called, I no longer showed up on the "land surveyors in San Diego search". But if I expanded the map and re-did the search I showed up. Geographical search engine I reckoned at the time.
The second time she called, same lady but more aggressive, I declined the sales pitch and poof, I was off of Yelp. Weird thing was, if you did a Google search for my business, the Yelp page came up with all of my shining reviews.
So I did a survey for a guy a couple of months back, and like a good consumer happy with my work he put a positive review for me on Yelp. So I checked it out with the Google search and it was there on the Yelp page.
Well, a week later, Yelp removed that review. WTF. Do they actually have some type of vindictive management style that holds us small businesses hostage if we don't buy their ads?? And they actually pay people to monitor this stuff?? Whatever.
I don't need those a-holes over there at Yelp, my business does well despite their extortionist practices.
Its like the BBB, a $400 sticker you can place on your $45,000 work truck. Screw em both! Good business and customer service trumps that crap every time.
I feel better now, thanks for listening
I have 4 5-star reviews from clients of mine on Yelp, but Yelp doesn't recommend those. Instead, Yelp recommends the 1-star reviews that were posted from the same crappy company (Global Seafoods) that tried to scam me.
When you google my business services for my small community, situated between three major cities ~100+ miles away, my business comes up first, foremost and many times, even the BBB A+ rating. No competitor has as many reviews, much less ALL positive ones.
Except on Yelp.
Here we find one competitor rated as "Five Stars" with only one positive review and one severely bad review, rather hidden under a gray link "not recommended reviews".
Yelp decided MY business would get 'NO Stars", then hide over 7 positive "5 star" reviews in that gray area "not recommended".
On the way down the Yelp page, note that "not recommended reviews" in small type gray tops an overwhelming color "ad" = Best of Yelp, featuring guess who? That same competitor.
Called up Yelp, they said Best of Yelp is paid for and only one per season, sorry Charlie (the tuna).
Paid advertising with them and true to their claim – this affected my business status zero.
Participated with their hijinx to offer discounts, et al. = no affect on becoming an "equal" to this one-trick pony competitor.
Tried out some promotions – nothing for me in all those.
The latest client/positive review got me a 5 Star rating … for one day until buried like the rest.
Another buried client even called them up (or was it email?) to complain her time/effort was being wasted on them, only to be stonewalled.
INSIDER ADVICE, anyone?
If it takes a load of cash, I simply don't have it.
[…] Yelp-Sucks.Com […]
So I set up with Yelp.com for their pay per click advertising. The salesman tells me that I can do this for $50 + $8 per click, does not tell me that the rate is subject to change. At that rate I was happy to do business, but I receive a bill for $334.87. I only had a single click based on the information in my emails from Yelp.com. So I call to see why it was so expensive. that is when I am told the charge is subject to change. I ask why I was not informed of these changes in rate. The accounts management people tell me it is because they change all the time. I tell them that I want to cancel and delete my page. they tell me that it is a 30 day cancellation and that I must continue with them I tell them that I want to cancel, and I call up my bank to start a claim as this was not what was agreed to and my bank returns payment. I receive an email from Yelp.com threatening to cancel my page to which I respond that this is exactly what I wanted. Next month they remove money from my account again from a different account to get around the bank block, $525 this time. Now I have taken and changed all of the information on my Yelp.com page since they won't delete it.This is the worst company that I have ever had the displeasure of running into.
Very similar issue with us! Ballooning "pay per click price", when they told us it would not be above a maximum price! The pay per click rose by at least 5x, over our advertising period!!!!
we also noticed one of our 2 5-star reviews disappeared!
This horrible ripoff, on our first advertising since our business was founded in 1953! I pray we don't get any fake negative reviews!
How do we get any vindication for our businesses??
Two times I post a poor review for a crappy restaurant (don't know why I went back, not many bars here) and YELP won't show them. And they don't affect the "star" rating. So the sh*thole looks like 4 or 5 stars and is a ripoff!
YELP now = ZERO CREDIBILITY with me. And I believed the stupid TV ads that they were honest and independent. WOW.
https://www.change.org/p/stop-yelp-the-ultimate-c…
Yelp is not honest in their reviews. I did a review on an attorney that I had an experience with and apparently she had my comment art my review removed. This was a bulldog bully attorney who I wanted to warn people about about her bias and her tactics in the court room but every time I posted a review, it’d get removed after about 4-5 reviews I get an email from yelp telling me that I am violating their terms and conditions but they never stated why or how.hell and every review I left was a 100% honest and tactful so how is it that they kept removing my reviews and ultimately revoked my membership. All because I gave an honest review? that just comes to show you the way of the world this attorney who is just a pure bully can deny me of telling my experience and have my reviews removed and ultimately my account is deactivated? what kind of transparency is that? if you depend on yelp for honest reviews think again because it’s not happening entirely.
Yelp let some person take our company account and it got a really bad review (1 star). Then more. We asked our clients if they would like to review us as well and a few did with (5 stars). When we finally realized that the people with bad reviews weren't even customers, we tried to get yelp to shut down the account as we didn't even have access to it! They refused and then promptly one day after another all the 5 star reviews went dark and when asked about that they literally took all the 5 star reviews off entirely so now it is like they never even happened!? What? Are we so stupid as a whole to allow some company to dictate our rights and what is or not, because that is EXACTLY what YELP is doing and I have to ask who died and made them GOD! Obviously, we as the public are allowing this to happen. We should boycott YELP and give legitimate companies our vote and business.
I really have yet to visit a place that had 5 stars on YELP and feel that way myself. Usually I am super disappointed. In fact it is usually the one's that have poor ratings that are much better! I guess like me they didn't pay YELP!! We can use google or any other and make our own decission right? Why be dictated to do something because YELP give's its seal of approval (because face it) it is YELP and not the reviewer who has the final word in what rating any company gets!!!! I personally don't believe they should be allowed to be a company. Isn't being told what we can and cannot do by government enough? (At least we have a say in who we pick). Do we really need big companies with tons of money and no ethics at all to dictate how we spend our time and money? This kind of company should NOT be allowed to exist.
I cannot stand how they cut off rec views “unless you get the app” thevattiyude of greed permeates the thing . Huge ah s
I agree with all other posters. Yelp will hide some legit good reviews as “not recommended” but hurry to post a bad review from a non client that just wanted to make us looks bad. Nothing I could do to remove that review and all emails or phone calls were a waste of time. I’m actually thinking it would be best to not show at all on Yelp since my business doing well on Google search engine. No review, is better then a bad one. It will be great if one day a collective law suit will be filed against them as they deserve. Shame on you!
I posted the following complaint on yelp and it was deleted (not just “not recommended” but actually deleted) due to “Content Guidelines violations”. They said it fell outside of a “typical consumer experience”. If you read the review below, you will realize that people considering using this business need to be informed!! When reviewing the Content Guidelines, I have no idea why this review was deleted. Further, the email I was sent informing me my post was deleted, was a no-reply email, and there is no way to contact someone through phone or email to answer any of my questions. My experience in my post is SO SO SO important for people to know that are considering using the Pet Vet I reviewed. Its a life and death situation for pets. I can not understand why my review was deleted twice, and it makes me not trust yelp reviews anymore. I would like someone at Yelp to contact me and explain why they are keeping this important information from the public, or are they just going to delete this post too? I am in the process of speaking to the Orange County Register about the fact that Yelp keeps important reviews from customers to appease business owners. Please see my review below:
Removed Content:
DO NOT EVER BOARD YOUR PET HERE!!! While I was getting into my car a few Saturdays ago in the Seabridge neighborhood behind The Pet Vet, two of their employees approached me and asked me to be on the lookout for a small black and brown terrier chihuahua mix (about 15 -20 pounds). An employee had let the dog out, it had been sighted in my neighborhood for the past couple of hours, but no one could catch it. To make matters worse, a coyote had been sighted numerous times in Seabridge that day. I texted about ten neighbors and for the next couple of hours people were searching by car, bike, and foot. The word spread and even more people came out to search. We all have our own fur babies and could not imagine what it would be like to come home from a vacation to find that they lost our dog. It was spotted many time during our search, but no one could catch it. Luckliy, right when we were about to call it quits, 5 of us happened to be at the right place at the right time, and we caught the very scared dog. My husband even got bit, but not that bad. We were able to give the dog back to the employees who were driving around the neighborhood searching for the dog, but in retrospect we wish we had kept the dog and tried to find the owner. I guarantee that they will not tell the owner what happened, and they will never know how a community of dog lovers came together to save their dog. Then, come to find out, the dog originally ran down to Garfield and Beach, turned back around and ducked into our neighborhood. One person even saw it run across Beach Blvd! I also heard through the Community Huntington Beach Facebook page and the Nextdoor App, that this is not the first time a dog has gotten out. I can’t believe how irresponsible this vet is!!!!
I have probably 10 positive reviews that have been deemed unrecommended by Yelp, yet they show the one bad one of a customer acting out of malice to hurt my rating. With Yelp's internet presence, despite the fact that I have over 50 other reviews on google and elsewhere that are all 5 stars, my rating shows up online as the "Yelp rating" which is by far the lowest of my collective reviews out there. Its sickening and they have way too much power over your small business, demanding outrageously high cost marketing to trick you into thinking that it will generate positive reviews, which for me, just ensured that I absolutely despise Yelp altogether.
Real simple… Take a look at the reviews for "Mark Patrick Seminars". There are 2 reviews viewable and "77 other reviews that are not currently recommended". So in Yelps opinion, 97% or yelper's opinions of this business are not legitimate. HA!
Yelp allows individuals to review other businesses, right? OK…then how come we cannot post our experiences w/Yelp on Yelp?
You can! https://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco?osq=yelp
Another unsatisfied business owner here. I had a client who went onto YELP after we removed her from our studio due to her husband verbally and physically threatening me late at night when I was alone with my child. In her review of my company she went as far as to say that we were intentionally hurting and threatening children. I had extensive proof that this lady was harassing me through our credit card company and through email. I provided all of this to YELP and they to this day have done nothing to remove the review. In addition, they have shelved four reviews that were very positive and unsolicited from many of our customers. Under no circumstance can I understand how they believe that they are being fair and unbiased.
I have been fighting this since 2011. one thing you can do is us the yelp logo on your web site and link it directly to the not recommended reviews which i have done. check http://www.bejanies.com in the past you had to enter a capcha darn thing to see your not recommended reviews. Yelp is well protected legally but the reviewers are not. They are not reporters and are not protected by any Constitutional amendment. I have started to respond to reviewers in the same manner that they review and have warned them of potential law suites! Yelp promotes these "A" holes by making them Elite Yelpers. The have party's and get togethers and actually have ranking positions. So of course their reviews will be posted.
I know who my reviewers are because I have a salon with records of who comes in when. I am seriously considering starting suite against them!
Most of these morons are the same people who were picked on in school all their lives and the tried to get into the police academy only to flunk the Psyc exam. They are now Mall Cops!
https://twitter.com/yelp_ads_suck go here and help
According to Yelp my business is now closed.
We signed up and durning the sign up process before we were EVEN a customer there was a bad review that the sales person did not share with me…. The bad review was a customer black mailed me into giving her an additional discount on our services AFTER we negotiated a GREAT price. I DID give her the discount and she STILL wrote a bad review.
I canceled with in 30 days of signing up, when I called to cancel they told me it was a 30 day notice so in 30 days it would be off.
Well I got another bill OH that was for the advertisement we did for you for the past 30 days….. WAIT I canceled 30 days ago I did not ask for you to advertise for me any longer… got another Bill
OH then a 650 dollar bill YES early termination fee.
I went to the bank disputed the fees and got my money back…
YELP SUCKS FOR SURE>>
AWFUL TO WORK WITH and Will not recommend anyone to BUY advertising from them.
I am fairly upset from the product delivery for the last few months since we signed up..
We have a very low and contact requests from Yelp, and the few that did contact us did so for services we do NOT provide!
Like, video production Photo printing Flyer printing And others But the last one that caught my attention was from a call 5 minutes ago when a lady called me for a VHS to dvd conversion.
So I went and checked myself, and behold the magic we are there on the list..
http://screencast.com/t/5aPfYcv1
For this we have to spend $13 per click?? Seriously??????
We have NO control on my own keywords and search terms and this feel like high noon robbery!! In laymen term – Yelp is managing your entire advertising for your store and claiming to send you direct traffic from related searches.
unfortunately this is broad day light theft where yelp is charging you for advertising where no one else is spending money and just pushing you ad there for their maximum profit either it is related to your business or not.
SCREW YOU "YELP," you are not any help and just distort the reality!!!
You refuse to post any justifiably critical evaluation of dishonest businesses, and for years flood my e-mail box by your junk-mail promoting the businesses that you extort.
You should say on your website that you just promote the businesses that pay you, and do not have in place any verification of negative postings. On top of all, you could not arrange the needed contact with the useful businesses because you are CRAPPY and your e-mail system is obsolete?!
SHAME ON YOU "YELP" your self-serving service is a great disservice to anybody who'd trust your!!!
Your further e-mail is blocked from now.
If you value your time, don't bother posting a review on Yelp; They may not post it for their own seemingly groundless reasons. But if you like wasting your time and getting pissed off, go ahead.
I so agree! I work VERY hard to provide superior service at a fair price to all and have had 6 reviews posted on yelp (4 or 5 stars) by happy customers, but yelp only shows ONE very OLD review, not even the most recent review! When I contacted them about this, they said "they" have no control over it, it's all based on a computer algorithm that decides with NO human input whether a review shows up. So potential Wedding Couples only see one years old review instead all of them! I am so angry I would like to see a class action lawsuit against yelp!
Anyone have a face book page join in and have some fun YELP SOULD BE PUT UNDER THE SCUMBAG THAT OWNS THE COMPANY JEREMY STOPPELMAN RUIND MY LIFE FROM FAKE DEFAMATORY REVEIW.
https://twitter.com/yelp_ads_suck
DOES YELP OWN THIS PAGE
Two years ago 28 five star reviews simply "disappeared" off of our Yelp page right after I refused to advertise with them. This left us with 3 reviews; two five star and one one star review from a woman who signed up to take our classes, went to almost all of them and then requested her full amount back because she was going on vacation and wouldn't be able to finish the class (she attended six of the eight classes she paid for). When I finally got ahold of someone at Yelp (by calling the sales department many times and wearing them down), I was told that they had no idea where those reviews went. We decided to cut our losses and move on. Over the past two years we have received 37 five star reviews. The one bad review is still there but our other reviews make it clear that we are a reputable business. Up until this month, there were only 8 reviews that were in the "not recommended" section at the bottom of the page. I received another sales call from Yelp about two months ago and, again, turned them down. I just went to our Yelp page and 31 of our reviews are suddenly relegated to the "not recommended" section!! Of course, the one one star review remains. That is 80% of our reviews. Some of the people that are in the "not recommended" section are people who review all the time and have quite a few followers. In fact, I randomly selected some of these reviewers and found that ALL of their other reviews of other businesses are "recommended"!! Why just our business? Do the math.
If you are interested in suing yelp in small claims I am organizing a group small claims action. Contact me at [email protected] and I will let you know how to join in the case for free.
As if you guys did not know already, YELP is a piece of SH*T! Just here to vent. A while back we had a couple of bad reviews and those reviews would be at the top of our yelp page. No matter how many good reviews we got, they wouldn't budge. At the same time, yelp called us to see if we wanted to advertise with them. After many attempts on their part, I finally gave in. I went in at the lowest rate. Since then the bad reviews got moved to the bottom or the next page. We reached a max of 54 reviews which was in the last couple weeks. Coincidentally, they started calling again because the contract is up. I refuse to answer because I know all they want is to move me up on plans….somehow we are down to 43 reviews from 54 in the last week. I'm going to be cancelling my account with them completely.
Yelp Salesmen called today so that I may rejoin and start paying $15 per click to be on front page. He was trying to bully me into resigning up saying "what you don't want to make money, and here why this makes sense" as if he was selling to a three year old. I have 5 star reviews on yelp and they took down three of my reviews because they were not considered bonafide yelper reviews whatever that means! He said that decision was made by their software. I've been in business 20 years in June surly I must be doing something write within my service industry to have lasted this long. I am not in business to make another company more profitable then my own company! Thumbtack is more reasonable for my return on investment and fair exchange is no robbery,
That’s interesting about Thumbtack. I’ve seen it and I put all my clients on it for SEO but I hadn’t thought any traffic was coming from there. I’ll have to take a deeper look.
I did it it worked changed all information and removed all pictures thank you your a life saver
should we trust an anti yelp site that advertises yelp ads???????????????????????????????
OMG Is Yelp advertsing on my site???? It's google adwords! I don't pick the ads but that is hilarious! Staffers from Yelp have been to the site 9 times this week according to my tracker. Holy moley!
I'm going through my "experience" with Yelp NOW. I never paid a lot of attention to Yelps rankings, but lately they have been at the TOP of Google when typing in the keywords for my business. I decided that I should become a bit more active on Yelp since they were being shown to all of my potential customers. THAT, was my first mistake. I claimed my business on Yelp and was surprised to see that my business (they very next day) had moved in rank from 8th all the way up to 3. Positive? I thought so…at first. I generally have asked clients if they wouldn't mind submitting a review of my services and I added Yelp to the list of websites where my business reviews can be found. 2 of my clients did and were reasonably positive reviews. Well, Yelp decided that they were "Not Recommended" reviews. A few weeks later, the phone calls from Yelp started, trying to sell me advertising. As a small business, by advertising budget is quite small and I declined. Another phone call…declined their offer again. Then the emails…I at least an email a day which I stopped replying to as it became a nuisance! One last voice mail left for me from Yelp essentially said" I guess you don't care how your business ranks with us, it's unfortunate that this will negatively affect your business." Sure enough, within a few days I thought I would check and my business had dropped down to #22. Coincidence? I doubt it very much! They are extortionists prying what they can out of the hands of small business. I wish they cared that small business does not have the kind of money they demand for their advertising. (Seems ironic that a site that is for "fair and unbiased reviews" even allows advertising…this should be a BIG red flag to consumers to begin with! Go ahead and drive small businesses out of business with your operation…soon, you won't have any business left to prey on!
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