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Get Help With Yelp
Our community has thousands of business owners, most of whom hate Yelp and have been victimized by their business practices and refusal to acknowledge the damage their site has unfairly done to many. BUT, I personally know of dozens of folks who use Yelp well and transform it into a profit center. Let’s just call this Dancing with the Devil. As long as you know who your partner is, there might just be a way to make it work. So, comment below if something HAS worked for you… Deals, Check-Ins, etc…
My name is Tim Nelson I own Sky Drifters Hot Air Ballooning over in Sacramento. After reading your article about Yelp I thought you may enjoy the story we have. It is our desire to get this story out as it is quite unique.
Three years ago we did some daily deals with Groupon and Living Social. We did well on those deals but ran afoul of something quite unexpected regarding their clients.
The coupons we sold had limitations on passenger weight and days the coupon could be used. Although these limitations were quite clear we had a very large number of people that purchased the coupons threaten us with bad Yelp reviews if we did not make exceptions to the weight limits or days they were valid.
We went from five stars with two reviews in five years to 3.5 stars with over 100 reviews. What is unusual is that nearly every single (all but two) of the one star reviews were from people we refused to honor an invalid coupon with.
Looking at California’s definition of “customer” indicates that people with invalid coupons are clearly not my customers until they use our service. Yet, Yelp claims they are my customers. Both Groupon and Living Social refunded every single one of their clients that we turned away.
Currently we are seeking an attorney willing to argue that Yelp has damaged our business by allowing non-customers to post reviews which is clearly in violation of their own policies.
We are trying hard to get this Yelp story out. Please feel free to contact us directly at 530 210 6294 or by email. Also feel free to forward this story to anyone you think may care.
it is supremely and annoyingly ironic that yelp does not have a rating system for itself. I am trying to reach one of those 38,000 yelp live person employees so that I can receive the $150 refund for the hotel I paid for but did not get to enjoy because yelp took my $$$ but failed to actually reserve the room for me. so when I arrived, I was room-less and had to pay TWICE in order not to sleep in my car. I already sent an email to [email protected] and have not received that response that yelp promised within 24 business hours. Grrrrrrr……!
Posted a factual review (negative) the business owner posted his emails to me but not mine to him, which is fine, the review stands, HOWEVER he posted my full name and email address which is a violation of privacy. I deleted the whole review- redacted my identifying info and re-posted. His reply still attaches with my info! I contacted moderators to no avail. What can I do to have the review stay but not his replies with my info- I don't care that his replies stay (it actually supports my review) just not my info?
is there a way out of a yelp contract?
Posted a factual (unfavorable) review of a Sotheby's realtor that was the listing agent of a home we purchased in the Claremont, CA area. Yelp removed it, claiming I was not a direct client of the realtor. Interesting, the realtor LIED, made FALSE representations regarding the agreed upon repairs and no one is held accountable. Removed all YELP posts as it is a SHAM!!!
I do local Search Marketing and I always cringe when I add their business to Yelp because I have to tell them to prepare to get a barrage of phone calls every week at all hours of the day trying to get you to buy their advertising. They get especially aggressive after you cancel your advertising with them. Most of my customers still get calls despite repeatedly requesting to "Please remove me from your call list and do not call me again about advertising. I will never buy advertising from you."
If you scour their website (and Google) you will find Yelp has absolutely no way to contact them by e-mail (or website contact form) to request that you no longer get sales calls (or any other subject for that matter). They require you to call them. This I believe is by design because anything they put in an email response would create a permanent record of a communication they had with you. If they responded in an email that they would stop calling you and they still did, you'd have some good evidence for legal recourse.
Has anyone figured out a reliable way to get them to stop calling? It is a form of harassment in my opinion. I'm sure they consider that if you have claimed a business listing, you now have a business relationship with you so they would say these calls are regarding your business relationship with them. It's just plain wrong. I've never seen a company in all my years be this harassing with the sales calls despite repeated requests to be removed from the call list.
Yelp Sucks…
I am having a much different experience with Yelp. My yelp page actually has no reviews. I have a fairly new business that I have not advertised yet, nor was I ready to spend any money advertising, but against ALL better judgement (yes I hold myself ultimately responsible for this decision) I let a Yelp rep talk me into trying their ad service for 3 months.
After having 0 responses if you discount the scammer that contacted me thru Yelp (lost money there too…) I decided the program was not right for me (why didn't I see this before agreeing to a 3 month contract!! argh!) and sent in an email to cancel the contract since the 3 months were over. Well apparently the 3 month contract stated that I had to cancel 30 days before the date I wanted to stop running the ads. Now, if it was a contract for 3 months, why would it run into a 4th month without my consent? The costs of running the ads bled my sole-proprietorship dry. I KNOW it was a bad decision, but the rep explained that one contact thru Yelp and a closed deal would pay for the cost of the 3 months. That never happened since only a scammer contacted me. Now, according to them, I will have to pay another month since I didn't submit a cancellation 30 days ago. After a lengthy back and forth with their rude customer service, nothing has changed and I am staring at another payment I cannot afford. Such a terrible decision on my part but I learned a valuable lesson.
Back in December I received a promotional email offering a $300 worth of business advertising for "FREE." I accepted, part of which required me to give them my debit card. In January I decided that it wasn't worth anything, so I thought that I put the campaign on pause. I am actually sure that I did. Just now I looked at my bank account and found that they debited $134.40 from my account. I called my bank (CHASE) and was told that they couldn't do anything about it unless I cancelled my card and called it stolen. I explained that wasn't the case, just that I disputed this charge, and had they sent me an invoice I would have questioned it. The bank told me too bad, I had to call Yelp. So I just did, and they told me that I used up the $300, and in addition incurred another $134.40 worth of clicks. The woman was very arrogant and only told me what I already knew, which is that they are charging me $134.40. That everything was done legitimately by them. I said that had I been receiving some sort of invoice each month, I would have had information to halt the program, which I already thought I did way before the $300 was reached. In any case, the woman at YELP basically told me to screw myself. So my only recourse is to relay my sad tale. People have gone to jail for stealing less.