Is Yelp Good?
On in category
Categories Yelp IPO
Listen to the podcast of LA Talk Radio star Bill Carroll, and the rabid response from viewers. The overwhelming response seems to suggest, NO!
What say you?
Listen to the podcast of LA Talk Radio star Bill Carroll, and the rabid response from viewers. The overwhelming response seems to suggest, NO!
What say you?
You must be logged in to post a comment.
In 2010 a one time patient blasted me on Yelp. I didn't know about it for one year. By that time my phone had stopped ringing. Google Adwords was depleted by this poor review. I am in the process of figuring out how much this un-vetted review has cost me in Google clicks and lost income. Yelp refuses to show my reply without a viewer clicking on response at the bottom of the Yelp. They refuse to put many new good yelps on the page unless a viewer clicks on filtered responses. Why do they filter only good yelps (many) and not filter bad, unvetted yelps (2)???? They refuse to talk to me and don't respond to my efforts to contact them.
yelp is a joke…
Yelp is a LIE. Their motto is "Real People, Real Reviews" yet my listing has had 8 out of 11 Real Reviews by Real People edited out from the public eye. Of course the only negative review I have out of 11 -5 star reviews is one they choose to display along with 2 other small positive reviews. From the publics' perception, this makes it appear that my business has a 67% approval rate, when in reality my business has a 91% approval rate. This is flat out SLANDER and I'm interested in joining any lawsuits going on about this.
And of course you cannot contact them in anyway unless you pay for advertising. There is not customer service for the business unless you pay, so it is true, that businesses who pay them money have more control over their listing.
Also I found this funny. They claim the review filter is in place to prevent fake reviews but in reality all it does if filter out people who don't use Yelp all the time. Case in point, my boyfriend uses yelp quite a bit and honestly some of his reviews are purely comical, he thinks Yelp is a joke too but just because he has posted several reviews most of his stick. So he went and posted a fake review on my profile just so we could see if Yelps' review filter could detect the fakeness….of course not ! ! its a stupid automated filter, the amount of reviews someone has posted has nothing to do with their authenticity. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if alot of the "VIP" yelpers/repeat users are just paid hacks who go around posting reviews all the time for various companies.
So of course the fake review my boyfriend posted stayed, while the majority of my authentic reviews were still filtered out…then I made him delete it because I don't want or need fake reveiws. I have 11 real reviews, 10 are purely positive and 1 is only slightly negative. If yelp is about real reviews, then all 11 of these need to be shown to the public. Editing them out is not free speech. There are many better ways to verify that a yelper is a real reviewer, their filter is just a scam to get you to pay for advertising with them. In summary Yelp is not good, its just a scam.
yelp is an abundance of misinformation
nothing real about yelp
In my view, Yelp and others like it should be prohibited from operating without the ability of a party to respond and have false information removed promptly. This system is harming legitimate businesses and it is costing us plenty to allow people to publish often false and misleading information without demonstrating that they were patients or clients in the first place. Personally, even though I don't use Yelp, I hope lawyers and injured parties financially break this entity and send them to the bankruptcy court!
Yelp sucks
Im experiencing the same thing- a positive review is posted and removed by the next day, the old and new negative stay up for years! I even tried to change my business name, added in a "new" address, took my name out as owner so i could "ditch" the page and disassociate myself from this scam- it worked for about 3 days…i thought maybe this was the way out- then Yelp went into my account and changed everything back! I am so outraged that yelp has the authority to change MY business name WITHOUT my permisson or acknowledgement! How is this not illegal? I'M the owner and have NO say! It's ridiclious that they get away with this. I can't wait for this lawsuit!
i put a YELP button on my website to encourage my customers to review. I didn't know at the time that ALL newcomers are filtered out (read: six legitimate 5star reviews) Also, did not know that YELP would keep a bad review on for over 5 years. YELP does suck, but any publicity is good publicity, AND there's always a way to outsmart them…
YELP is a fraud. I posted a one-star review for a Broadway show, and it was immediately sent to "filtered." Yep, there are probably a few fabricated reviews on Trip Advisor ,but thesite does its best to post negative and positive reviews.
YELPERS decide what to choose to display from YELPEES – mostly cutesy stuff. Look elsewhere to read all,unfiltered reviews – not those deemed Yelppy enough to post by their crew.
While I do not have an exciting story of extortion regarding Yelp (yet). I just wanted to give an observation. I have a small business in a small town and it's fairly new to the area. About 4 months ago, I had a customer say that she saw my business on Yelp and it had a good review. I thought it was very considerate of someone to take the time to not only post a picture of my business, but to also give it a good review. This was a pretty good confidence builder for me. A couple times a week, I would go to my review and see if there were any new ones. Sure enough, I now had three reviews and they were all good. I may be shallow, but that felt good. Soon I had five positive reviews. I realise this is really small potatoes, but I was really happy that folks were enjoying my service. I did not have a single bad review. Two weeks ago, I check again to see if I had more, I did not, I had less. Three reviews were gone. Since this is not something I pay for, I have no right to feel upset by it, but I still did. Oh well, life goes on. Another week goes by, I check again, I now do not have even so much as one single review. All five have been taken off. My business is still listed, so that's good (I guess).
It seems odd to me to have a site based on giving reviews, but then takes away all your reviews. Nothing really shady has happened, but it kinda took the wind out of my sail to see them missing. I happen to know all five were legitimate reviews, all from customers I remember (I did mention my business was small). Anyway the site really seems a bit on the lame side to me. When I went looking to find out what happened, I found complaint after complaint about the same thing. Also, nearly everyone said that if you have a bad review, they never seem to delete those. I guess I should be happy that I did not have any bad reviews, because apparently, that is what they would have left up. Sorry, my story is a bit on the boring side compared to many others I have read.
As a small business owner, all I can say is YELP SUCKS!!!!
I have reviews that are completely libelous & false and Yelp will do nothing to remove them. I have tried several times.
Yelp supports Hate Speech and that's all there is to it w/ what these fake reviewers wrote, yet there's nothing I can do to get it removed.
The only good news is, nobody uses Yelp anyway…
I can't wait for this POS company to file for Chapter 7 and like the pimple on a rhino's butt, be GONE!
Yelp does suck. — big-time. I have a similar experience w/ them as some of the others who posted. A single negative, FAKE review has been up since it was posted, while the legitimate reviews have all been "filtered" out.
Some time before the fake review (by an "Elite" yelper), I refused to pay to advertise on yelp. This may be the reason why only the negative fake review is left while all the other reviews (w/c had shown briefly) have all disappeared.
Just because someone posts reviews a lot does not mean those reviews are legitimate, as proven by this fake review by one of yelp's own "Elite."
Not being very computer savey I have a marketing person do all my web designs, monitoring and internet marketing. She put a YELP button on my web site ( which I didn't even know what YELP was or did) and I recieved one good review but it was a 4 star. I applied to be a merchant on Groupon and was turned down, the reason given was because there were not enough reviews on YELP. I never even visited yelp prior to this time but did start looking and found I had 11, 5 star reviews filtered and 1, 4 star review was left on. Fortunately it is a good and positive review. If I had a 1 star I'm sure that wold be the one peoplewould be reading. Researching further I found that many of my clients wrote reviews that never even appeared on YELP. I tried calling and emailing YELP with no response and then remembered several weeks prior I had a vioce mail that I saved from a Yelp salesman so called the number for answers. After getting the run around and several different answers as to why my 5 star reviews were filtered I was told if I were to advertise on YELP my page would be better managed and I would have better exposure. I didn't want to anger this guy because I don't really know how much power he had or what he could do so told him I "might" be interested but had a client and could not talk any longer and to call me back. He has left daily voice mails for over a week now. What a scam YELP is.
I'm an established business for over 35 years with steady repeat customers so I really don't think Yelp is hurting me yet but not too sure what the future may bring.
Have you seen the pictures on Yelp's listing on Yelp? Just saw a few, pictures of employees you can tell they were hand picked, I don't think normal good people would want to work for Yelp! There is one picture of this "Yelps Rules" wrote in the sands! This alone shows the mind set of these inhuman people! They believe they have they are ruling our lives! They are aware of destroying lives and they are proud of it! Hoe creepy is that!
People in over seas pull down dictators by putting their lives on the line, why can't we have a organized demonstration to bring light and attention to this?
totally agree YELP is a scam the same things that other people are talking about has happend to me we should star a blog a bout how bad is yelp for business and eventully file a lawsuit there is got to be a way we can do this.
Yelp is a total fraud, called them about a local buisness, they had removed 5 positive reviews in the last 2 months. When i called them and asked them why they told me no buisness can be that good so they removed the positive comments and left a negative review that was over 1 year old. What a total fraud. I will be telling all of my friends and family what a rip off site this is. You think your buisness will last, keep doing what you are doing and you will be living in the street out of buisness.
Yelp sucks big time
Wow, I feel much better now, I just got off the phone with Yelp, which by the way takes about 3 days for a call back. I have 3 good reviews, and all of them taken down. The reason, "they didn't fit the algorithm " and theres absolutly nothing hey can do. However, if one of those was a bad review, they would keep it up.
I figured out there "Alogrithm " good reviews get filtered and bad reviews are ok. I hate Yelp, and wish they would go out of business.
Yelp is a joke, I have several businesses and people love to yelp them. I am small independant and it seems people hold us to a higher standard. What do i mean by this? Let me briefly explain and then you will understand why I hate yelp and could care less if yelpers come into my business. One of my smaller restaurants about 80 seats has been opened for 2 years now. We are very busy and we served a little over 150 thousand people in our first 2 years.. VERY good for a small cafe. Now about yelpers, my cafe was reviewed about 400 times by yelpers giving me about 3 stars.. about 30 reviews are filtered mostly 5 star real reviews, but the hateful fake reviews remain. how do i know they are fake, because as an owner you can tell when someone reviews your business ask anyone. If we get a poor review and we deserve it I dont have a problem but when we get fake reviews and complain nothing gets done. Now back to why its bad for business a HUGE restaurant up the road that does 20 times more business than me catering to the same basic clients has been open for 20 years and has only maybe 65 reviews. Now doesnt this seem ODD to you? Me 2 years 80 seats 400 reviews.. big company restaurant 20 years ten times the customers and 59 reviews.. It SUCKS Yelp sucks and they let your compatition write FAKE reviews and do nothing about it … SORRY YELP YOU SUCK AND MOST YELPERS SUCK TOO
Recently, I brought my daughter and her friend to Buca di Beppo Italian Restaurant at Pasadena for dinner. The service was extremely poor. I made a review at Yelp. The company wrote me and requested me to rewrite my review and asked for my e-mail to send a personal apology. However, I have not received any apology e-mail from them. But instead I got a NO-REPLY e-mail from YELP stating that I violated their contract as a member of YELP. There wasn't an explanation. My profile was deleted from the site without any warning!
This is an unfair act! I believe that Yelp must be getting paid to do this type of harassment. I still have some gifts and deals I brought from that site. Now I don't think I will be refunded my money! PLEASE BE AWARE PEOPLE IF YOU RECEIVE BAD SERVICE FROM YELP.COM OR BUCA DI BEPPO IN PASADENA MAKE IT KNOWN!!!
Yelp, by all appearances, seems to be a fraud. Iv'e had approx 14 reviews…3 bad…11 good…and only the 3 bad ones stay on with 4-5 filtered and the rest out right deleted. My good ones were real reviews from real customers who simply had some kind words to say about some good service they received.
Yelp has no credibility whatsoever as far as I'm concerned.
Rick
I too came here to rant about why my legit review of Scoot's in new orleans was deleted… but seeing all the others crying the same, what are we gonna do about it? yelp seems to get to bad reviews (maybe on behalf of the owners ala 'reputation defender'… 'oh, we saw this negative review, and if you enroll, we'll contact the site and removethe negative review…' and that yelp is a part of all this? yeah, yelp's a scam….
Yelp is paid off by the company getting reviewed to post only good reviews if you do not pay the only list bad reviews.
Dodd's camera in Kenwood ,Ohio is horribly run and all of their bad reviews are hidden. I had a very bad experience getting a lens repaired throught that Dodd's store and did a review. It was never listed.
exactly I wrote a neg review about my pastors who are lying and dishonest jerks, they are not shown. I wrote a neg comment about my dishonest lying dentist, it is no where to be found.