Tell Your Yelp Story

Hello fellow YELP victims,

We recently responded to a YELP review from Jessica I. in which she wrote nothing other than "this place blows!" regarding our family owned and operated restaurant. Juvenile behavior, I'm sure you'll agree, but also irresponsibly detrimental to our reputation. In our response we simply requested that YELP reviewers please be more responsible and, heaven forbid, CONSTRUCTIVE, with their criticisms. We also changed our business name to "Yardville Inn PLEASE SEE OUR FILTERED REVIEWS!" because, like most businesses, all of our 5 star reviews have been filtered and we believe the regular potential customer does not realize this.

Jessica I. replied to our response, and again stated that we "blow". She received compliments from her fellow ELITE YELPsters as well as "cool" and "funny" clicks re: her eloquent review of our establishment. Interestingly, one of her fellow ELITists sent us an email reprimanding us for our response to her "blows" comment. I thought you might be interested in this email and my reply. Good Luck.

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Kenneth DuPuis wrote:

I am writing in response to the reply you wrote to user Jessica I. regarding her review of your establishment on Yelp.com.

Firstly, as I'm sure you are aware, Yelp is a forum where users generate feedback related content about local businesses, hopefully based on their personal experiences. There are guidelines and recommendations on what can or should be posted, and nowhere in them is there a mandate that they be constructive in their criticism or detailed in their descriptions.

As not only a user of the site, but also a career management professional, I find it unseemly to berate a customer for, or lecture them about, their opinions; especially so in front of other prospective or actual customers. In terms of the values I would assign to both her review and your reply, I must go on record as saying that your posted input would carry significantly more weight than hers in a decision on whether or not to patronize the Yardville Inn. And by that, I mean that I would decide not to.

Yelp is a community where people speak their minds. Not all of them may do so with the same degree of clarity, or speak from the most qualified positions, but all feedback is valuable to a business. If someone tells you that you are bad at what you do, it is ultimately your responsibility to fix yourself, not theirs. If the feedback you are getting is consistently bad, there are problems, and you need to rectify them if you do not want to deal with negative word of mouth advertising, which I am sure you are well aware is poisonous. If you also feel the need to fix the person who is spreading that negativity, well, I would refer you to the old saw about flies, vinegar, and honey.

Lastly, on the subject of your impassioned plea to read your filtered reviews tacked onto your business name, it is cheap and transparent. It is not part of your business name, and in my opinion should not be published there. A request has been submitted to remove that, and should you change it back, I will request that it be removed again. If you feel the need to ask us to do what most of us do anyway (essentially implying at the same that we are stupid), you should include that in a description of your business, which I see no one has bothered to write. That doesn't seem like a very good idea, though. It would smack of desperation, as it does now.

Above all, please be aware that offending the users of Yelp with questionable tactics is probably not the best way to drum up business. No one is out to hurt you, only to guide others. I hope you take these suggestions to heart, I wish you luck and success in your enterprise.

Regards,

Kenneth DuPuis

Toms River, NJ

Yelp Elite '12

OUR REPLY:

To: Kenneth DuPuis

Toms River, NJ

Yelp Elite '12

Thanks for contacting us with your reprimands and threats to report us to YELP, but You miss the point, Sir.

Why is it that 15 of Yardville Inn's legitimate customers' reviews have been "filtered"?!

http://www.yelp.com/biz/yardville-inn-please-see-…

As far as Yardville Inn's opinion of Jessica I.'s public YELP insult and subsequent tardy explanation: Here's my challenge. If Jessica will give us a date and time, we will review the security cameras..and if she ever waited 20 minutes "without a SOUL waiting on us", I will change our listed business name to "WE ARE VERY SORRY JESSICA" and I will personally hand you both $1000.00. Why am I so sure? Because it's a lie. And because our management team and I don't allow such things to happen. But that's actually besides the point. Let's just say it did happen?…."this place blows" is not the helpful or constructive way to let the world know. But that's just my opinion, which, for some reason, according to you, deserves far less respect or publicity than one of my supposed customers'.

No, we are not perfect. But we strive for it. We stake our lives and livelihoods on it. Do we make mistakes? Absolutely. Have we apologized, comped meals, sent out letters of contrition? Yes certainly, and we will always take responsibility for what's not working about our business and then work ceaselessly to change for the better. But when exactly is it constructive or helpful to ANYONE besides Jessica (who garners her little "funny" and "cool" clicks), to simply write: "this place blows"? Surely you can't believe this to be the reason that YELP should exist? So that disgruntled former employees or their friends can seek revenge for feeling wrongfully terminated? So that a local competitor can bring another business down? So that you can be too lazy to communicate using your actual mouth and not just your keyboard? To speak up and contact a manager? So that you can't just let us know on the spot what happened to cause your dissatisfaction, and allow us the grace of making it right? So that you can just throw out insults which affect more than 30 hard working individuals' ability to be employed and pay their bills? But again, this is not the point, and not why we must answer and defend our reputation against YELP's unfair business practices.

"If the feedback you are getting is consistently bad, there are problems, and you need to rectify them.."

-and here IS the point, once again, clearly delineated:

The feedback for our business is consistently and overwhelming EXCELLENT, and it's ALL word of mouth, because we 've always felt that our customer's opinion is the very best advertising…but YELP is stacked in such a way that the innocent and ignorant are not easily aware of the inherent lie.

It's the reckless irresponsibility of you YELPers and your ignorance of YELP's completely biased review setup which really deserves to be examined: The ASSUMPTION that because it's filtered, it must be a lie. The only way to fight back is to educate. That's why we changed the name. And will continue to do so, along with joining the thousands of businesses across the country who are filing class action lawsuits against YELP and demanding that the deck be unstacked. Drawing attention to our legitimate, but for some odd reason, filtered, reviews will hopefully wake some potential guests, and perhaps even self righteous "Elite" YELPers, up to the fact that legitimate reviews are NOT being shown to them.

As we've stated before..we have NO PROBLEM with our negative reviews being posted. We make mistakes and we support the first Amendment…BUT YELP NEEDS TO UN FILTER OUR POSITIVE REVIEWS.

You can contact any one of the reviewers whose posts were filtered. We did not pay them or bribe them in any way. We were not aware that they were posting until they complained to us that their positive review was removed. They simply love our place and appreciate all the hard work we put into making customers happy. Yet because they don't review as much as yourself or Jessica, they get filtered???

Is that the reason, or could it be because we refuse to pay YELP for advertising, that only mostly negative reviews remain? Why no negative reviews being filtered out? Why is it that businesses across America are told by YELP reps that in order for their "filtered" reviews to be revealed, they must pay$ 300-1k per month in advertising? That in order to remove their local competitors listing from the top of their very own Yelp Business page, they must ante up $$$? Why can readers click your Elitist review as being "cool", "funny", "useful", but not "biased", or "inappropriate", nor simply "not useful"? Why are you allowed to flag the business owners response to a review as "inappropriate", when no one is allowed to flag the reviewers response to that response? If you look between the lines and past your nose you'll see the answer.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-bu…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/28/yelp-rev…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhandy/2012/08/16/t…
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/11/presidential-be…
http://www.discoverhawaiitours.com/blog/2012/01/0…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/30/yelp-ext…
https://yelp-sucks.com/category/yelp-lawsuit-2/

We have no problem with criticism, public or private. But why is it not being given its proper context? All we ask, even if you "Elite" YELPers must continue to pride yourself on insults like "this place blows", is for fairness. Yelp can track the IP addresses of our filtered reviews and can easily satisfy any suspicion of impropriety. If the filtered reviews are legit, which they are..then include them along with the negatives and let our business's adjusted star rating speak for itself.

Do a little research first and I'm positive that you will begin to see what's inherently biased (and in my opinion, evil) about YELP, and anytime you or anyone you know would like to take me up on my challenge, I'll have $1000.00 earmarked, or you might simply stop in to enjoy what our community regards as some of the very best food and service around.

Sincerely,

S. Lenahan

Owner, CEO

Old Yardville Inn, Inc.

Yardville Inn

Wine, Spirits, Restaurant & Tavern

Yardville, NJ

My complain against YELP is similar to many post on this site. I have about 40 positive review which YELP remove it to the filter section ? most of the negative post are still at the front page even so some of the Yelper are first time posting ? I did try many times to complain directly to YELP and the response was similar such as YELP computerized analysis doing his own filtering ? First amendment is good as long is the customer provided the proof and true document to confirm the action, many post are rivals or customer using friends or multiple accounts ? hope we can one day win class action suit against YELP.

This is discrimination against our shop, either YELP will post all the review on the main page or move all review to the FILTER,

I DO advertise with Yelp! and they still are deleting my good reviews!! And I'm sure that when I get bad ones, they will keep all of those! Do we have any recourse? Is there anything that we can do?

Thats exactly what happened to me! I own a sports Bar & Grill in Pittsburgh Pa and truthfully we do very well and get a ton of compliments ! I can take constructive criticism all day long as a matter of fact I welcome it!! However when an individual decides to extract revenge on a review site it should be the sites responsibility to know the difference! They make enough money off of our businesses without our permission to do so, as a matter of fact Iam quite sure they make way more than most of us in the small business world. The difference between other sites and yelp is that the other sites leave all reviews for people to figure out the good bad and the ugly! YELP however puts the bad ones on the front page and the raving reviews in their so called FILTER! They leave you helpless without a customer service number I had to trick them into thinking. I wanted to advertise with them to get a call from the company , I also emailed them several times to complain and I believe that not only did they not help me but I think it's intentional! Where is the review site to write reviews on review sites? I would really like to sue them & if the avoid suits by saying reviewers release them of responsibility well then when we business owners reach out for help against blatant lies and they can see the other nasty reviews this same person wrote about us and they do nothing to help and only make it worse by filtering all positive reviews well that's where I find them Liable!! Please let's join forces and put a stop to this business practice! We too are customers of their sites going back to a comment that the Customer is always Right!!

Yelp is driving me crazy. I have 15 5-star reviews and six of them have been filtered out. I'm still at five star, and I do get referrals from yelp, but one of the reviews have been there for a year, and then poof one day filtered. Another one has been there for three months, then poof, filtered. It's pretty discouraging to try to get new reviews. I am a wedding photographer videographer and once my brides get their stuff, they get on with their lives and then I feel like I'm bugging them to get a review. And a couple of them have written very elaborate reviews that got filtered. I'm 5-star all around but I wish 30% of the reviews would not get filtered out, especially some that have been posted for months….

I agree with businesses getting together and supporting our hard work and posting things that are good about our businesses. I have een in my own business since 1970 and Yelp is BS. I strive to treat customers with respect and do a great job for all customers. We are in the RV sales, service and rental business.

In the RV rental part of the business a renter will take out an RV and damage it or bring it back dirty and not want to acknowledge this and if we charge what they damaged then they give a bad Yelp! Good Yelp reviews are filtered. We have a 98% satisfaction on all other sites. WE ARE NOT PAYING YELP FOR ADS OR SERVICES EITHER. They have hurt our honest business and we should fight them and whoever had the idae of business getting together by spending time on Yelp and then taking our real and true positive reviews that on on other sites and putting on Yelp by other businesses!! Alan

Hey, same thing happened to me too! We need to band together, I can get a hold of FTC attorneys if I try hard enough, something needs to be done, this is beyond pathetic. Yelp needs some sort of "verified purchase" system akin to Amazons or not show the reviews of people who only leave one fricking review, and guess what, it's that negative review on your page…

Exactly the same story here. Honest good reviews are filtered and not visible, negative ones stay on. We don't want to advertise and so the situation continues. Yelp doesn't even respond to our emails. This kind of Yelp business is low-vibrational. Are they member of the BAD Business Bureau?

hmmm, maybe you didn't investigate enough. There are SO many blatant examples and serious complaints against yelp in every MAJOR business journal now that you would be hard pressed to be unaware of the abuse. Knowledge is power. Denial is death of truth.

how do I get yelp to remove my listing and leave me alone? thanks

We are trying to unify frustrated business owners in a means to an end. We have spoken with several media outlets and are working with a group of lawyers to put an end to Yelp's bad business. Please take a few minutes and sign our petition to better display the number of business owners that are fed up with Yelp's manipulation of reviews for profit.The link is Sign the Stop Yelp Petition

We need your signature it is a crucial step and we appreciate you taking your time to sign.

i agree with you, yelp is like a MAFIA, they need to be stopped or shut down. I just saw today that they are now facing tought times with NO profit yet in 2012 and their stock price is in decline. As well Google and FourSquare are taking over the reviews on line. So yo may not have to worry about YELP for much longer, they are likely to be out of business by the end of next year! That by the way would make me happy , very happy!

Let's just hope your competator or Yelp gools don't start posting fake bad reviews. For all we know Yelp trolls are here reading and out to get all the good business who are "on" to yelps SCAMS!

I share the same story as so many many on here. After declining to purchase the costly monthly advertising scam. I immediately started getting negative reviews and every positive review filtered out. One of the negative reviews comes from someone claiming to be a woman sitting in the waiting room for her 5:00 appointment and furious because she had to wait 20 minutes. We checked our books and we didn't have a woman scheduled at that time on that day or any day within the past year. It was in fact a man scheduled, on the date and time this woman claimed to have an appointment. The other negative reviews posted, we also looked for clients matching those names, and they were non existent. They were fake reviews!!! I filed a BBB complaint and it has been an exhaustive back and forth with Yelp with them regurgitating the same BS over and over. They state that many of their reviewers don't use their real names here is there explanation… "although we encourage users to provide their real names on their profiles, it is not a requirement for utilizing the site. As mentioned in our prior message, to the extent a review appears to reflect the personal experience and opinion of the reviewer while adhering to our Content Guidelines" So basically they are saying anyone can post a review completely fake and it's perfectly ok by Yelp standards!!

On top of all of this, we have closed that business and it's corporation. We have since opened a new business, a completely different corporate entity and now Yelp has posted "Heads up!

This location has renovated. Check out the new…." and the link to the new business is given. How is this legal? It is an entirely separate corporate entity, therefore it is not the same business, there was no renovation. Any guidance on this would be appreciated. I am getting absolutely no where with the BBB complaint, it is impossible to get anyone from Yelp on the phone and even then what good would that do? What legal action do I have against them? I'm furious that this allowed and that they are getting away with such fraud.

To Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of yelp:

Have you heard the story of the three men in the lifeboat? They note particular areas in the boat that "belong" to each as they make their way on their journey, each hoping for land and safety.

Each personalizes their area as best they can with seaweed, driftwood, and such using tools in a little kit in the lifeboat.

One day, one of the men begins drilling in the floor of the boat. The other two, obviously alarmed, ask him what in the world he thinks he's doing. He replies that it's his section of the boat and he's making his own modification. Of course, the other two point out that if he drills a hole in his section, the entire boat will sink!

How often have you found yourself in that situation, where somebody else's actions put you at risk?

Obviously, if it's something as clear cut as a hole in the bottom of a boat, we'd probably all speak up, but what about when somebody's callousness, self-centeredness, or just plain obliviousness causes harm that's not quite so clear.

Would you have the courage to speak up in that kind of a situation? I bet you would.

You're certainly not the type of person who keeps his opinions to himself. I think your intelligence and your strong-willed self-reliance are two of your most prominent personality traits, and there's no doubt that you'd address something that could hurt you or a loved one right away.

Do you ever wonder if you might be the person holding the drill? I know there are plenty of times when I'm focused on something so much that the consequences of my behaviors to other people seem to be lost on me.

Sometimes, it's just a refusal to willing relinquish any rights of my own at all. It can be as simple as me not enjoying a meal as much as I should and complaining to management. I have no idea if I'll be causing someone to lose his job, but I think it's easy for us to put ourselves ahead of everyone else.

What do you do when you catch yourself being the person with the drill? Do you respond by putting it down or do you insist on your rights and flood the boat?

I think how we respond when we know we're wrong probably says more about us than how we respond when somebody else is wrong.

I know this review is rambling a bit, and I hope you'll forgive the way I'm going all over the place. But the implications of acting on what we believe to be our rights while simultaneously hurting other people just kind of hit me when I thought about the story.

I think it's good food for thought for anyone, though, and I hope that the story has a good and life-affirming impact on you as well.

How did you change your client name? I'm very interested, been dealing with the same issue we are even paying them now for advertising and they are still telling us they are not going to help us. We're Not even asking for them to remove the bad "Fake" reviews just put our good ones up for customers to see!!

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/199…

Is this the yelp CEO's father? And if yes, is there any hereditary issues that may affect CEO's mental state and ultimately, the value of the yelp stock?

I own a hair salon and we noticed that another salon put a bad review on yelp every other good review has been filtered leaving my salon with one star I'm really tired of this and ready to play hard ball tell me what to do please Thank you for your help Rob

We had a customer show up one day early for his installation. He was high as a kite and got real upset that we were not ready for him. He wrote 5 negitive reviews, one using his real name. The funny thing about the other four reviews is they all have the same name as the only good reviews on his Yelp page. I brought this to Yelp's attention and they said there was nothen they can do to fix it. So not only do we have 4 fake reviews, this guy has 4 fake good reviews. Yelp can be very distructive to a company that tries very hard to run a honest company.

I know of a business in my area that has about 100 reviews from the past 4 years, they HAD a 1 1/2 star rating! The reviews written all had the same negative things to say, "Employees acted like I was bothering them when ordering", "place was dirty" etc. For the hell of it, I recently checked and now they have a 3 star rating and still only 100 reviews (not counting filtered). Am told (can't confirm) What happened is the owner joined the Yelp business plan and apparently pays a chunk of money every month for "promotion". How common is this?

Hello, We are a chef owned family run restaurant. We work hard to prepare classical Italian, French and American Dishes.

My star status on yelpy is one of the lowest in my town. We have 21 reviews and 14 filtered. We are regularly recommended by locals, yet our star status is one of the lowest in my town.

Out of the 14 filtered 12 of them are 5 stars, one 4-star and one 3-star (which is a good review). It is also frustrating that the bigger, and better-located restaurants have many reviews with only a couple filtered?

If these positive responses were not filtered, and if we got the good with the bad, like every other site, we would have one of the best ratings in town. Instead our restaurant is portrayed as one of the worst. Are they trying to put me out of business?? Serious dis-justice and very deflating. You work very hard, and customers reward you with positive comments and they filter them.

Would also like to say I was contacted several times by yelp saying I was getting the most hits for Italian food in town. Would I like to advertise with them for $500 a month. I guess if you say no, they filter you to death AND KEEP IN MIND THAT NOT ONE COMPLAINT (or Yelp) WAS FILTERED!

You think you people have it bad? Let me tell you my situation!

I have

11 positive reviews

And

2 negative reviews

Guess which ones are filtered? All the positive reviews are filtered. All of them! They dont let me keep one positive review…Not even one out of mercy!

But…..Guess which ones are NOT FILTERED?….thats right!…..Both negative reviews are not filtered….Wow what a coincidence?…..What are the odds that out of all my reviews, the only two that dont get filtered are the negative ones?

So now, my profile has an average rating of 1 STAR……Thats so nice of Yelp isnt it? They are ruining my buisness, ruining my name, and ruining my hard work!

Ohhh But thats not the best part….no no no no no…..you know what the best part of all this is?…..Can you guess what the best part is?

The two negative reviews i have?….they are fake!!!….There not even real!……What a coincidence again!…..There suppose to filter out fake ones, and the only ones they DID NOT FILTER are the fake ones?

Can u imagine how m—– f—– annoyed i am?

Whats that u say?…..Email Yelp?……i have!….millinos of time!

Apparently, the solutino is to go over there FAQ section……and by the way…..the same robot always replies to my email complaints……

I wish i could cuss on here!……F—- YELP…..IM TRYING SO HARD TO SPREAD THE WORD TO BRING IT DOWN…..I call radio stations all the time and go on the air so im gonna do this and tell people how bad Yelp is!!!!

Just wondering why Yelp keeps calling me to sell ads, isn't the idea behind Yelp to let good business' rise to the top naturally without paying to be at the top? Frustrating receiving this many calls and also they are filtering my own personal reviews for other valid business' I use on a regular basis.

Reading review after review on here has made me feel better and worse!

I feel so bullied by my negative reviewer and Yelp! is like the kids on the playground yelling "fight,fight,fight."

My incident started in May when a lovely client came in with her social media sight "coupon." Hint. I felt derogated by her right away. I'm a independent hairdresser in a salon where I do a booth rental so I am the ULTIMATE small business owner. When this lovely client came in I had the impression she viewed me as a "stupid" hairdresser to dumb to do anything else. Because of this we had a total communication breakdown. I tried my hardest to continue on with the appointment with as much grace as I could muster. I joked with a friend later that she seemed like the kind of person who would write and negative review and

put it on Yelp! but maybe I was just shook up by the way she treated me. Nope there it was. I was so hurt by the review because it only attacked my personality. And it was just mean spiteful Internet bullying. I have a small but very loyal client base that I have built over the last 10 yrs and over the next few days expressed my concern and hurt to my clients. Quite a few of them went on Yelp! and posted positive reviews. And then slowly I start to see them removed. Now I'm mad and I contact our "sales rep" who had called our salon, I found out later, immediately following the negative review. This rep sounded like she was reading off q-cards. She gave me very robotic and rehearsed explanations for the filtering of reviews and kept saying "mam this is why Yelp! is the number one review website on the Internet." I kept telling her thanks for that since I have this salacious review on there. Then this rep asked me if our salon would be interested in paying for advertising on there sight. I told her not in a million years. Seeing as I was getting nowhere with Yelp! did contact the client and tried to offer her some kind of compensation but to no avail. I decided to post a response to her review that I kept as professional and conscience as I could. Within about 20 min of posting this lovely client had posted a whole other long paragraph of how much I suck again. I couldn't believe it! Was she checking Yelp! every 10 minutes? Yelp! should have a filter that allows your to post ONCE! Her second review started like this"in response to your comment." Yelp! the kids on the playground "fight,fight,fight" I can say this about her review, she never said the haircut was awful or the color turned out bad. Nothing like, I didnt know what I was doing. It was all about my personality. That I was making "stupid faces" and asked her "dumb questions." So now our salon is stuck with one 5 star rating and one 1 star rating that give us 3 stars overall and 8 positive 5 star rating filtered out. The reps at Yelp! were completely useless. I just have to suck up this whole experience and keep my finger crossed this crappy website goes under one day.