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Categories Yelp
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 also is running their paid clients ad above my business as well as not listing any of my 5 star "reviews" I AM NOT GOING TO PLAY WITH THEM ANYMORE. PLEASE READ ON ABOUT MY IDEA. I have put 23 years of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears into building my business- which was also a childhood dream, AND have been hailed by my peers and customers as the best of the best of what do. They do not want the facts, nor do they wish to hear the business owners side of the story. Without going into a lot of detail, Yelp allowed a woman who is not, nor has she ever been, a student of Rapid Spanish™ (my business) make a "review". She attended a 4 hour presentation and claims she attended an 8 hour workshop? She said that she did not get all the materials and CD-which was promised to her, she absolutely did receive every thing she listed and more. They allowed a guy who could never make classes, nor take direction in class, the voice to say that I am not fluent in Spanish that I'm not a native speaker! He say that I believe in sub-conscience learning or something? Gee isn't that what the Nobel Prize winning research (on which my teaching method is based) say about all third level learning? He goes on and on. Lie after Lie. I've done radio and TV commercials in Spanish, have been an international speaker in Spanish, have taught Spanish for over 30 years, have been voted into a Who's Who for my contributions to Foreign Language Education, Helped write COP TALK for the Texas Commission for Police Officer Education, Spanish Language Training Division, but yet I "have to look up even the most basic words in a dictionary"?- as he put it. I mean, Come On !! Not one word he said was true. But yet Yelp allowed him to go to a "competitor" who just blew into town a few months ago (same competitor that appears above my Yelp listing) and rave on about how wonderful they are, AND he wrote both so called reviews , mine and theirs all on the same day? Not suspicious? But yet, two other students whom wrote fairly decent and useful reviews about Rapid Spanish™, were "filtered"-a Yelp euphemism for : to hide from sight. It's a no brainier what Yelp is; pure, unadulterated Scum- a bunch of corporate THUGS who have found a way to CAPITALIZE on the jejune remarks of the ignorant and envious. When Albert Einstein remarked "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.", he was talking about the kind of people Yelp has promoted to write things like they have written about my company, Rapid Spanish™ .and not include (filtered out) anything good, decent or helpful. As I'm sure you've all heard many, many times, Yelp is nothing more than EXTORTION at its finest. I'm also sure Yelp would gladly post the real "reviews" about a small business if say, we small businesses owners were to buy their "protection"? So, what is a decent and helpful review going for these days? NEW to this Yelp thing. My wife called my attention to a couple nuts who had written horrible things about me on Yelp. I wrote the following in my own defense a couple weeks ago. Yelp "Filtered it the next day. If I had known about Yelp, I would have had my students write these so called "reviews" on Yelp instead of LinkedIn. I wrote my defense about the nuts & then posted a few recommendations from my LinkedIn (which are included below). I've been in business 23 years, offer a unique way to learn Spanish, which is based on Mind/Brain Research. A lot of people are scared of anything new so, I've gotten resistance through the years, but nothing like these scalding lies. I have lost sleep over this crap. Yelp has done irreversible damage to me and my business. these nuts that posted this garbage never , ever, filed any complaint with our office, our attorneys nor have we ever received anything written nor orally, stating anything of the nature of these appalling comments. For many more testimonials, see LinkedIn (they will make you join to read, but it's free) http://www.linkedin…
and see http://www.RapidSpa…
(The above is what I wrote on the Yelp page, then copied a couple of my LinkedIn recommendations. HAS ANYONE THOUGHT THAT MAYBE WE MIGHT BEGIN TO ATTACH TO OUR BUSINESS WEB SITES ETC. THE LOGO ABOVE) SOMETHING LIKE "PEOPLE ONLY HATE US ON YELP" ORI"M A PROUD MEMBER OF BUSINESSES AGAINST YELP+ (LOGO)? WOULD LIKE SOME FEEDBACK…
Barry Browne-Carstetter, Director/Master Trainer
*Mr Vyas is a Frenchman working in the US. He speaks very broken English, is hard to understand, and probably is operating under the misinformation that freedom of speech means one can say whatever they want, truth or lie, and not be accountable.. Rapid Spanish™ is in the process of filing a lawsuit against Mr. Vyas for slander, as not a word of his "review" is truthful. See what he wrote about a restaurant in Chicago. He calls the entire Italian staff "Guidos". I am brand new to this Yelp business but if you see Mr. Vyas S. coming, do your business a favor and just say "NO!"
**Ms Hannah A.'s complaint is regarding a 4(four) hour presentation, (not 8), she attended at a NAPNAP convention. She has received all the material she claims to not have received and more. She is obviously not aware that her association had much to do with Rapid Spanish not being able to deliver successfully, an 8 hour workshop. The NAPNAP association's Conference Co-coordinator was fired or quit 2 days before the conference. She was responsible for the prints, covers of the CDs as well as leading us to believe that we had 8 hours to deliver.. The Fill-in refused to complete the tasks as agreed before the convention, but did tell us just before the workshop we had only 4 hours..I have attempted to contact Ms Hannah A. through Yelp and have not received an answer. Since she is not a student of Rapid Spanish we have no information about her.
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"Barry's knowledge and personality will propel,motivate and advance ones desire to learn and understand.his methods and style sets a benchmark for others to compare." November 6, 2012
top qualities: great results, personable, creative
Grytch Smoot
"Teach me Spanish?¡ni hablar! Barry's class was awesome and his teaching skills fantastic. my Spanish really started to improve and every time i left Barry's class i felt a little more comfortable with the language. Barry uses passion, creativity, and a great system to teach adults a second language.
thanks Barry!" November 4, 2012
top qualities: personable, good value, creative
Jeff Sauer
"I took Barry's class, (and also hired him for private sessions) before moving to Santiago Chile. i did not know anything about Spanish and my wife thought his class would be good since i am probably a more visual learner. it was great as i learned many of the core concepts before i ever left Austin. it was an enormous help and i recalled the scenarios from class many times in chile. it was also fun!" November 5, 2012 hired in 2010, and hired Barry more than once
top qualities: personable, good value, creative
Douglas Prince
"Maestro Barry and Rapid Spanish helped me to learn Spanish in an entertaining and quick manner. the lessons were highly interactive, promoted role play, real-life quizzes, all while being anonymous as your own pretend character. i would highly recommend rapid Spanish and all of Barry's services to anyone seeking to learn a foreign language for work or for play."
top qualities: personable, good value, creative
Gary Novosel – fellow, ilm 2008, and hired Barry more than once
"Barry is incredibly creative and professional as a teacher of Spanish, using accelerated learning techniques. this method of teaching speeds the learning process (thus "Rapid Spanish") and provides a fun, easy way to master a new language." October 31, 2012
Arlene Julie, president/owner, demystifying, inc.
"Barry creates an invigorating class environment by bringing creativity and fun to teaching Spanish. his course provides excellent in-person, interactive instruction, as well as written and recorded materials that you can take with you.
while i originally took Barry's course to learn Spanish for my business, i also benefited from his instruction a few years later, when i decided to pursue a Ph.d. in literature. this required passing two language tests. Barry's course not only helped me pass the Spanish test, but his teaching methods laid the groundwork for me to teach myself enough french to succeed with the french test.
i highly recommend Barry and rapid Spanish." October 30, 2012
top qualities: great results, expert, creative
Clay Zuba
"Barry is a great example of an out of the box education professional. his personalized approach to teaching and culture immersion is the next best thing to actual traveling to a Spanish speaking country." October 30, 2012
L Gonzales
how do i remove my listing from Yelp. You are only showing the one negative review and I'm not interested in being on a website that promotes us in such a negative way. I don't even have an option to respond to the reivew. Get me the hell off this site!!!!!!!
Yelp sucks! We have 13 reviews. 7 being filtered are positive 4-5 stars. 3 positive being shown. 3 negative being shown thus giving us an average of 3 out of 5 stars. If the 7 filter are shown our rating would be MUCH different. Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks, Yelp sucks!
I have experienced the same exact thing. I am a small newer business owner that is a chef owned and operated establishment. I know the business and am not one of those people who expects to please all of the people all of the time. I want to complain about the inconsistencies in yelps " filter system." We had 2 or 3 great reviews that never made it to our published yelp. When I contacted yelp about this ( I keep a log so that I may use the reviews as feedback for my staff ) they stated that the reviewer did not have enough reviews or just signed up, blah blah blah…. This deters famiky or friends making positive reviews. However, we just got a review and were slammed ( ironically 1 day after a perfect and raving review of a elite rather) by someone who just signed up and their only review was our restaurant…I am glad it isn't just me, when my reviews like trip advisor and urbanspoon are all consistently good .
I have fully documented (by photos and videos) writing TWO positive 5 star reviews for a local company here in Seattle. One review I posted a month ago and the second very recently. The first was up for a day and now is no where to be found. The second is filtered as well and not visible to the general public. However, two one star reviews remain on this particular business' website. I have contacted the business owner and she claims that she has refused paying for Yelp advertising scheme. I will continue to document my findings. In the meantime I will be searching for an attorney who wants to bring YELP down.
I'm sure our story is no different than many here, but I appreciate the channel to vent.
Every one of our positive reviews is filtered. They only show the negative posts, and that's just not balanced or fair. Show all of them, we'll take the good with the bad,… but that only works if you show both of them.
We've contacted yelp and gotten their standard responses, yelp's filtering system, blah blah blah. I see this as a huge problem for any business.
At this point, we would like if they actually REMOVED us from their database, but I doubt that will happen. I wonder if anyone's had success in asking to be taken off the site?
Yelp is no more than a combination of the big- fat-ugly bully who beats up kids in school and steals their lunch money and organized crime who offers to protect you if you pay them enough.
I have so many legitimate positive yelp reviews and not a single one of the writers was rewarded in any way for saying nice things. One nasty yelp review was even contradicted by a witness who just happen to be in my office at the same time.
The nasty things remained and the honest truth was filtered.
Emails to yelp fell on deaf ears. First time reviewers can safely write a very negative review and yelp will not filter it. Positive ones seem to just vanish! Some reviews are even anti-Semitic or racial biased and yelp lets them get away with that!
But they sure are not shy to call me several times and ask for lots of advertising money! That too seems pretty unethical and possible illegal too! Pay the bully /mob and they protect you!
In fact, it is amazing how the legal definitions of slander, liable, so many others things seem all have been ignored when it come to yelp. They get away with murder and I am sure the lies and fake filter have killed more than a few people who just could not take it anymore. I ended up in the hospital because of it!
If anyone wants to try and get rid of this irresponsible company and thinks they have a legal way of doing so, please contact me. I would love to seem them gone!
Doctors can be attacked on Yelp, but if they make statements that contradict what the patients say, the doctors can receive stiff fines. So it is a no win situation.
Most of all, I hope that at some point soon, nobody pays any attention to or ever believes yelp reviews. When they print only what they want and not all the information, they are censors using the internet to hide the truth. Their reviews are useless to the public. They do what they do just to make money and clearly good reviews are not as exciting to read and won’t get them advertising revenue. They are and evil entity that acts with no sense of responsibility and can print lies with impunity. Shame shame shame…
Ripoffreport.com is doing the same thing to people. They want people to be on there so they can extort money out of everyone. This has to stop! Please write a letter to Google's headquarters and ask them to filter out the negative information so people and businesses aren't crucified.
My husband is a realtor. One person posted a negative review about him. After that, Chris asked some happy clients to post a review for him. Nine happy clients posted a positive review about Chris and Yelp filtered all of them out and left the negative review. I don't know how Yelp can consider themselves unbiased doing business this way.
My husband and I are seriously considering a lawsuit against Yelp. They claim it's an algorithm that filters the reviews, but it is filtering legitimate reviews. Yelp is responsible for this algorithm since they are using it. This is people's reputation here. It seems obvious they are doing it because they want money for advertising and this is their way to get it. We're not going to be manipulated by Yelp. I'm surprised how many negative posts I'm seeing for Yelp. I hope people start realizing to take their posts with a grain of salt because that cannot be believed.
I posted a really bad experience with a chiropractor in Torrance. Some time later I was surprised when I found that instead of my post, I saw an ad from the chiropractor and only positive reviews. My bad experience comment was hidden by yelp filter.
In the past, most of lawsuit against Yelp were based upon "business owner has to pay for advertising in order to have good reviews stick…" and Yelp is successfully defend since even you pay for advertising the good reviews still being filtered out.
However, no lawsuit has been filed base upon this ground:
Yelp company practicing likes the communist countries in which they censorship people opinions versus the freedom of speech that is employed by our country. By censorship people's opinion, Yelp thoughts that they are giving other customers "authenticated" reviews through "filters" but these “filter” criteria are subjective and unproven.
In fact, Yelp violates the 1st amendment constitution of our country
In court, I can prove all of the reviews come from our patients who currently have records and received our treatment, they also can testify under oath that these reviews are from them…But for sure Yelp cannot use the "filter's criteria to defense it. Yes, they can come up of these reviewer are not too active or yelping all the time or reviews are coming from one IP address etc.
The real problem is most of business owner don't have time and resource to file this lawsuit.
I hope some lawyers can look into this and file a class action lawsuit again Yelp.
Yelp is full of liars and extortionists. My business was initially reviewed by a legitimate customer that gave us 5 stars only to be "Removed for Violating our Content Guidelines or Terms of Service". The only review Yelp allows visible on my Kids Parties ad currently, is a review where the guy not only admits he didn't use my company but slanders me personally as well, only because I refused him business because of his own rudeness. Other 4 & 5 star ads by legit customers are neatly tucked away in the filtered area. Yelp contacted me, of course and asked me to advertise with them in exchange for ad manipulation. I, of course, refused.
Yelp is absolutely the worst! You can't get a live person to talk to and even the BBB could not help us fix the flawed Yelp filters. The Yelp "filters" currently have 23 reviews for our company NOT posted. Of the 23 reviews, 22 of them are positive. Yet, the public sees a negative review anytime it is written, whether it is true or not. If anyone has ideas on how to gain a fair and level playing field for business owners, I would be happy to discuss a plan. As of now, Yelp is the absolute lowest level review site on the internet. Funny thing is, it looks like Yelp owns the name http://www.yelpsucks.com!
So the fact that you thanked someone for a good review is being called soliciting business? Really?
Buying ads doesn't help with your reviews. They let that rumor circulate because it got businesses to buy ad packages.
I'm here. But I am adding a better contact form for people to contact me.
We are a small family owned business and have been open for over 23 years. When we search our restaurant through google we find a consistency of at least 4 to 5 star rating which has brought in new business by travelers who use their GPS to find a good place to eat. Then sadly one day came Yelp! I saw that our business had more negative reviews then positive reviews which almost gave me a heart attack! It seemed the customers that provided reviews were creative writers or aspiring food critics (almost like poetry). That made me start thinking and asking questions what type of users Yelp attract. I heard from one of my customers that Yelp has a small group of users/followers that like to act as critics. One day I received a phone call by a Yelp sales rep asking me if I would like to advertise with them. I asked why would I want to advertise with a website that makes our business looks bad? The rep replied back that first it was that big of a deal but the importance was how many reviews we had which was little over a hundred at the time. Today we have half the reviews and mostly negative. I couldn't found any good ones I remember reading about it the past. Additionally, I have been asking customers to please leave a review with Yelp and one day it is there and the next day it is gone! One customer even told me that Yelp would not allow them to leave a review. Anyways back to the sales rep…the rep then explained that she can improve our ratings by attracting Yelp users to our restaurant. If the Yelp users are giving us bad ratings the why would I want to advertise on Yelp and what would make me think that they would want to come back? LOL Unless a discount was provided which means that is the benefit of being a Yelp user? Maybe that is what Yelp users are looking for is discounts? Does discounts equal a 5 star rating? Anyways to sum it up I cannot believe how their filter system works and how our loyal customers that want to rant and rave about our restaurant cannot because they are not frequent Yelpers! I understand they don't want owners opening multiple accounts and posting on Yelp but what about the legitimate reviews? I remember seeing on the news of owners of other restaurants paying people to bash on their competition! Which I found interesting…I found some of our competitors that I have heard horrible things about from people have more stars than our business! I was shocked! I feel there is something shady about Yelp! I wish Yelp would just go away! Our business was far better when they were not around!
Yelp is really impacting my mother's small, once success floral business. While she has over 25 positive reviews, Yelp has filtered the majority out- showing only 6 in which 2 are negative.
How can small business owners survive in this situation???? It is an utter shame. What can we do to stop this? The government needs to be involved.
Simone
JOIN ME AND OTHERS IN PROTECTING YOUR BUSINESS AND REPUTATION FROM YELP.
CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT……………. CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT……….. CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT……….CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT………….CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT…………. CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT.
how im trying
We've been on yelp for several years now. We are a construction company that works on big residential and commercial projects. We have about 16 (5 star reviews) that are very long and descriptive of each individual job that have been written over a period of 5 years. Those all got filtered and left 2 recent 2 star reviews.
We also pay Yelp $1000 a month for advertising to which we don't get any results from customers nor do those reviews get unfiltered. What can I do to get these reviews unfiltered? This is really hurting my business.
Sorry. you can't buy better reviews from Yelp. That's not their model. And frankly, they just don't care, about you or better results. And just go ahead and try to cancel the contract. It's not going to work.
How do I get Yelp to remove my full name from a Yelper's complaint? I was working for a company, enforcing their policy. The Yelper did not like my answer, made up some slanderous remarks and used my full name on Yelp. How do I get it removed? At the time, Yelp's privacy policy forbid Yelper's to use full names.
The best answer I have is that you should have a lawyer send a letter. that oughta do it. The fact that Yelp makes lawyers rich by refusing to do anything without threat of litigation is crazy!
I've suffered as everyone else here has. There seems to be nothing that can be done to legitimize their system as ultimately, it is their system.
HOwever, their methods and tactics will be their demise. It has to be. I say the best thing we can do is to SHORT THEIR STOCK! As much as you can.
Oh, and by the way, insiders of the company have been selling stock.
I have been trying for more then two years to contact YELP with no results. Countless hours have been taken away from my bussiness because of this. I have hired an attorney and he can get anywhere with it either. How do we get the word out about YELP and the way that they do this to us? I never gave them permission to put my bussiness on thier site and I want it removed and cant. Something is not right with that.
I have watched my favorite restaraunt for the last couple of months. They hit 4 stars. Then, there have been 30 reviews in the last two months that would have bumped them up to 4 1/2 stars. I have watched all 30 reviews filtered. Every single one of them in a row to bump them back down to 4 stars.
It seems the filter starts getting crazy when they get to 4 stars and won't allow a higher rating.
Check it out, it's tequila grill in pflugerville. It's nuts. It filtered my own review. There is no way it could have found anything suspicious with me I don't think. I've never had another review filtered. I'm absolutely convinced it is only looking at the fact that it is already a 4 star place.
After declining NOT to purchase advertising on Yelp, a large number of positive reviews from our business’ listing on the reviews site mysteriously got filtered, downgrading our company’s rating.
————–
Most of our five star reviews were removed from our company’s page following our decision not to purchase advertising on Yelp.
Please let them know about their unethical practice.
YELP SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I joined Yelp in 2011 to write the first review for a specialty bakery, in which I declared they made the best macarons in my state.
Then a few days later, I found another bakery that made better macarons. I changed my review and rating to reflect my discovery, but my review got flagged and removed for violating TOS. The email Yelp sent me stated it was because I didn't base my update on a firsthand return visit. So I can't change my mind when I find a better place? I bet the people who ran the bakery were the ones who flagged my review. I checked their Yelp reviews just now, and every one (even the filtered ones) is either 4 or 5 stars.
I was so peeved by this (and the fact that my well-written and thorough reviews for other establishments kept getting caught in the filter – probably because I didn't write many) that I quit Yelp. Contributing to them was a waste of my time.
The group Bad Rap uses Yelp as a marketing tool to raise money for their 501(c)(3). When two refugee dogs from a high profile raid and seizure disappeared into thin air after arriving at Bad Rap, we posted an article written about this incident in Yelp reviews.
Head of Bad Rap responded by calling names and had our Yelp review pulled. Our question is this…what kind of review forum is worthwhile when promoters like Bad Rap are allowed to dictate the Yelp reviews available to the public?
Here is a copy of the article in question:
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2012/11/b…
Thank you,
Cindy Marabito
Reunion Rescue
Look at the following email correspondence from Yelp:
Jaycee,
Unfortunately, I have nothing at my disposal to "fix" the problem. You may send all future emails to [email protected] and your listing inquiries will be fielded by our operations team.
Best,
Bastian
On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 3:42 PM, A.F.I. Upholstery wrote:
Hey Bastian,
Thank you for your follow up.
I am still a little confused and am hoping you can explain how listing locations that do not exist is fair for either the consumer or the business helping the consumer?
Thank you for your inquiry as to why we do not have some of our locations listed on our website; the reason is because we have designers that cover different areas which in many cases is more than just one city; such examples of companies would be plumbers, carpet cleaners, and Empire Carpets.
With this being said, what do you have at your disposal to fix the problem?
Your immediate response is greatly appreciated.
— On Sun, 1/6/13, Sebastian Carden wrote:
From: Sebastian Carden
Subject: Re: follow up
Cc: "Alexia Flores"
Date: Sunday, January 6, 2013, 12:41 PM
I can understand how you might think the system is unfair. I've tried using everything at my disposal to help you out, but a lack of locations on your website and inconsistent descriptions of the business ownership situation makes this impossible. I believe we've been very fair.
Best of luck in the future,
Sebastian Carden
Sales Manager
Yelp.com
On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 11:42 PM, A.F.I. Upholstery wrote:
Hey Bastian,
After talking to my boss, our company does not feel comfortable working with a business that continues to list on its website locations that do not exist.
Please do not think this is about reviews, because that would be confusing the issue.
To clarify, the issue is that you list locations on your website that do not exist and confuse our customer base and is not fair to people that currently do run and operate locations that do in fact exist.
When you are willing to be fair and honest then we welcome the opportunity to work with other businesses like us who are fair, honest and legitimate.
Please let me know what you'd like to do.
— On Fri, 1/4/13, Sebastian Carden wrote:
From: Sebastian Carden
Subject: Re: follow up
Cc: "Alexia Flores"
Date: Friday, January 4, 2013, 7:56 AM
Hi Jaycee,
As much as we'd love to help you grow your business, we will not be adjusting the reviews on your other pages to do so. I hope, however, that this is not a dealbreaker, as you have said you believe the advertising can help your Los Angeles business.
If you'd like to move forward with us on advertising, we can offer you 15% off for a February 1st launch.
Please let me know what you'd like to do.
Best,
Bastian
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: A.F.I. Upholstery
Date: Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 6:38 PM
Subject: follow up
To: [email protected]
Hey Alexia,
I was just following up.
I hope you had a great holidays.
I really want to take care of the little issues and get working with you.
Can you please help, so we can move on?
Thanks,
Jaycee
Interesting. They have in the past been very clear that you have to be a "real business" ie, brick and mortar business. but they are listing businesses without Brick and Mortar locations? Seems fishy. Did the other businesses advertise?
I am a victim and yes I feel as a victim as many pet care clients use yelp to determine services, unfortnuately. My situation is about a review that does not tell the complete story along with several other clients I personally never spoke to about pet care. Anyway, not only did i respond to the jerk client who left me a review but I also complained to Yelp so many times regarding more than 22 review remain hidden. I understand there response back regarding filtering the first time and there response was when you get current review things will change. I received more than 4 current review throughout 2012 even up until December, 2012 and nothing has changed with them. I feel this is hurting my business and I want to know what legal actions I can take. Thank you for reading and listening to me.
I heard that Yelp is silent partner in one of those "save your online reputation" companies……hummmmmm
I would love more info on that!!!!
Howdy, Love your site and also hate yelp's biz scams. Thought you'd like this: if you google "yelp extorted me", one of the three ads on top on page one claims that they'll help you get yelp elite reviews, "totally legally". A good experiment would be to contact them and tell them you want to use them and see what they say. Maybe even pay for their help one time while recording every single thing they and you say, and then see what happens on yelp. This might be the smoking gun you need. Also keep linking to yelp's own review page on the sf site, and pointing out how many biz owners keep saying the same thing over and over. Yelp will fall, and it deserves to. Thanks for doing important work, many biz owners love you for it. Good luck!
I'm checking them out now… nice looking clean site, and I think a bit of investigation is in order. If they do what they say in a legal and ethical manner, I might recommend them. Thanks for the lead.
yelp is turning out to be nothing but on line small business bullying by people with axes to grind or ex employees, and the good folks at yelp who hide behind their "we are an online company only and so you can't get anyone in the corporate office is really poor for a publically traded company. this world is becoming a sad state of affairs when people can hide behind social media and slam hard working business owners trying to make a living. any yelp just eggs this on. we need to start a campaign to take down yelp. they only filter positive responses and not negitive ones.
We have one negative review – from someone who was never a customer of ours as far as we can tell (and we have thorough records!). We have had many positive reviews which are filtered. All that shows on our Yelp page is the one scathing negative review, and one positive review, for a total of three stars. It's hurting our small family run business! Would you use a company with one good review and one really horrible one? I probably wouldn't!
NO return response from Yelp in over six weeks of trying. We have presented all the evidence to them regarding the negative review being fake – NO RESPONSE. Nothing.
Unfortunately, we signed a 6-month advertising contract with Yelp, which we will certainly not be renewing.
I would understand and be okay with the negative review if it were a real unhappy customer, but it is a fake, inflammatory review – and all of our positive reviews disappear.
PLEASE think twice before giving your advertising money to Yelp. In the process of signing the $325 a month contract, they were incredibly helpful. Since then, our rep has told us that there is nothing she can do, nobody she can help us contact, nothing we can do. Wow. Such incredibly crappy customer service from this company. Unbelievable.
Does anyone know if it's possible to simply remove our company completely from the Yelp website?
Same thing with me.. Own a small business in the Bay Area.. Yelp would called me to ask me to advertise with them.. After about 15 times that they call me, there sales rep told me "if u advertise with yelp we can unfiltere your 5 star reviews.." Oh you mean the reviews my customers took there time on to review my business and service.. Just so yelp can assume there fake… Yelp u suck.. Oh an I did pay them for advertising… My stars did go up yelp is all conflict and interest..
I viewed a review on YELP for a local restaurant and based on the good reviews I took my wife there for out 25th anniversary. Unfortunately, the experience was an absolute flop, and me and my wife actually got into a huge argument over the matter. I was fuming that night and I seriously almost called it quits after 25 years. How's that for a great YELP experience. I can not understand how people actually follow this stupid site, I absolutely despise this site and would be willing to join a serious organization against it. I would even run a marathon to raise money against it, just as a demonstration of my negative passion.
Your own posting, “Tell Your Yelp Story
I came across a petition to the US gov't against Yelp…
To have the attorney general investigate Yelp.com for deceptive, bullying, and shoddy practices.
sign it here: http://wh.gov/PUM7
It's not that people are sitting around watching their reviews – you get an email when someone from a business posts a response to your review (or sends you a message). If you have your phone set up to alert you to new emails, it makes sense that you could know in a matter of seconds a reply was posted. Or maybe she was just online at the time… it happens.
Is there a way to remove your company from yelp ? I'm having the same issues.
They filter all 5 star review, the only showing is the 1 star. "Whats the best thing to do? Please Help us
please sign petition to have Yelp investigated by the attorney generals office.
http://wh.gov/PUM7
I posted a review about my bad experience with a chiropractor in Torrance but after a while, my review was filtered and removed and a very good review and a complete advertising from the chiropractor replaced it.
Well, I have a different story, I wrote a bad review on a bad company and even worse customer service (Land Rover) I had my car serviced at two locations and both sucked. The charges went over 5 000$ for nothing, so I wrote the review, and Yelp removed both of them. How can you trust a web site if they remove the bad comments…
I am trying to do that very same thing as you are. I want my business closed from Yelp and deleted of there website. If you find out any information as to how to do this leave me a reply.
Thanks!
Since you work for this company Yelp, can you tell be what I need to do to have my business page closed and deleted? I am going through the very same things as most of these other people on here. I want nothing to do with Yelp.
I don't work for Yelp. Things would be different if I did!
Can you tell me how I can get Yelp to remove my business from the search engines and off of the Yelp site?
Requires an attorney.
Help get this petition against yelp seen by signing and getting more ppl to sign.Please sign and share!!!!
http://wh.gov/PUM7
Well I reviewed a restaurant, in Walnut Creek, CA that I have been visiting for over 5 years. The menu, the service and the food was very bad over a period of several months. I reviewed my experiences, none of m reviews show up. Basically I'm thinking you guys filter reviews to ensure revenue, and not the truth.
I have dined out probably a few thousand times in my lifetime. I really don't care if you don't TRUST someone, I just think that YElP is over-rated and not trustworthy itself.
I recently had to call the police on a woman that came into my business (I run a business where children are present all the time) screaming profanties and threatening people.
After the police incident she wrote horrible reviews about my business, in some even calling my child (who has nothing to do with my business) profane names on all the websites she could find. Most I just had to call and explain to them the situation and they removed the review. The only one who didn't was Yelp – before that I had that one bad review and two 5 star reviews. The same day I received their reply that the review would not be taken down, they took down both my 5 star reviews leaving only that one!
I would scan the police report, post it on flicker, and respond to the post with a link to the flickr scan.
We advertised with Yelp for one year. During that year, we received many positive reviews that were prominently displayed. When we did not renew, ALL our positive reviews got filtered. We have one 1-star review that was put up by a competitor who had 2 previous reviews posted. That is the only review they show, although our eight 5-star reviews (some of whom have more posts than the negative party) are all filtered. And they still call me asking for $ to advertise. I would like to get the word out to the public that they are not reputable.