Tell Your Yelp Story
Everyone wants to be heard. That seems to be the #1 complaint on Yelp is the lack of transparency in the filter, the lack of response to real business issues, and the seeming lack of care that real businesses are being destroyed by fake reviews while real good reviews are filtered out.
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.
[…] information that is available to me, nor could I do anything about it if it were. However unfair, unethical, or downright evil Yelp may be, the reality is you are compelled to play ball, or at least address […]
I think I got mine removed. I changed my profile information with a fake name and email address. The automated message said that a verifying email would go out. since the e-address was fake, I am hoping that they deleted me.
Ed, I tried that tactic too…..and it was quickly removed from our Business page, with a oh-so nice email from Yelp saying I was breaking their terms of service. They do not and will not allow you to say ANYTHING about filtered reviews ANYWHERE on your Business page.
Oh, and when I tried another tactic of sending a message (through the Yelp system) to the customers who had reviewed us but ended up in our filtered reviews (because there were 1st time Reviewers)…..and explained to them nicely, how IF they wanted their review to be seen and not stuck in "filtered", they just needed to be active on Yelp by posting more legitimate reviews of other businesses they are used, like restaurants, dentist, hotels, etc.). And….I also requested to be "friends" on Yelp with my reviewers (from my husband's profile name who was the Technician that had taken care of them so I thought they would recognize the friend request).
Wouldn't you know it, but Yelp had some way to "connect the dots" with this tactic of mine, and once they saw that my Business profile was messaging other Yelpers who had reviewed my business, they immediately SHUT DOWN my profile. My Business page and listing was still there, but I got an email that the profile (under my husband's name) was closed since I broke their rules. After that I had to open up another profile under MY name so I could log in to my Business listing and manage my page and account.
So to date, I have not come up with a way to point the way to our 34 filtered reviews (all 5-star) so that new customers can see how great we are and how much our customers value our service and company.
It seems like you are fighting an uphill battle. The best revenge for a small business is to provide the best service you can to everyone who walks into your door. Ensuring they are all satisfied. Sure, you are bound to have bad days, but they should number very rarely. While you are spending time pursuing complaints and legal issues which could take ages, you should all spend time getting on with it with your best foot forward. I have all the sympathy in the world for small business owners because I am one. But whilst the power of Yelp can damage small business, it can also make a small business. I reviewed a start-up small Japanese take away store around the corner from my house, and now, partly because of the Yelp review if not mostly because of it, business is truly booming for them, and deservedly so. Hopefully the better service you provide all your customers, will be reflected in positive reviews on Yelp and these over a short period of time, will make the negative ones go away.
I recently wrote a 5-stars review for Freedom Solar in Campbell, CA, after they installed my solar system in my home under construction. I mentioned the names of the 5 companies I contacted to get bids, but made a mistake of recommending against one of them, a well-known roofing company that sounds like a person's name and the two parts starts with a P and a D.
Right after I wrote my review I got threatening email from Mr. P (or was it Mr. D?) calling my review a fraud, saying I am actually Freedom Solar itself, and threaten me legal action if I don't delete my review. It was my first ever review that I posted in Yelp, and I went through the hassle to sign up for profile because I really felt Freedom Solar deserve to be known by people in my area, because I want others to have the same wonderful experience as I've had. I really didn't expect something like this to have come from PD and Mr. P. I immediately went back to my Yelp profile and noticed that I could adjust my profile to prevent anyone from contacting me through my review, so that was the first thing I did.
A month later I casually searched for Freedom Solar in Yelp and was surprise to see that my review was not there, even though there is only 1 visible review. I also searched PD Solar's Yelp page and also found that my review there was also filtered, which means they weren't being used by Yelp to calculate the company's star rating.
At this point I can careless if my review for PD was visible to others or not, nor if it was used by Yelp to calculate PD's rating. I can see that PD doesn't have stellar rating anyway, with or without my review.
But what really pissed me is that it appears Mr. P of PD Roofing and Solar had somehow managed to have Yelp filter out my review for Freedom Solar also. This seems a clear case of a large company paying Yelp to get rid of unfavorable reviews and to also filter any reviews posted under other companies names, if those review also contains unfavorable comments about PD.
This is really sad because I had thought that Yelp can be trusted and I've used it on many occasions, but this experience totally destroyed my trust in YELP review system.
If you pay they will take care of you if not you are screwed corrupt and unreliable
Not true! Whether you pay or not you're screwed!
I want to tell you that every single one of my positive reviews have been removed. These reviews were written by customers who told me they wrote a review. I did not ask them to, they approached me and said they wanted to write a review for the good work my business did. However, the solitary negative review sticks with no problems. I was called by a Yelp representative and asked to advertise. I asked if my positive reviews would show back up. The representative said yes. I asked how much it would cost and he said $300 to start. This is Business Reputation Review Extortion! Why aren't they being shut down?
[…] Google”) uncovers the not so pleasant part of the equation at the not-so-flattering URL of https://yelp-sucks.com/tell-your-yelp-story/. You can guess what the 290+ comments there are like. Are they all legit? No idea. On the other […]
Yelp used to be a great tool, but since the marketers have gotten involved it seems that anything can be bought for a price. We've all heard of negative reviews being left by people who haven't even been to the place, but have some type of personal problem with the owner. That's why we created Rate Diary. Rate Diary works like this:
(restaurant example)
1. eat at restaurant
2. upon checkout, owner will give you a unique voucher
3. go to Rate Diary, and redeem the voucher for rate dollars that are treated as cash
4. you get the rate dollar no matter whether the review is positive or negative
5. the goal is honest feedback
6. only patrons can review, and the voucher expires after a 2 weeks
We were trying to eliminate some of the pitfalls of Yelp.
Please check out the site and tell us what you think Rate Diary
[…] Google”) uncovers the not so pleasant part of the equation at the not-so-flattering URL of https://yelp-sucks.com/tell-your-yelp-story/. You can guess what the 290+ comments there are like. Are they all legit? No idea. On the other […]
How can you fight the corrupted Yelp company? Do what they do to you. kill the “good name” they have with many posting on line
(1) Call BBB to reduce the A+ ranking they have.
Talk to Kim Sharp 510-844-2015 ask them to review Yelp ranking, they cannot be A+ with all the complaints they have
(2) Tweet , Email anyone that you know that gave Yelp money to survive. like Bono Vox from U2,
(3) Email Google, Google is showing Yelp on top of the list, maybe before your website.
(4) Blast any social media you know, Facebook and just let people know what they do.
They kill our name, we will fight and do the same to them!
I just filed a complaint with the BBB in Oakland CA. Same story here. A positive review goes missing without notification. Yelp's only responses have been pastes of the same message about their "review filter" video and nothing more. Yelp has no valid reason for the removal of this positive review from an actual, true, paying client. Not friend or family. Soon after joining Yelp, I was nearly harassed by a sales person pressuring me to pay for some "listing enhancements." I cited to the BBB my suspicion that the positive review removal resulted from my declining to pay for what is commonly known as advertising fees. Then I found out I'm not alone. I have only a few reviews. It's not easy to get clients to take the time and write a positive review (complaints never an issue, right?), and I feel it's not good business to request them. I need every positive review I can get to earn a living. I hope the BBB can make a result.
I just filed a complaint as well. They harassed me for weeks for paid advertising, I would just let it go to voice mail and now that they won't return calls or emails about removing 8 of my 11 reviews (all the positive legit ones) I had to file a complaint. Sadly because it's free, it probably won't get any attention, but at least if there are enough complaints about their extortion tactics someone will take notice.
REVIEW; Best chocolate cake ever, loved it, so sweet, gotta have it again!—–"YELP FILTER": "OVERLY POSITIVE, HIDE IT!"
REVIEW: Worst chocolate cake ever, tasted like urine, the waiter who served it had tattoos and a prison uniform on and tried to rape my wife and daughters. Several dead bodies on the floor, midgets taking dumps in the kitchen. Bill was over $865.00, food gave me several diseases. Worst restaurant of all time.
"YELP FILTER": HMMMMM, THIS MAKES SENSE, PLACE IT AS THE FIRST REVIEW.
SMART
I am a business owner in San Jose, ca and have been trying to reach Yelp for 2 months now via e-mails and calls as my account has been hacked. I have sent e-mails requesting a contact person to send my valid business license to confirm my ownership and receive the following response (3 times at this point): " We only allow access to account owners." I always reply with "I am the account owner and have all the proper and legal documentation proving that, who do I talk to in order to regain access to my account." They never reply back to that message. I am still waiting any type of a response. If I cannot access the account for my own business and someone esle is using it, isn't that a violation of the law??
I am currently seeking legal representation and think that users should consider a class action law suit against Yelp at this point. They show no regard to their customers rights and need to be help accountable. I am also going to the BBB with my complaints. There lack of professionalism, response to business issues, "algorithm" tactics to force people to pay for continued fair service…it is all criminal.
I advertised on Yelp for about 2 years, and I just decided to pull out because of the awful service we've been getting.
Yelp's review filter filtered out ALL of our reviews. Every. Single. One. Even though an actually fair rating star average for my company would have been excellent (between 4 and 5), one that included all of the reviews both good and bad, my ad on Yelp ended up not displaying a star meter at all! Compared to other companies that had star ratings next to their profiles, my paid ad looked like I had zero stars, or like I was hiding something. It was ridiculous. I don't know why all of my good and bad reviews were filtered out. I didn't solicit any of them. And without reviews my expensive ads were useless.
I also had a lot of difficulty with the customer service representatives at Yelp. They were very unresponsive, by either email or phone: unreturned messages, unanswered emails, etc. I asked them in an email to call me to discuss my advertisements, and they insisted I needed an "appointment" for "next week." Quite an ordeal for a simple phone call!
Overall, I had a very negative experience with Yelp, and my advertising dollars would have been better spent elsewhere.
Can you remove your site from Yelp? Unfortunately no.
HOWEVER
You can eliminate search categories for your business on your profile.
For instance, you have a pizzeria. You can eliminate all the relevant categories and just leave up one that no one would search for.
That's what we did and we no longer show up, except for one useless category or if someone specifically searches our business name.
We are the new owner of a salon in Austin. We were contacted by Yelp's sale associate to buy their what so called "enhancing advertising". The price they demand is pretty high: 350 to 1000 a month for 1 year contract. We have to turn it down because we don't have the budget for it and we don't know how effective is that " enhancing ad" will help. After refusing to sign up, we started seeing our positive reviews disappear. We have total 8 5-stars reviews have been filtered, and left only 2 bad reviews. When I contact them, they reply with a video of their filter system that they employ to RANDOMLY filter out what they think is fake reviews. This is not the act of RANDOM at all. THIS FILTER SYSTEM WILL TARGET ONLY POSITIVE REVIEWS IF WE REFUSE TO PAYyelp MONEY. This is the act of EXTORTION. This is UNFAIR business practice.
Here’s one for you. Yelp has a review for a different business located in the same building as mine, and they will not remove the reviews. Different business, different services, different phone number, different owners, different name, just in the same building (address no suite #), what BS. I have contacted an attorney, and Yelp hides behind the law which basically states “this is freedom of speak, and we cant prevent people from posting what they want”. My attorney recommend after 23 years of being in business, I change the name of my business, or cough up for starters $15,000 to find the people and sue the one who posted the comments. Now 5 months later and I still can’t get the jerks at Yelp to change my address. Yelp Sucks is a understatement.
I wrote a genuine reviews about poor service my wife and i received and my reviews never showed up… even when i clicked to order reviews by date. This tells me that we can't trust any yelp reviews. i would like to know if other people have had a negative experience where i am going to eat or where i plan on doing business with. Yelp does not represent real reviews people try to submit.
I have been following this restaurant in National City. http://www.yelp.com/biz/t2-filipino-fusion-nation…. As you can see the business does not have a stellar review. Somehow, the business now shows that is it CLOSED on Yelp. What really happened was this business is currently a Yelp sponsor. Being a sponsor allowed them to change their Yelp presence. (http://www.yelp.com/biz/titas-ii-restaurant-national-city) It is still the same company, same owners, same phone numbers and same address. The only thing that changed is their Yelp presence after they became a Yelp sponsor. Now you can see that they have two 5 star reviews, both from obvious shills. I'm sure there are a lot more of these going on in Yelp world.
I own a small business in Long Beach CA. We do dog daycare. Ms. Yoonissi, who left us a bad review after we refused to work 12 hours a day for $20 and took her dog to a kennel where he contracted kennel cough was not allowed to bring her dog into our group setting with a communicable disease. Since then she has trashed us on Yelp, on our own account and on our business partner's and competitors Yelp accounts. Last week, four months after she fired us and left us the initial bad review she accused us of breaking into her home and threatened to have us arrested. I responded with a cease and desist letter which she now posted on Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/wooftidoo-pet-services-lo… – I have contacted Yelp and flagged this review as untrue but Yelp will not do anything about it. Seems like no matter what we do or how we answer these people Yelp is positioned against our best interest.
I tried to sign, could not find the petition, if it is available it should be directed to at the
front of this site, not buried in comments, maybe whoever runs this site could make that happen
This bull**** just happened to me today. For my business I really don't count on Yelp as much since I have listings & reviews on the more popular wedding related websites where I generate business, enough where I've won countless awards. I still took advantage of yelp and what it had to offer. Since no one goes on yelp for wedding invitations, I only had 3 reviews… 2 more were already filtered but they were old so I thought maybe that was why.
I had one customer who posted this outrageously negative review that was unwarranted… she only signed up to post my review and another, of course YELP makes it first and foremost on my page… so I commented on the review and called the customer out in a nice professional way… and after that I told my customers if they had a yelp account to please go on and review me if they could, to bury that negative comment. So they did… 5 customers went on, reviewed me and now suddenly… EVERY positive review has been filtered.
Now that I know what Yelp is up to… My thought was to edit the business information section to call out yelp's business practices in filtering reviews. I don't know what would happen but if they are not putting back the reviews, or they filter my business information, I will have them take down my page.
If you know you have good reviews in other places like google or yahoo, etc. I would write something like, "We highly recommend searching outside of this site for all of our positive, legitimate and most of all unfiltered reviews"
I also would email all of the customers who got filtered and ask them to copy and paste their review that they wrote onto Yahoo & Google's review pages.
Yelp pretty much wasted a lot of my time and anger and energy today that could have been used more productively. I would like to see them shut down, they are worse if not the same as Citysearch.
As a small business owner, I have experienced exactly what everyone is describing. I currently have 19 filtered reviews (varying 3-5 stars) and 2 unfiltered reviews (1 star and a 2 star). So, I tried something new today. I added a public comment to my 1 star review and attached a link to this page in order to inform my customers of what is happening. I'm not sure if Yelp will filter this or not, but we shall see…………..
Apparently they must have received my BBB complaint as they took down ALL of my positive reviews now and left me with a negative review and 2 stars. Does anyone know if you "close your account" will they remove your listing all together or is it just your access to it. If anyone knows how to get their listing totally removed, please let me know. They are maliciously altering my business page at this point.
Same story here. We opened a small dental office and two negative reviews just made 5 star to 3 star.
One of negative review is not even our patient!!! I emailed Yelp sales rep and contact dept and no answer.
It's not worth paying $300 monthly so I canceled the contract immediately. All the real positive reviews are filtered. Even patients emailed Yelp asking why their reviews are filtered and of course no response from Yelp.
Businesses should not stand alone, but fight back together. We are all consumers one way or the other. Small businesses suffer much greater when there are consumers who are posting false accusations and writing bad reviews on purpose. We have taken legal actions against the client who has falsely accused us of our service. We need to help each other out in situations. We have genuine clients’ reviews, but those seem to get ignored and filtered out completely after a day it’s been posted. It’s surprising to see the bad apples stick around. Yelp’s system is unbalanced and totally unfair.
I have 49 filtered reviews mostly 5 star and 5 published reviews only 1 5 star!! hopw can this happen? YELP needs to be stopped from these unfair practices. one of their ELITE members is related to and sometimes works at a competitors restaurant. He lists his home as New York but in actuality lives in Wyoming. He gives dreadful reviews to other restaurnt in the area that are not owned by his Dad.
I am not a business owner. I am a customer, and I’ve posted comments on Yelp before. Out of curiosity, I decided to see what the Yelp review was of a small business I’ve used for years — teh guy, Kevin, is awesome. His busines is Burke’s Automotive in Riverside, CA.
Yelp rated him 4 1/2 stars. I wondered why; he had four reviews of five stars — and one review of one star, Hmmm . . . So I asked Kevin about that review. He knew who it was. It was someone from out of town, who’d come by with an emergency problem that Kevin fixed. He came to Kevin because a friend in Riversdie recommedned Kevin. But then the guy came back and wanted Kevin to do something else that was totally not part of the agreement, and Kevin declined. THEN the guy called later and wanted to bring the car back, all the way from where he lived to Riverside, for Kevin to fix another problem, and Kevin said, no. he didn’t want teh guy’s business because he was a pain. In other words, if Kevin had done a bad job, why would the guy want to bring his car back for Kevin to do more work on another problem? hmmm?
So, after hearing Kevin described what happened, I went back to yelp and wrote this all up. And guess what? That’s when I rlearend about how Yelp filters information. Yekp makes consumers think they’re getting the full story — that anyone can post a review — and that ALL teh reviews are there. You assume that if someone is being an a******, it’s gpoing to show up based on ALL the comments — but that doesn’t work unless ALL the comments are there. Did someone say Yelp sucks?
I was reminded of all this again when I got an e-mail from someone who likes my Yelp reivews and wants to “friend” me on Yelp. I immediately thought, “Scam of some kind — and apaprently there is some kind of scam with people wanting to friend people in connection with Yelp. I haven’t read the articles about that yet — I found a site called Yelp Sucks, and thought — I’ve got to read this first.
I now see how Yelp actually can hurt small businesses AND consumers, too. Yep, Yelp Sucks.
I have had it with yelp .. Every positive review has been flagged and not published.. Only the negative … I don't pay for yelp and would like to have my business removed.. I have 88 fiver star reviews on a reputable website like wedding wire..
There is no way to contact them and I am
Beyond upset!!!!!!
I have had it with yelp .. Every positive review has been flagged and not published.. Only the negative … I don't pay for yelp and would like to have my business removed.. I have 88 fiver star reviews on a reputable website like wedding wire..
There is no way to contact them and I am
Beyond upset!!!!!!
I'm so disappointed w yelp I work very hard .. I want my positive reviews to be posted…
This unacceptable… Please tell me how to delete my business from yelp
Dear Yelp-Sucks.com,
My name is Maya, and I am the manager of Southgate Coins. Our company’s Yelp page has one review, and it’s negative. This sole review shows up on page 1 on SERPs, and adversely affects our business. If it was a legitimate review, or even if it had a grain of truth to it, we would suck it up and try to learn from it. But it is a frivolous review. Someone irresponsibly took a potshot at us. We know it, the person that did it knows it, yet the thousands of Internet searchers don’t know it—they just see it as a 1-star review. We have tried to have it removed, to no avail.
Here’s the story:
Over two and a half years ago, my business received a rude email from a local college student about our hiring policy. She asked why we constantly had our job posting listed on the university’s job board.
Here is Heather’s email, sent directly to our business:
The owners have made it a habit for over 25 years to hire college students. This is one of the ways in which they have chosen to give back to their communities. Because of the short-term employment common with college students, the usual term of employment is from one to two years, at which time the students graduate, take the next steps in their career path, or maybe even get married or have a child. Most of the employees here are only part-time, temporary employees, who use the job to earn extra money while going to college. So, as you can see, there is a strategic reason why the company is always hiring. In addition, the owners would always make room, regardless of how overstaffed they were, for a competent, customer-service-oriented team member. The search for such employees motivates the owners to always have the Help Wanted sign posted.
Apparently this was not a good enough answer for Heather D. More than 14 months after her initial email (wow! that’s a long time to harbor a grudge), she posted a bogus Yelp review for our company, even though she had never visited our store, and had certainly never met either of the store’s owners. Here is the 1-star review she left on our Yelp page:
According to Yelp’s terms, this review violates their Content Guidelines.
“Try to tell your own story without resorting to broad generalizations…”
“Relevance: Please make sure your contributions are relevant and appropriate to the forum. For example, reviews aren't the place forrants about a business's employment practices, political ideologies, extraordinary circumstances, or other matters that don't address the core of the consumer experience.”
In addition to the violation of Content Guidelines, our store’s owners are not on-site, so we know that Heather D. could not have had a personal interaction with them, even though she referred to one of them as being “hoity-toity.”
We feel that in reference to Yelp’s Content Guidelines, and especially because we know the history of the reviewer, the review should be removed because it is irrelevant to the true consumer experience at our store.
The owners, another employee, and I have all flagged this review for removal and submitted our reasoning to Yelp, but ultimately they rejected our request to take down the review.
We are looking for solutions to remove the negative review from the first page of search engine results, but have struggled with the fact that maybe one of our only alternatives is to pay Yelp. Yet, we do not want to promote Yelp to our customers in order to improve our ranking, since Yelp has been so uncooperative in dealing with this blatantly obvious, bogus review.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Maya
Manager – Southgate Coins
Update on above posting:
After researching numerous help forums and YouTube videos, the owners of Southgate Coins and I (Maya Jones, manager) decided to contact Heather D. via personal message on Yelp. I did not attack her review, but instead, I appealed to Heather D. I apologized and explained our circumstance and hiring policies, and asked that she please elaborate on her bad experience in our store so that we may offer better customer service in the future.
Within three hours of me sending the personal message, Heather D. removed her one-star review, and sent a reply, apologizing. She stated that her “comments were definitely exaggerated and unnecessary” and “[her] review really wasn't fair to a local unique business that probably doesn't get a lot of Yelp traffic.” She concluded her response by saying, “Again, I'm sorry, and I really do appreciate you taking the time to explain your hiring policies and everything.”
It’s more than we could have asked for. We are happy to have reached our reviewer on a personal level, and that the outcome is pleasant. For any future negative reviews, we have adopted a new policy of messaging them personally, in an attempt to resolve their problem.
Although we are glad that this specific problem was resolved, we are still very frustrated with the fact that Yelp refused to assist us and went against their content guidelines. We had to take it into our own hands, after countless hours of research.
That's AWESOME! Great news!
which petition are you talking about?
I tried changing the city name to another city and they changed it back. What was interesting is that before they black balled me they misspelled the city name so it woulnd't ever come up. So yes, try switching categories, like dry cleaning instead of pizza.
I continue to get outstanding reviews but they are always filtered. NO matter how many reviews they have left. The only ones that seem to stick are the elite reviews, and they will never come in because of the bad ones that stick. I think yelp is irresponsible with their filter. I think that their is alot more that meets the eye then just a filter. If your not a restranant or someone bringing in major business then they dont care about you. You are small potatoes to them. I get asked all the time. Why the bad review on yelp thankfully some people are smart enough to read the filtered revies, and see we are indeed a good business. I really wish that i could just take my business of of yelp all together but they wont let you they say the public has the right to know. Then if the public had a right to know then they should no all of it. People are smart enough to sense BS. Every business has problem customers and, i hope every business solves them like we do. We dont have many issues, I have one bad yelp review that is legit, and i just could not make this woman happy no matter what i did. I tried, but she was just completely non workable. Anyway that is my two cents i think that they should come up with a better review filter. Google has one most all my reviews stay on google good or bad.
Is there a person to talk to on Yelp?
I wanted to rename a business and sent emailS but got no response. Then I created a new listing. Then I emailed my customer list and asked if anyone would like to make a review with the new listing. None of the few reviews (out of a long email list) show up perhaps because a few came at the same time?
who knows but it is frustrating that you can't talk to a person. I can see the traffic on the site and it is impressive how many people viewed my business just because I had a listing and a few positive reviews. Now that I changed the name seems like I lose that. Anyway, they have created a tool a lot of people use (so it makes them powerful) so they need to invest in some customer support to make sure they field legitimate questions/concerns. …based on what I am reading here maybe an erin brockevich type lawyer can make some $$ with a class action law suit 🙂 🙂 too much power in one hand. disclaimer, I am not a lawyer.
It maybe time for a regulatory body for all these review sites. A friend who runs kids camps told me about this company Activity hero, a startup that reveiws summer camps. This friend noticed that the founder is writing many of the reviews on the site to populate it and she is writing 5 star for larger clients (who prob paid for advertising too) and 4 star for hers and some others.
I am fine with hearing about a customer review for my small business that was not happy or has complaints. Right now i am dealing with 2 bad reviews from employees of my competition. I have written yelp on several occasions informing them that both of those individuals work for my competitor and are making false statements for that reason alone. yelp said that the responses were allowed because they made it through the filter and both of the individuals are active members. These 2 members also wrote bad reviews on a couple other of our competitors too.
The system they have is very easy to beat, use a computer that does not track its ip back to your business or a mobile device is best and review as many businesses locally as possible. Even spend a some free time when you have it checking it at local businesses on the yelp app. You do not have to go inside a business or stay very long, just long enough for the yelp app to acknowledge you are in close enough vicinity to where you are checking in. unfortunately, once you build your profile like that and stay committed for a month you can destroy any local business you want. it is a very flawed system and the fact that it can be beat so easily makes it worse.
I posted a negative review after I was very unsatisfied with some customer service and a product. I was shocked to see it had all 5 stars… inside the filtered reviews I found many that only had one star and were very disappointed in their service…
The next day my review was moved to the filtered reviews (I had given them one star)… But noted that this company had a yelp deal ("thus were paying yelp)… so it sounds like businesses that do pay get negative reviews filtered and businesses that don't pay get positive reviews filtered. I will probably never use yelp again.
Totally agree. My personal visit with a well known gun store was filtered after I gave only 1 star. I had a bad experience. Serveral 1 star reviews followed and ALL were filtered. Something's rotton in Rotterdam
My recent post Main menu
Their alleged review algorithm is designed in such way to force businesses to advertise with their non-important businesses. If you advertise with them things look much different. I am so waiting for Apple to drop their reviews from the Maps App…
When I first learned of our Yelp problem, good reviews filtered, bad reviews highlighted, I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I could not get through to Yelp to rectify the situation. Then I discovered Yelp-Sucks.com. The fact that I wasn't alone, and that others were having similar experiences, helped pull me back from the brink of madness. Now the question is…how do we collectively help to stop Yelp. There must be more we can do as a unit, to expose this unethical company and it's unethical business practices.
Thanks so much for having this website! We have been victims of Yelp's for several years now.
Our 42-year-old local business was slammed with slander – stating that we sold "crack pipes" and it even posted a link to a crack pipe! This is most definitely UNTRUE and was written by a woman mad we asked her to leave our tobacco room for making illegal marijuana references.
We contacted Yelp to let them know this was slander, illegal, and untrue. From that point on, they have filtered ALL OF OUR 5 STAR REVIEWS. At this point we have 15 reviews that show, and 16 filtered. No surprise – every single filtered review is 5 star positive except one 3 star.
There is no way to talk to yelp. At the time they were trying to sell us advertising and I had a lengthy conversation with my rep – who was delightful – but said he doesn't even have a way to phone the people in charge of that and the only thing he has power to do is sell ads – and there was no way for me to talk to a supervisor. He seemed to feel our pain with the slanderous review and said he'd even email the other department telling them he agreed the post should be removed.
No luck.
Anybody suing Yelp -we'd most likely want in on that.
[email protected]
Keep up the good work YELP-SUCKS.COM!
ah! Thanks! If it weren't for all of you I wouldn't keep working on this. But your stories touch me, and I know that I can help by connecting you to the media and the resources you need, so I keep at it.
As the owner of a small business for the past 14 months, Yelp has quickly become my enemy. The majority of my good reviews have been filtered. I have been nearly harassed by a salesman with names Zach with Yelp trying to bully me into advertising with them. Swearing the whole time that it wouldn't affect what reviews are filtered. FYI…my closest competition does advertise with Yelp and his good reviews don't get filtered. I even went so far as to do an inexpensive Yelp deal in the hopes it would help my chances of good reviews showing. No…it did not. This Zach from Yelp and I have gone around and around regarding this issue. He swears that all of the bad press (Forbes, Business Weekly, ABC News, etc) is fake and that it all boils down to their mystery algorythem that he is unable to explain the workings of. Early this week was the straw that broke my back. I got a 2 star review from an idiot who came by my business after hours, has never had my product, and slammed and insulted my business on Yelp because he missed our hours of operation. Do you think this review has been filtered? Absolutely not!!!! I sent Yelp yet another email today concerning their horrible business practices and their harm to small businesses. I'm quite sure it will fall on deaf ears. I find it deplorable that I have no choice in having my business listed on there and I also have no choice in what is said about me. I want them gone!!!!
My colleague owns a Puppy Boutique in Florida and she started to find business going downhill and asked me to look into it. I soon found that there were a lot of bad reviews regarding her store on Yelp and people were making accusations that her store was being supplied by puppy mills – This is probably THE WORST thing that one could say to destroy this sort of business. The store owner has contacted the people via Yelp and invited them into the store so as to see a list of breeders she uses but nobody has replied.
One of the reviewers was a woman from another site that had asked people to log in or call the store and give them a hard time.
Yelp does not understand how damaging it can be to systems and even to the point of somebody saying slanderous remarks, Yelp washes their hands from it.
If I may make a suggestion to folk here – Why not call up Yelp advertising team, mention that you wish to advertise and if it would help with the bad reviews also, record the calls and if you catch them out, just setup a page on Youtube with all the recorded messages. This would not stand up as legal evidence in a court but by God, it would totally TARNISH THEIR NAME!… Lets see them get out of that one.
I am completely blindsided by this. I just so happen to go on my yelp page this evening and see a posting from a person I have never had contact with or even can relate what so ever to their purported posting. I do not or have ever known this person (ED D) who wrote the review. Or for that matter have even had some type of similar incident even close to what this person described. This is total B.S.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/tompkins-landscaping-cont…
Funny as recent as 3 weesk ago I got a call from someone at yelp trying to sell me advertising and I never much paid attention to it, until tonight. All my 5 star posts are hidden and the completely fake review is right at the top…. ughhhhh
While we can't prove that this is a standard process, there are hundreds of anecdotal accounts of this happening on Yelp. I'm so sorry! Someone else just posted that if you file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau that the review will be removed. Try it!
Yelp is full of con-artists and hustlers! My company has over seventy (70) legitimate reviews posted by our customers which have been filtered by Yelp because I wouldn't purchase their advertising plans. Yelp is doing more to hurt business than help it. I encourage consumers not to trust reviews which are posted on Yelp. Their policies are unethical and they practice a business acumen that can be considered borderline extortion.
Hi, I own a small business that repairs apple products – Yolo repair. I have over 6 years of exp and everyone that I've services always leaves my store happy. Unfortunately I had a customer that had an incident which broke the replacement glass within a few weeks of replacement. He called me and asked me what I can do, so I told him I can take a look perhaps it may have been my fault if I missed adhesives. I failed to warn him that his iphone may not look so great after (my bad) so when I took a look at it, everything looked good so I denied free replacement. I offered Nima discount but be did not want to pay it. He left me a negative review on help.
Yelp filtered all my reviews (11+) but left only this negative review.
I tried messaging yelp asking them to delete it as what he wrote on the review was far stretched from what happened but no reply.
I then decided to reply to his review stating that this is not what had happened and why I had denied free replacement. This seemed to have agitated the customer so we started chatting through private message and he pointed out that I should have warned him that it may not look so pretty. We had a truce and I agreed with him. I told him if he takes off or edits his review I'd replace his glass free of chage. He agreed.
He gave me 5 star rating.
A few days go by, and behold its filtered now.
This really pissed me off. So they decided to keep his review up since it was negative but as soon as he edited it to positive it got filtered. How does this even make sense.
I've had it with yelp. I really hope they go bankrupt.
Now I've got 0 reviews and 14 excellent rating reviews filtered.
Lets stop yelp!
That story makes me so sad and so angry!!! I had great reviews for years as a medical professional and recently had one mentally unstable patient write a bad review. Now all of my good reviews are gone and only the bad one shows up- and after I didn't respond to their sales call from Yelp…….
Is there any way all of us hurt and targeted by Yelp's unfair business practice can get together to form an association to be able to file a lawsuit against Yelp.com? These negative reviews cannot be ignored especially since iPhones use this information in conjunction with their Maps App.
That's such an interesting point. I never thought about that. Yelp is integrated with Apple maps thereby spreading the false information beyond just their site. They are propagating the info… I think that goes beyond free speech if they are actively proliferating it…. something to ponder for sure!
Good news!! Yelp removed the untruthful review about my company. I followed the advice I found on your board, filed a BBB complaint and they finally decided to take me serious and respond to my inquiry. Some crazy customer (or competitor) posted a misleading and false review on Yelp listing us in the "furniture store" category; we do not have a store as such, we should not be eligible for a review since Yelp is only intended for brick and mortar story which deal with customers. I thought you might want to share this info with all the other Yelp victims, this company needs to be put in its place, Yelp is evil. If I didn't contact BBB they would leave the false review on their site forcing me to advertise with them…
That is such good news!!!!! Congratulations! 🙂 I love hearing success stories! 🙂 Keep 'em coming!
Can you explain what you did with BBB? As I have this same situation?
Hey Vio, we are currently in a similar situation and i was wondering what steps you took and who you contacted at the BBB to get the review removed?
I'm with you. I just wrote a review for a restaurant in my neighborhood and gave them 5 stars. It was a legitimate review and yet it was scrubbed from the site. I asked the owner what might have happened and it didn't surprise them as it has happened before, it seems that they haven't advertised with Yelp, the good reviews are being scrubbed in lieu of the mediocre or negative (reviews pushing competing restaurants). A bit like a "protection racket", if you ask me.
We are filing a class action lawsuit against Yelp because every reviews must be paid wages by Yelp. With 93 million reviews, this might cut into Yelp's operating expenses. Please let us know if you know any former "Elites" or any former or current writers on Yelp who would be interested in talking about our class action lawsuit against Yelp. http://www.YelpClassAction.info
I am a small business owner in the "Professional Services" category. Yelp has been great from my business. I have fair prices and I offer an outstanding service to my customers. I put my customers first and a free Yelp account really helped grow my business. I have never received anything bellow a 5 star review but noticed that I had about 7 filtered reviews, all of which were legitimate good reviews. I am a small family business, I get an email notification of a new review and I instantly will look it up. I know my customers names and do right by them since we share the same community. I used to think the filtered reviews were for Yelp users that didn't have an active account or only had 1 or 2 reviews, but most of my filtered reviews are from Yelp users who have over 20 reviews on their account. After telling a Yelp salesperson "No" to buying into advertising over the course of a year I finally decided to do it. Since advertising with Yelp I get a lot more calls from Yelp users and the increase in business has been great! I still have all 5 star reviews and my "Filtered" reviews section gets larger and smaller as reviews get filtered and unfiltered. Some reviews go from filtered to not filtered and back to filtered many times. Even with a paid Yelp advertising subscription you still get filtered reviews. My feeling is that, if Yelp for free works well for you than a paid advertising subscription will only help your business by directing more customers to your Yelp page. Buying into Yelp will not take a poorly advertised business and make it better. I do think that the review filter is totally wonky and that is a real bummer but I am getting more page views from being a subscriber and my new customer calls are proving it.
You are the poster child for how Yelp is supposed to work. Great service = great reviews and more and more business comes in because of it. Congratulations. 🙂
I'm confused. Isn't the site yelp-sucks? Hundreds of people are leaving their stories of real life extortion…and the guy that gets the "congratulations" is the one from an obvious Yelp employee? Any business owner KNOWS yelp doesn't work like that. Filtered and unfiltered…come on. Sad to see this wasn't the open forum I thought it was.
yes, this is Yelp Sucks! Over the past 5 years of running this stie I've strived to get Yelp to make changes to benefit the small business community. This is an open forum, I"m no sure what you are referring to, but if you show me I can explain further…
Sorry, sarcasm doesn't translate well, and it's true, this is how it's supposed to work. It doesn't work 95% of the time. So he's lucky it does work for him. Also, I use a comment moderation system that doesn't show me names, so I didn't see the whole Yelp Subscriber name. I'd love for more people to respond with their experiences and to make sure you go through all the comments and thumbs up all the ones that you think the media needs to see.
Here we go again….Complain about Yelp and they will take off more reviews about your company.
I have over 15 clients that have written reviews about my company, (I have my clients phone #, Date of event, Contract of the date I did event, all the proof you want about each and every one of my events, and still these YELP staffers, keep taking off reviews about my company.
I would like to meet your staff, or who ever decides to take off any review they want, (because they have nothing else to do, but try to downgrade companies reviews.
I will give $1000 to Yelp if they can prove anyone of my reviews are false….Brides, and clients can't believe how LOW yelp will go to try and hurt businesses in the sacramento area.
YELP, you name a place and time and I will bring anyone of those reviews client to your office to prove you all need to STOP taking reviews off (because you feel like it) when ever you want.
Put your proof where your mouth is….You owe me $1000 if I prove you wrong….
I'M waiting for the date and time of OUR appointment………………..
In July 2012 a lady came to pick up a horse trailer from our location. She came back next day telling me she didn't have enough experience to drive her truck with the horse trailer, so I gave her deposit back._Two months later I checked this post in yelp from a man called Jeremy:_"If I could give no stars I would. These people are overly anal about your paperwork but obviously not as concerned about the maintainance of their equipment. We ended up having to rent on Saturday because of their hours then we we returned the defective trailer on Monday we had it two days so they were not willing to even consider a refund…" Our partner located in Visalia, CA called him to find out who he was since his name wasn't in our records. He was unclear to explain his relationship with our customer, but he asked for money in exchange to remove the review. I called Yelp and I didn't get any response about removing the review, and I still don't know who this person is, but his language and unprofessional manner makes me think he is just a jerk playing with the role of hero.
This persons name is Jeremy Clark Sales manager of a Title and Escrow company in San Mateo,CA