For Years Yelp has long faced accusations that it manipulates its business-review ratings to sell advertising - 5 star reviews to paying advertisers. This is no big secret. Most all businesses that use YELP know that. But here is what is interesting.
If BUYING Reviews is standard practice for YELP. IE: Let's say John owns a Pizza Shop and has one or two "1" star negative reviews from his customers but John has Ten customers that give him 5 stars great reviews- Yelp will contact John and say something to the effect. "John if you pay and use our service for $200-$800 per month we will make sure that your customers will see your "Positive 5 star Reviews." There is another word for this. "Extortion"
But The verdict from a federal appeals court: "There's nothing illegal about the way Yelp conducts their business model."
Yelp adamantly denies giving its paying clients more favorable reviews, but even if such allegations could be proved, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Yelp is entitled to set a price for its ads - and the businesses reviewed have no legal right to a high rating. But at the same time don't have a legal right to a lesser review ranking either. And of course if an advertiser pays Yelp their ongoing monthly fee the Reviews will surely rank high.
Robert C from Montebello CA wrote this about Yelp "Beware of Yelp! suppressing good reviews and depriving businesses from positive reviews being shown to the general public. The motive behind this practice is unknown, but it will be uncovered. It's a disservice to the both the business who are victims of Yelp!'s practice and to consumers seeking honest real reviews from members of the public. I have had a good reviews of David Schonfeld taken off Yelp without reason...and so have others. The only bad review of Schonfeld is bogus." LINK
Darren R. Lorain Ohio wrote "A new business owner in my area owns a small business and he's really good at what he does. In result of his great work he has had about five or six 5 star reviews so far and Yelp won't post a few of them publicly for some reason. Yelp called him and said they won't show the reviews unless he upgrades to premium for $200/mo. Is this a scam and if not why won't Yelp post the reviews?" LINK
Henning K Charlotte NC wrote "Yelp is a business SCAM. They only post reviews when companies pay for it. I posted a positive and a negative review. I took about a half hour and wrote an honest and detailed review which was not posted. The company owner told me he was asked to pay for it to make it post. A scam.
There is no way to contact Yelp except general info that lead away from the subject on yelp.com. Bottom line: Yelp is a big money making scam. If you want to have useful reviews, go somewhere else (like yellowpages.com for example.) LINK
There is even a entire FaceBook Titled "Yelp Is A Fraud" Here's the link. FACEBOOK
Here's another article on YELP's Standard operating procedure.
The phone calls came almost daily. It started to get creepy.
"Hi, this is Mike from Yelp," the voice would say. "You've had three hundred visitors to your site this month. You've had a really good response. But you have a few bad ones at the top. I could do something about those."
This wasn't your average sales pitch. At least, not the kind that John, an East Bay restaurateur, was used to. He was familiar with Yelp.com, the popular San Francisco-based web site in which any person can write a review about nearly any business. John's restaurant has more than one hundred reviews, and averages a healthy 3.5-star rating. But when John asked Mike what he could do about his bad reviews, he recalls the sales rep responding: "We can move them. Well, for $299 a month." John couldn't believe what the guy was offering. It seemed wrong. READ MORE
We could go on and on. But I'm sure by now you get the picture! Is Yelp a Scam? Ask the businesses that feel extorted by them.
davidconigliaro.com
davidconigliaro.com
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