Yelp for Business OwnersReviews 653

I received 300 free advertising credits from a purchase through vistaprint. I setup my page and advertising program to allow up to $300 spend per month thinking I would be able to cancel once my credits were used up.
July cost (using credits) = $55.41
August cost (using credits) = $53.66
September cost (using credits) = $40.97
October cost (using credits) = $36.08
Total spend on Credits thus far = $185.06 (so still have 114.94 credit remaining right? Wrong, credits expired at the end of October so now the November bill I receive = $173.99. Way more than any previous month's cost + credits expired so I owe the full bill. I called customer service, they say nope can't do anything about it, you should have called us in October if you wanted to cancel...
Also, I received no customer leads or contacts from all of this advertising.

Im sure anyone reading this already knows. Yelp basically extorts small business owners. They harass you with multiple phone calls throughout the week asking you to sign up for paid advertising. If you dont pay them money to advertise they will remove your good reviews. There are many, many documented cases of this happening. Yelp claims its there software that automatically filters reviews... bull$#*!. I have three absolutley legimate 5 star reviews on my page and for some strange reason, none of them are recommended. The reviews are all detailed orientated, contain pictures of my work, etc, how is this not a recommended review? Well, because I refuse to pay yelp for advertising. These guys are scam artists. I sincerely hope this company gets sued and has to declare bankruptcy or better yet throw the CEO in jail. Shame on you, messing with peoples livelihood's, erasing good reviews and harrasing small business owners. YELP FOR BUSINESS IS A COMPLETE SCAM DO NOT PAY THEM ANY MONEY. DO NOT CREATE A YELP PAGE FOR YOUR BUSINESS.

A sales rep name Anthony gave me a call. Had me set up yelp ads and mentioned the first 6 months will be covered up to $150 a month. He mentioned I won't be charged a thing. After 3 days I was charged $175.37 for 13 people clicking my ad. That's roughly $14/click and didn't get one client. After call Yelp to fix things they said no refund and now I get 0 of the credit and must pay the entire amount. Will never do business with Yelp again

Totally misleading straighten out now lies your money is thrown out the window swear they have people on their payroll that email you just to burn up your money and jobs that never come through just a waste of your time and money right now I'm in a dispute over a bill that they try to Bill me from previously scamming me they had my credit card already on files and without my permission used it and charge me another $164.14. So please please whatever you do do not use Yelp

As others have noted, you post a "free" ad and afterwards are contacted by a pushy account executive who convinces you that based on what you offer, you should be able to reap high profits. It's hyperbole. I received a total of four actual contacts all requesting services I was not provided and three of which I suspected were illicit if not illegal enterprises, like flying out of town and delivering a packet or overseeing painting of a home. I believe Yelp has hit upon a good thing. You offer pie-in-the-sky assurances and once the person is billed for the number of visits to their page vs actual acquisition of business, you are billed. I paid $430 and got no results. This is a legal scam.

Got the sales call and was told he can up my $300 credit to $900. He walked me through my portal and said put credit card info in "as a place holder" for when promotion was over. Somehow I stumbled upon bad Yelp reviews and dug a little deeper. I cancelled everything but still got charged $138.00 for 4 days of advertising. I got off easy but now I can't remove CC from my account. Eff these people, stay away, horrible company, even worse salesmen, rip off...

At this point, I hate yelp for business. First, they tell you you have credit only to find out you don't. You work with their wording so good that you think it's a credit but it's not. I am so upset. Customer service doesn't care and act like its a normal thing. I am beyond upset and this leaves a bad taste in my mouth because I just opened a business and the first thing I have to do is pay money that I don't have. I have a 700 dollar bill!. Shame on yelp

I am a solo attorney working very hard to establish my practice, and after a YEAR of non-stop work, I finally resolved a few matters and had a few VERY happy clients. I asked several of them to leave me a review on Yelp and I responded individually to each of their reviews as recommended. Yelp initially featured each of these 5 star reviews, then hid all 4! They were posted on different days by clearly different accounts. Each of the users had left reviews on other businesses, and some of them had DOZENS of reviews. Yet Yelp placed each of these reviews in the not recommended section, meaning that I have NO STAR RATING on yelp, even though I have 4 5-star reviews from clients. I am not some restaurant that gets dozens of customers a day. I run a law practice and it can take YEARS sometimes to get a satisfied client. I work EVERY DAY to ensure those clients remain happy.

The company also told me that I was signing up for an initial promotion that would charge me a max spend of $450 each month. Then after 3 or 4 months I noticed that I was being charged more than $600 per month.

Yelp is TRASH.

This is similar to many YELP complaints. We were contacted multiple times by their sales representative. They indicated that YELP can provide us more business leads than any other service. They offered their bonus promotion, etc. After we agree to try the service we no longer received responses from either of the people that signed us up, but they were able to respond during the sales process. YELP produced less than 30 "clicks" in a month when they indicated there analytics showed we should have far more leads than our budget allowed, not far less. Once we received our initial invoice we realized we were billed for the budgeted amount not the delivered service. Basically, YELP is taking money regardless of if they deliver the service level offered. When I asked for a refund or reduction, they said they delivered as promised. I feel they are guilty of deceptive advertising and then they try to hide behind a lengthy T&C document. I request a refund. I do have the charges disputed with my credit card company as well.

Yelp could easily provide a transparent statement or billing tracker to show current billing and credits. They choose not to and consequently you get no communication other than a big bill at the end of the month. They also make the add-on items easy to overlook the impact they will have on your total bill. They are friendly when you call about it but unwilling to make any adjustments and just make lame statements about being able to calculate the total based on the daily budget which is technically true but not a customer friendly way to manage billing.
As a small business owner I have plenty of other things to track and Yelp should be embarrassed by their billing process.

Please BEWARE OF YELP. A sales woman called me, harassed me rather, to try a promotion for $12/click to which I responded I could not afford it. She insisted that I would pay no more than $21 for a weekend trial and I agree and entered my card. 5 days later, after receiving no calls, I tried to cancel. They stated that my bill was now $214.52. (tHAT WOULD EQUALL $1,287 for 30 days.) I was in shock and told them what the sales woman told me. The manager replied that they had no such promotion and could not do anything.
PLEASE ALERT YOUR STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND CANCEL YOUR DEBIT CARD YOU USED WITH YELP. THEY ARE A DISHONEST BUSINESS AND USE LIES TO LURE BUSINESS OWNERS TO PUT YOUR CARD IN FOR PAYMENT. YOUR BILL WILL NOT MATCH WHAT YOU AGREED TO.
By the way, I'm assuming he was being truthful about me having 12 clicks. No one ever called me. So now I'm a new business owner with a $214 bill and no results.