Yelp for Business OwnersReviews 653

Yelp should be considered a criminal organization. If I could use negative stars I would. They promised us a $900 promotion for a 3 month ad campaign. It never materialized. They charged us full price. On top of that the few leads we got either had nothing to do with our business or were fake. Don't waste your money.

I have always tried to be savey on business. Yelp promised me to moon. It was supposed to be 450 a month. After a week i had 2 clicks. Late night I checked in. I didnt have any responses. And a bill from Yelp for 113 dollars. THATS IT. Since i had used a credit card... i went to the bank next morning. Explained it to the manager. She said cancel the card and get a new one. Bingo. I wrote the CS. "Hate to see you go" All other BS. Blah blah blah. Email says "But you will be charged at the end of the month" yeah good luck with that. So instead of me being reactive. I was proactive. They got 113 from me. But that will be it..

I was charged for ads and all the calls or "leads" were other sales people trying to sell me more ads!
I would stay away from Yelp ads total rip off!

Refused yelp ads. Biz not in local search anymore Reviews removed My Business is now not recommended

They called me several times & left vms/emails. Finally one day I answered. The guy assured me I wouldn't pay anything until after 30 days. Told me I had a $300 credit to use to get started. Helped me build an amazing looking Yelp page. Sure I did have 2 ppl reach out in a week. Which should be normal if something like this works. I'm happy with that part. What I'm not happy about is seeing $103.27 that was taken out of my account without my permission. After seeing all the other reviews looks like I'm not the only one they've done this to! I changed my card info on the site and reached out to who is supposed to be my rep. I hope I get my money back. This is a critical time for me while expanding my business. I really can't afford a hit like this. I wouldn't suggest Yelp to anyone.

During a slow time, I created a yelp page. Immediately i started getting solicited to pay for advertising. All of a sudden i had an account manager, whom i did not need, calling me relentlessly. I blocked his number. I started getting what appeared to be fake leads via email. They were always from far away, no one sent contact email because yelp charges you when someone replies to you. I looked at the fine print of the email and it said the average cost of a lead was $202. I unsubscribed. Then, i started getting texts that were all similar. Again, they were quite far, the area code did not match the area they were calling from and 'kindly respond with your email for details' I view this as a way to entrap people to have apparent use from the site, then bill them. What they don't know is how much their site sucks, how few people use it, and how transparent their fake leads are. I think they are trying to rack up your bill figuring you will not notice the fake 'extra' leads and just bill you for them. Finally I got another call from someone FROM yelp that almost made is sound like a customer was calling so i left a nasty message a few days later, said i wanted nothing to do with them, and got called back immediately by someone else. I cursed him out told him it was a scam and said i would start a class action suit if they kept sending me fake leads and harassed me to pay for advertising.

$202 for a lead? Never. Just 'say no' to yelp, for your own good

Nothing good has happened on behalf of the teams that call Yelp their workplace.
A tragic turn if you need their help.

I apparently clicked on a 2 month free trial in March of 2023, and then they began automatically billing me $150/month. When I discovered the pending $150 charge I reached out to the merchant number on my AMEX statement, and they couldn't have been less helpful. I insisted on immediate cancellation of my account and a refund, and the customer service person refused. When I asked to speak with her supervisor, she refused, saying that her supervisor would tell me he same thing.
I then immediately contacted AMEX to dispute the charge, and am in the process of filing a claim with my state's Attorney General's Office to make them aware of Yelp's unfair, deceptive and illegal business practices. Adding insult to injury, when I looked at my account's performance there was only one completely irrelevant inquiry from a college student. Sad to see an established name like Yelp defrauding small businesses. My recommendation is to stay as FAR AWAY from these folks as possible.

I received a call from a unusually capable saleswoman who told me that Yelp had great visitibility and that large number of prospects would be viewing my ad for residential rentals. There was not cost of their viewing my ad but if they clicked on it, I would pay $15/click. She suggested that with 3 or 4 people intentionally viewing my website, at least one should contact me and set up a showing. They billed me for 50 clicks - NOONE CONTACTED ME! It's a scam. Do not contract on a per click basis. COntract only on a per contact basis.

Beware of yelp. They will have bots that will write you so that you pay for the leads. I canceled in less than 2 weeks and they figured a way to still charge my card for other bs. No one uses yelp and I can't wait until someone hits them with a class action lawsuit so I can get my money back.
Oh and the support team are a**holes.

I do know Yelp is a complete waste of time. They remove everything. We actually bought a lead directly from them, did a great job, customer left a great review, Yelp removed it in their risk management and refused to put it back on. They said the Yelp profile of the customer didn't have enough reviews to go through. All 10 reviews they deleted accept for 1 review that I left personally, the only one that SHOULD have been removed before I knew the new policy. When I explained that to them they deleted that too. We spent so much money there. We hate yelp with a passion and will never use them again. Google is the true way to go, that's where I search when I need something. I think Yelps business model realized that good reviews would create organic leads and a lack of dependence buying new ones. They want you to be dependent on them for purchasing all your lead's for any new businesses established before their new and current business model. Super shady.

Wanting to get help to start my own business wanting to do a cleaning serivce like washing cars cleaning inside and out

I have used the yelp for business thinking the were giving me a 300 credit to get started for my coffee shop. Come to find out it end up costing me 500 or more for a few clicks and they make it hard for you to see what's active and what's being charged. The customer service was unhelpful. Please steer clear. All they care about is their bottom line and not yours.

This is so unbelievable! It was supposed to be free and then I started getting a phone call and I have asked to cancel my membership or anything related, nothing! I called more than 3x and waited on line for more than 1 hour. I emailed them and nothing again! I asked to get my money back, this is scam, don't ever believe anything on this platform! This is frustrating and disappointing.

Yelp hounded me about running ads on their site for my very small business for weeks and after a friendly conversation with a rep who told me it would be just a few dollars a day and convinced me to try it, I was horrified to see that I was charged $535.
Furthermore, I had five of my clients leave me beautifully written reviews and Yelp wouldn't showcase them because they determined they were too biased and not fair because they felt I solicited them. I am a sort of spiritual counselor and my clients and I have very close relationships because of the nature of my business. I don't have negative reviews and either way, how would my clients even know I'm on Yelp. I'm word of mouth and have very personal relationships with my clients. I got NOTHING for the month but a blank page and somehow overcharged hundreds of dollars I do not have! I'm horrified by the dishonesty of this company and their tactics and have since found out that thousands of people have fallen prey to this scam and that there's some loophole that makes it not illegal. What are we supposed to do? They verbally tell you it's something totally different from what it actually is, and you don't question it because they're supposedly a reputable and well known company.

Also, I wrote them last week to ask to cancel before I even knew this was happening and no one ever responded. So now I know that lack of response cost me an extra $150 or so.

Ran a 8 day ad got 6 clicks cancelled the ads, at the beginning of the month they get charged my card 136 then sent my account into the negative added another 35 dollars on top of the 136! $#*! yelp small business killer

Trying to cancel ads is difficult. I was billed for a closed account. I had to talk to five people before reaching the billing department. Once there, I was told I had restarted my account after canceling the month before. I was told to fill out a form sent to my email to try and get a refund of money for something I had not authorized. I was told that I had to wait two weeks to talk with a supervisor: I asked to be scheduled and was told I would be contacted with a calender date for the call. Never received it. The entire process was to make a refund impossible to address. They steal from customers every month, making it impossible to get a refund after doing it. Total unaccountability.

Not only does their platform not work all the time to allow users to adjust budgets, they're extremely hard to get ahold of! Once you get ahold of them, the "supervisors" don't listen and aren't going to help at all. They also employ bots or people to run up your bill. I have proof of picture's of several accounts (I'll post) sent to me all with the same photo attached to them under different names. This is a giant scam and it should be illegal. Definitely search for different platforms!

We created an account on Yelp on 27th May 2023.
Yelp promised an upfront $300 credit on ad spend if we start advertising on Yelp ads
We were charged $109.21 within 13 days of starting the account.
This means Yelp should have exhausted the free credit of $300 and then charged us $109.21. The total cost of $409.21
Their ad report says my ad campaign received only 15 clicks at $210.96 from 27th May to 11th Jun 2023.
On what basis have they charged us $109.21?
Their customer success team is not responding.

As a longtime business owner of the Plymouth, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Barnstable county of MA, this site and customer service has been awful, unreliable and a complete scam. Definitely look elsewhere and don't pay them a dime for a thing! Very unhappy.