Yelp for Business OwnersReviews 653

Do not fall for the promotional campaign! They hook you with free ad dollars and then charge you monthly and you pay way more than you ever would with other companies. They don't try to help you when you contact them. They say we send you an email that is black and white! Really then why are their so many complaints of people who feel deceived. It think it is pretty gray! I was just at a conference this week and the speaker literally said "Don't advertise with Yelp"! Wish I would have known that before. I thought you set a budget and the click rate would be something reasonable. I didn't realize they were billing me monthly. Because it was going through my paypal I didn't see it. It cost me $1800. 00. It is ironic that this company is in the business of reviews and they have such bad ones. I should have looked up reviews first. I got suckered. I emailed the person who is hoping to band people together to stop others. I urge you to email them *******@gmail.com.

I received a promotion from yelp that give you a $300 free spend budget before they charge you anything. Well to my surprise I received a bill for a $115.88 for services between Feb 7th to Feb 28th. I was confused because when I looked at my activity, I saw 23 views and 16 clicks with 4 leads and a $64. Spend. Yet, they billed me $415.88, gave me a credit for $300 and I am now responsible for $115.88. I reached out to the sales person and the support team. I received a call back from Kassandra in the support team who informed me that I did not look at the correct screen for my billing, and that my spend is different from yelp spend so my click cost was $23 per click. This is the most deceptive selling I've experienced and would never recommend yelp.

The salesman was nice. The advertising didn't generate new business. When it was coming up on billing, I wrote and asked for payment arrangements and to suspend my campaign for now. You can't suspend a campaign yourself; you can only cancel it. So when I was waiting for them to get back to me, without contacting me they drained my bank account for the full amount. My car payment, insurance, and other bills are going to be debited from an account with $8 in it. When I called, the b!+[# told me that it's too bad, I owed the money and tough crap for me. I explained that I was trying to make payment arrangements, not trying to get out of paying. She laughed arrogantly, refused to let me talk to her supervisor or anyone else, laughing about it, and hung up on me! BEWARE! They are ripoff experts!

Do not use Yelp for business owners. We used them for one month, we were given a monthly budget and were told we could cancel at any time. When we got the first bill it was 4 times what we expected. We did not get any customers from their garbage promotion ads that they claimed they ran for us. When we asked if there was some sort of mistake, they told us there was nothing they could do. They do not care about your business. Yelp for business owners sucks, avoid at all costs.

I'm getting sick and tired of companies like yelp getting away with scamming hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars from hard working people, I want to do something about it. I have a large audience on social media, political connections, along with connections in main stream media and news stations. I was recently deceived and scammed by yelp just like many of you and I think it's about time we put an end to their run. If you are willing to tell how yelp scammed you, through video, audio, or writing (preferably video because it's more compelling), I'm willing to organize yelps victims, create content and get it to the right people that could help us receive some form of justice. If you're interested, please email me at *******@gmail.com

Yelp claims to post unbiased reviews that can not be changed or removed by the business owner, but also claim to use a "computer" to decide whether or not a review is relevant. For our business Yelp has posted the only 2 negative reviews we have received and removed ALL 6 of our positive reviews. When I signed up so that I could at least question it, I got a computer generated response saying it cant br changed because it is a "computer" that decides if the review is relevant. Most ridiculous review site out there! Now that I'm reading these reviews I think maybe the "computer" only finds positive reviews relevant if the business owner is willing to "pay" for it. Customers beware of you use Yelp to research a business. You are likely not getting accurate info.

YELP is a business that makes bad practices.
My business has received only spam requests, after announcing my business with yelp. Yelp employees send requests that never come to anything, posing as customers. Also YELP employees HASSAS me via phone and want to advertise my business with them.
My business canceled the yelp ad after 2 days, because my business received a lot of SPAM from the employees of YELP, but the surprise was when the first of the month came, I charge my card claiming that the ad is not canceled, Yelp I manipulated my business account and made an unauthorized charge to my card.
I do not recommend Yelp, it's a business that practices illegal.
Yelp is a business that makes illegal practices

Yelp! Shame on you! You know. A lot of hard working shop owners are doing their best not for your stars but for their passions. Just because we can't advertise with you, you move our good reviews to "currently not recommend". You accuse us for faking reviews? Why does your algorithm only work for good reviews and not bad reviews? You removed 51-5 star reviews and left a bad review, seriously? SHAME ON YOU. We called and you said that if we pay, not only do we get our reviews back, we can remove any unwanted reviews.
Our reviews and revenue come from our blood, sweat and tears and your revenue comes from blackmail. They don't belong to you and it looks like you're going to get it soon. Can't wait to see you get shut down.

Pretty much the same as everyone else but I never took the bait on the 300 a month. I got as far as the not recommended reviews that my clients left. I right away knew something is funny here. Called customer service just to speak to a $#*! head named nick. Nothing he could say sounded benifical to my company. Then he told me if i advertise with them they will make my reviews public. Still have my free page for now but i will not advertise. I dont recommend yelp.

Before signing up for Yelp Ads, I actually got business through them, so when a representative called and asked us to sign up... it made so much business sense! Guess what happened next?

We did business with them for 3 months. Business dried up and we lost upwards of $1500 to ads. We then cancelled with them because it made no sense, and then they removed ALL our positive reviews but 1...

Definitely never working with them again.

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE USE THIS COMPANY. There will be a day when they destroy your account demanding log in and passwords from 10 years ago. You will waste approximately 20 hours of your time trying to verify your identity. Not only will that not work, they will refuse to forward your emails so it is a sudden and complete disruption of your business. Then wait for it: They will keep billing you because of course, you can't log in to cancel!

To start... I should have known better than to have trusted them. Normally, I take my time and study reviews and hopefully get word of mouth before making business decisions. I am in a pet sitting business with only my wife. Our business dropped off in January like last year and... Right on time... we get a call from YELP to get our business booming. Looking back I must have been crazy desperate! Because during the sales call I noticed 16 of our hard won Reviews had been AXED... This brought our 26 reviews down to... Yes 10:-( Well, long and short we got three new clients 1 FaceBook TWO word of mouth ZERO YELP. I just been billed $318.00 FOR ZERO results and YELP refused to cut my bill one penny... After waiting on hold for 26 minutes! My fault for trusting a wolf. Beware.

They bill you before they say it's supposed to start. After a year at $300 a month and getting NOT ONE JOB, I cancelled on the 3rd of the month. They sicced a collection agency after me and used the ad impressions *that THEY manipulate* to prove it was 'working' but neglected to show how I still owed them. I got sick of the harassment and paid them off. I just feel obligation to warn any other company to RUN far and fast from Yelp Business.

I have many 5 stars review from real clients but Yelp decided not to publicly advertise them after many attempt of encouraging me to pay for advertisements. I guess that is the reason why they dont show great reviews for my business. Therefore, I am telling to my clients about Yelp being inconsiderate and unorofessional of handling these situations. Plus the marketing people who calls me are rude and demanding. I am very disappointed. I wonder if they will let this review be shown publicly. I might have more than 20 reviews but they only shows the two complaints or poor reviews that we actually did no give any services and other less than 5 stars. But I have about 20 reviews that they are not showing that are great and from out real clients.

I received a call from Star promising me a promo of "free" yelp ad service of $1000. She promised there would not be a charge on my card from yelp for 6 months. What she failed to mention was that I would be charged an additional $540 per month. I called yelp as soon as I saw the charge and they claimed that I was sent an email confirmation in the beginning stating that I would be charged, which I thought was covered by the $1000 credit I received. I am a small business just starting out and there is no way I would have agreed to pay for such a service had I known it would cost me so much. I was later contacted by senior accountant rep of yelp, Allison. She kept insisting that I did know what I was doing despite me telling her repeatedly that I was not informed, that I did not know that there would be a charge because I was led to believe that I was promised $1000 credit of yelp ad services, and that I never signed up to be charged $540 per month. She then proceeded to tell me that the $1000 was a credit for another service on top of the ad services that I was receiving. What? Now, I'm confused. Then they proceeded to talk about clicks, and cost per clicks, etc. Which makes me even more confused. I then asked her why I didn't receive any bills or invoices and she replied that they are a paperless company. I should have still been sent an invoice via email. I then asked her to send me the recorded conversation with Star and she said that recordings are only used for internal services and cannot be released to the public (even though it directly involves me?) Of course there is no documentation of the $1000 promotional credit that I received. She concludes the call saying that she will send a request for me to not be charged for the additional seven days I had the service for before I cancelled it at the beginning of the next month. If she had full authority like she claimed when I asked to speak with her superior why is a request necessary when she can resolve the issue herself? I was wronged and tricked by this company. They stole money from me and try to justify it with lies and sales jargon that a normal person would find hard to understand if they're not directly involved in sales and computer metrics. There is no humanity or empathy in this company. Please do your research and don't fall for the 'too good to be true' offers they throw at you like I did along with countless other victims of yelp.