Yelp for Business OwnersReviews 653

My business is listed on yelp. What a mistake on my part for putting it there. My real customers come into my business and rave about how awesome it is and they do a rely review and give us 5 stars and describe their experience. The next day yelp removes it from their site. These are regular yelp users and real people. Yelp said they have a screening process that flags good review that are spicious. Bull. They flag every good review until you purchase their service. Hundreds of dollars a month. Waste of money and waste of time. New business owners Stay away from yelp!

I like advertising with them; what I don't like is how much it costs and that Yelp charges you approximately $800 if you get out of the contract before the year is up. I am an ad agency editor and a resume writer with fabulous reviews, but I didn't get much business the first two months. Word got out, and Yelp DID give me useful advice about beefing up my ad; however, their advertising fee is exorbitant (about $350 a month to advertise), and then I just told you about the $800 travesty. Very difficult to pay that much money, hoping I will have a return on my investment. A bigger tragedy was Google Ads; spent more than $1K, and didn't get even one customer. Waiting on May 2017 to arrive.

Unless you already have positive reviews don't bother with advertising on Yelp. I started with 0 reviews for my new business. Spent $1500. 00 on ads. I received ZERO customers from this advertising. It was a complete waste of money.

I am a physician and a cranky idiotic and ignorant patient give a bad review of my office without seeing me, just because did not want to pay his due deductible up front. Yelp has dedicated to remove my good reviews and as far as I know will continue doing it.
As per other evaluations of Help by different businesses they expect to get money from business owners in order to delete the false the bad reviews. This Yelp needs to be kicked off the social media.
BE WARNED
DO NOT PAY EVEN ONE PENNY TO THIS YELP.

I have to hand it to Alex, my Yelp sales rep. His persistence and what I believe now to be bogus facts, convinced me to give Yelp a reasonable chance to improve my coaching practice. There was a base fee that grew each time a Yelp user clicked on my site up to a maximum amount. Not surprisingly each month, Yelp provided "statistics" to prove that the maximum number of people clicked on my site, while the activity feed and my own experience did not reflect nearly that amount. Yelp opted not to display two 5 star reviews because the people did not use Yelp often enough. After 4 months, I received two calls from Yelp users, which resulted in one client and two coaching sessions. When I called to cancel the service I was informed I could lower my monthly rate to a third of what I was paying for the length of the contract and avoid the costly cancellation fee -- an option I was not informed of at the onset. If you are thinking about using Yelp I'd call business that are similar to yours who do and ask them if it has helped. It has not helped mine.

After close to 50 phone calls from yelp trying to "lock" me into a marketing agreement with them I finally realized they wouldn't stop calling me daily wasting valuable work time so I just stopped answering their phone calls.
WOW! So their "screening" software suddenly kicked into high gear which they say they have no control of how it does and does not add or remove reviews, Suddenly 31 out of 32of my 5 star reviews were deleted by being moved and shelved in a "not recommended" area invisible to any search engines.
MY clients took valuable time to write great referrals for me in order to help others use a referral service to find a great contractor. Instead they have with their supposed "automated screening" software blacklisted ALL new reviews that come in for my co. I have had a total of 30+ - 5 star reviews for my Co. And they have bounced all of them and left only the very first one ever posted many years ago.
They are liars regarding their screening software, It doesn't screen out legitimate reviews, They just blow away great reviews regardless of your service quality which they care nothing about what so ever, They want you locked into a contract period, and if you don't pay say good bye to anyone's reviews who may be trying to help you promote how good of a job you may do. They are lying scumbags and have cost me a ton of work in order for them to promote a local company that does lousy work but pays yelp to get their reviews posted. Yelp is worthless if you are tying to build your business through honest hard work and good references! It is simple formula, they lie to you and then screw you if you don't pay them, Horrible to see all of my great reviews shelved because they are so greedy and really don't give a damn about what is and isn't a legitimate review. It's all about the $$$ of course! STAY AWAY FROM YELP! They hurt my business considerably by being lying scum and not giving a hoot about honest hard working company referrals. THEY SUCK!

SO Now I am getting people selling 5 Star yelp reviews guaranteed! WOW What credibility could any think this bunch of BS could have regarding a real "Referral and Rating Service". What a bunch of crapola Get the word out, People now SELL Yelp reviews.!

I do freelance video production work and when I moved into a new market I knew my business would need a jump start. So when I was contacted by Yelp Biz I though it would be a good opportunity to connect with customers. The sales lady was nice and I felt she really cared to help me generate leads and make my business get noticed. She showed me other screen grabs, of people doing similar activities as me, with tons of leads and large amounts of money being generated. I was excited to get working again. A month went by and $400 later my sales chart also shows thousands generated except the only leads I actually received were bogus sales calls from other advertisers. Of course now I'm under contract to pay cancellation fees, give 30 days' notice, (another $400 dollars) for a service that is flawed. For someone looking for work that's a whole lot of nothing for a whole lot of something. If Yelp really wants to be your partner to success, why can't they stand behind their products and understand their flaws. Of course they got my credit card number so who cares about customer satisfaction.

While paying for my granddaughters cell phone bill by phone as we have done the last four months: I was asked some unusual questions. After security code, address, etc. I was asked my birthdate, last four digits in my soc. Sec. Could I answer some questions from my public record. Two men's name I had never heard of to which I asked for a supervisor and told him I have NEVER been asked so many personal questions to ay a bill by phone and had not been questioned the last three times I had paid her bill by phone... why now? All payments went through before. They got CHASE on the phone and I was asked security questions that satisfied BOOST after 45 min... She is changing her service. So invasive. Over $50. Supervisor replied $50 is a lot to some people... REALLY? I've spent $100.'s and never had to bend over.

Yelp is a company that corrupts reviews so that you aren't reading a true cross section. They appear to be bias toward a business and fail to print negatively rated reviews... or at least place a negative review in some obscure place while keeping the better reviews more readily available to the consumer. From now on, if I see Yelp is the company reviewing, I won't believe a word they say about average ratings. So ends free press and honesty in review ratings.

They say there is a computer that chooses which reviews get filtered. Hummmm I guess the computer knows if you pay Yelp or not. Consumers should know there is a fee for Yelp... you do not have to pay it, but if you do not... get ready for "filtered reviews". Case and point... look at the bottom left corner for the very pale words "filtered reviews"... then get ready to prove you are not a robot, and read the filtered reviews. If there are a lot of 5 stars reviews, call the business and see if they pay Yelp.

I am a restaurant owner and noticed that all my 5 star reviews on Yelp have mysteriously disappeared and left were 4 stars and below. What I also noticed is they keep all groupon reviews and they do not keep reviews from people who were recommended by friends or concierge or just by people who happen to walk in off the streets. This site is so unethical and is used against business owners! They bolster about some filtering system for user reviews however, I believe there is someone who takes down all the good ones when you do not advertise with them. I have been contacted numerous times to advertise and when I explain that I will not advertise because their site is unfair and unethical, a few days later 4 and 5 star reviews disappear. I have taken pictures of my reviews and then to see them taken down after a few days only to leave up the negative ones. Their is a class action law suit against Yelp for this very thing that they are doing. So all you Yelpers out there, do not take this yelp site seriously because you are not getting fair results. If they were a legitimate site you would be able to contact them but there is no way to get in direct contact with anyone from yelp. Emails are submitted to their sales department. This should be a red flag to everyone...