YelpReviews 1,585

I called Yelp twice in the last two weeks to ask why most of my reviews had been removed? They told me that is done via algorithms. WTH? When I signed up with Yelp they told me not to ask for reviews because they wanted it to be legitimate. I played along and still lost all but 3 reviews. I had been spending over 1,000 a month on my ad. I told them I was not happy and that I was going to pull most of my advertising. They could care less. I guess they think they are too big to fail. Please don't waste big money on yelp people...

We set up a budget for Yelp ads, it was 150.00 we only has 11 contacts, reviews 4 clicks and 2 calls.
They charged us 333.48
Called to speak with someone, Brandon hung up on me
Whitney ( whom squeaked like a little mouse) acted all sweet until i asked to speak with someone whom could assist the problem, them she got rude and hostile, and refused to transfer my call. When i hung up she called back to taunt me.

Will NEVER USE THIS service again

Wester liner head installer JOHN Bowen has no idea what he was doing. Nothing but conflict and problems. Didnt even want to be on the job. Throwing cigarette butts all over the yard. Unprofessional at best.

I wrote an awful review, on a horrible company I experienced. A few months later, when I logged into Yelp, I still saw this bad review I wrote. Yet when I went on this company's site, on yelp, AND I DIDN'T LOG INTO MY YELP ACCOUNT, I DIDN'T SEE THIS HORRIBLE REVIEW OF THIS COMPANY! Translation: companies that receive bad reviews, then MODIFY (MANIPULATE) their profile, so to DECEIVE the new client! (And the company can delete the bad review, so the new client knows nothing! {Example: I wrote this company as very new in business. The company, then deleted my review, and added all the years of work the employees had at that business, and said something like 20 years of experience.})

I have a yelp listing and there are a number of good reviews written for my company. Many of these good reviews by actual legit customers have been pushed down despite some of them having multiple friends and multiple yelp reviews. This has left only one good review on yelp out of a number of good reviews. As yelp reps have told me, But people can still click and see the good ones we don't recommend! But you don't know that in the Google listing because these are not displayed.

Recently a third party in a transaction between me and my client wrote me a defamatory review on yelp. This review has been featured prominently because of the number of friends and posts etc this user has on yelp (I was told this by a yelp rep). Yet they have never actually interacted with me or my company and the job was done well and with integrity (otherwise they may have opted to sue my company as may be their right). Because of this I am at a 3 star rating featured prominently on Google due to suppression of actual customer reviews which were 'too glowy'.

I have talked with other small business about this same issue. The poor quality of review control with what Yelp may consider freedom of speech but is in fact defamation. Freedom of speech does not give the right of defamation a tort which infringes upon the rights of others. Until yelp substantially improves weeding out of fake reviews both positive and negative and ensuring that real reviews receive their rightful place of prominence on business listings yelp will remain a 1 star company.

Of course after this I started to receive more calls from yelp reps asking me to sign up (a correlation perhaps as I have no proof otherwise).

On a final note your business rating on yelp gets two prominent places on Google. One is listed directly on yelp the other on the mapquest listing for the company (not guaranteed that both will show up but that is my experience.) This gives unbalanced impressions of companies. Although a representative ensured me that people will be so thorough in checking to be sure what people are actually saying and that they will know these are both yelp ratings my experience is that people don't have time to do that. The first impression is the one that sticks.

Yelp needs to clean up their act. I look forward to a legislative and/or legal reprimand for this and other fast and loose review websites.

Yelp lies to consumers stating that they will pay $5 or $10 a day and that you can cancel at any time but if you decide to cancel in 10 days they still charge you $280 or more a month stating that's what you agreed to. Enhancement fees, pay per clicks, bla, bla, bla...
For 2 years they called and I finally decided to give them a try. They hard sell you and you can't get them off the phone.
Do yourself a favor, and don't do business with them. Horrible business practice!

Kudos yelp! You're absolutely pathetic and your calls are becoming harassing. I got my child a cellphone in September 2018 and some ridiculous yelp bs keeps calling over 10 times a day stating our business has bad reviews and connects us to a rep. First of all let me say NEITHER MY CHILDREN OR I HAVE A BUSINESS. When I tell them to stop calling and take the number off they DONT! The calls are multiple times a day, one representative made my child cry when they answered the phone and brought it to me because it won't stop calling and if you block one number they call from another. And even as I'm sitting here typing this out I just answered another call from you yelp people as my child is at school and has no use for his phone during school hours. Here is a thought yelp. Taking a number off your call list isn't hard. I've asked several reps multiple times the last one just had the nerve to tell me well he doesn't know about that being a wrong number sounds like I'm just trying to get out of dealing with the poor reviews. Really?! Keep calling my child and it is going to turn in to a lot more than what I just said to the rep that just called the line again.

A USELESS OBSTRUCTION to finding HELPFUL REVIEWS

A USELESS OBSTRUCTION to finding actual HELPFUL REVIEWS

Yelp always *shows* up with IRRELEVANT so-called REVIEWS which
R actually adds.

I can't unsubscribe from it. I don't use a smart-phone or text
So perhaps if there ARE directions on HOW TO REMOVE ONES NAME, someone could
Translate?

The reviews BTW R TOTALLY USELESS, REGARDLESS of what one puts
Into ANY search bar.

In addition, since I HAVE TO enter a rating STAR, I am REMOVING
My STAR here which results in a ZERO overall rating.

As a business owner I found I had a listing on Yelp (didn't put it there myself) so as one would expect I went ahead and claimed it to ensure the proper information would be used and no one else would try to sneak in and claim it. Over time I decided to ask some of our clients from time to time to leave a review there as we have done on various other sites but mostly use the BBB since the reviews are verified.

Since we have quite a few repeat customers I ended up talking to at least two who I had asked to leave a review but to date show 0 reviews on our company. Both told me they HAD left a review. One had never left a review before so I chalked that up to maybe they didn't know what they were doing. But the other said they leave reviews quite a bit mostly at restaurants but once or twice at shops for car repairs and such.

Well it took some time and having several customers leave reviews that it finally showed the truth - each time someone left a review within a day or two I would get another sales call from Yelp trying to sell us premium services. Each time the answer was no and each time after a review posted and was visible but their offer refused... the review disappeared. Not once, not two or three times - EVERY SINGLE REVIEW... every time a phone call trying to sell and every time I said no the review disappeared.

So it's very clear now that YELP REMOVES GOOD AND VALID REVIEWS UNLESS THE COMPANY OWNER WILL PAY. Now a bad review... they will definitely post when you don't pay. Not good ones. So if you are desperate to keep one or two good reviews up then pay them but that's the only way it happens. And now I know it's A HUGE FREAKING SCAM.

For an interesting read on Yelp's dodgy practices go here:

https://blogs.findlaw.com/strategist/2013/08/yelp-shakedown-complaints-lawsuits-over-review-sites-practices.html

I've suspected for a long time that Yelp was a shakedown operation, and I have been told as much by business owners, but now I have proof that it is true. This is based on what happened with two low-star reviews I wrote, a few years apart.

The first review (a one-star, with a long, detail, explanation as to why) was killed by the business owner (Yelp said it was "managed") because he claimed it did not speak to the personal experience of the reviewer. That business had all full-star reviews on its page at that time. A couple years later, my one-star review was reinstated on that page, and not at my request. It just suddenly appeared in my account, so I clicked over and looked at the business page. I noticed that the page now showed several one-star and low-star reviews, with various dates! The only explanation that makes sense is that the business owner stopped paying the monthly "page management" fee to Yelp, so the archived negative reviews were posted again. Kind of funny, but really unethical. Devious.

The second instance was infuriating because it endangered me, and it was so blatantly in violation of Yelp's rules. I wrote a low-star review of a business that I had used for years and no longer supported. My review was detailed and honest. The business owner harassed me (violating Yelp's rules). She then posted a long reply revealing my personal information (sick and twisted, and also in violation of Yelp's rules). I flagged the reply and was ignored by Yelp. I deleted that detailed review and wrote a short, terse review with a low rating. The business owner pasted in the same, long, vindictive, identity-revealing reply. Again Yelp ignored my flag. I contacted a Yelp through another channel and was told that they deemed that hateful, vindictive reply not to be in violation of the Yelp rules (no mention of the harassment, of course, because they cannot explain that away). And here is where things become absolutely clear, when it comes to Yelp's shakedown business model. The business in question used to have several negative reviews on their Yelp page, along with some positives. They now have 100 percent positives, and the business owner managed to "manage" two negative reviews away, by breaking Yelp rules.

So what is Yelp if not a blackmail operation? If a business owner gets a negative review and contacts Yelp for advice on what to do about it, Yelp will tell said owner that they can pay a monthly fee to have their page "managed." I know a business owner who got this sales pitch. This is about as dirty as advertising gets!

Yelp advertising so bad, waste of money. They Rip Off money for advertising and not even work for us. Also they says you can cancel any time but have charge for the whole period you initially thought you will advertise.
Next after we stop advertising all 5 star reviews we had they put in their junk section and one and only review we ever had less than 5 star, showing up as our only review.
What a scam. I don't know why the govermant agency not Shutting down this unfair business practise.