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Yelp Accused Of Hiding Positive Reviews For Non-Advertiser (cbslocal.com)
A Dallas business owner is accusing Yelp of hiding good reviews of his coffee shop after he refused to pay them for advertising. From a report on CBS Local: Bob Sinnott owns Toasted Coffee + Kitchen in Lower Greenville. He said after months of non-stop phone calls from Yelp, he claims his favorable rating dropped after he finally told the company he would not pay for advertising. "What I would compare it to, the mafia," said Sinnott. "You know, you do business with me or there's retaliation." Sinnott feels Yelp is hiding many of his 5-star reviews in the "not recommended" section because he chose not to pay for Yelp services. "The sales pitch is, pay us a monthly fee and we'll your help page," said Sinnott. He claims there were constant phone calls and emails from Yelp pitching the company's services. "It became what I would call borderline harassment," said Sinnott. After posting on Facebook about his experience, Sinnott said his rating went from a 4-star to a 3.5-star rating. Google rates Toasted at 4.1 and Facebook has the business at a 4.6 rating.
Is Yelp still a thing? I mean, didn't we all pretty much move on to Google ratings on Google maps?
Google reviews are a wasteland anywhere I've ever looked. Yelp is still what people actually use if they want real info. Google Maps, for example, claims a local comedy club that has been closed for a year is still open... Yelp knows.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I had the same thing happen with a negative review I posted for Whole Foods. It stayed up a couple of days, got a lot of positive feedback and then was hidden by Yelp. Presumably Whole Foods is a paying Yelp customer.
If you poke around Yelp's site, they talk about how paying them can result in better placement, targeted advertising, etc. That seems expected and fair behavior.
I can't find anywhere that it would infer that your aggregate rating will be affected by whether you pay them or not. In fact, on their About page, they state "Paying advertisers can never change or re-order their reviews." (which, I guess, does not exclude Yelp themselves from doing it). The perception is that the ratings are organized and aggregated based upon algorithms. If the reality is that it's also based upon whether Yelp is getting paid by the business in question, that seems shady. It certainly should have an impact on consumers' confidence in Yelp aggregate ratings.
Remove Everything. The page about your business, the lot. You don't want your business on such a site.
Otherwise you'll sue for defamation.
Do you have an archive.org of the original page? That'll make suing easier. Phone records, copies of emails, etc, etc.
Yelp isn't a thing anymore. It should have dinosaured a long time ago.
Just check out this gem from Google Maps:
Response from the owner 4 years ago:
This is the fat slob.
I wanted to put some context around Mr Scaccia's review.
First, no disputting it, I'm fat. I take issue with the rude and slob parts. I shower every day. I say please and thank you. But, fat, unfortunately I can't dispute that.
OK, let's talk about our interaction yesterday.
It goes on from there to explain to this bozo how a line in a Texas BBQ joint works. You place your order, then you sit down. It's common courtesy.
I had a multitude of 5 star ratings and daily calls from Yelp, congratulating me on my reviews and suggesting advertising was the best way forward, nearly all went to voicemail. One day after I did actually speak to someone and indicated I was not interested, nearly all my top reviews, which had been up for months beforehand, disappeared. Yelps 'automated' AI system, according to them, had deemed them non-trustworthy - remarkable that the AI should have, after all this time, suddenly decided that those reviews which were up just 24 hrs previously, were no longer valid.
At that point I shifted focus, left a placeholder in my business description indicating what had happened and removed all reference to Yelp from my web site, email and marketing. I moved over to Google Business, which, despite some hiccups (no 'by appointment only' option, no easy URL to direct clients to for leaving reviews...) has worked very well for me with a good 80% or more clients indicating that they had chosen me as a result of my web site, portfolio (I'm in a creative field) and reviews that showed up. Ironically, I have spent money on adwords and would probably have done the same with Yelp had their 'AI' system not treated me in such a grossly unfair manner.
Censoring positive reviews while showing negative reviews is plain extortion when you act as an honest authority. Possibly even defamation, since they're manipulating the facts.
However, they have been sued unsuccessfully before over this and the court seemed to think it was fine.
I agree the rating is what is most useful, but there is where Google reviews fall down for me. Many of them seem highly questionable. Some Yelp ones are too but way more of them look like they are from real customers, so therefore the aggregate Yelp rating a trust a lot more than the Google rating.
That's really why I called the Google reviews a "wasteland", because it's either crickets or shady stuff. I guess it is persuasive, or people wouldn't try to game it...
Reviewers on Yelp also leave way more details about why. they are unhappy. If they didn't like some aspect of it I don't care about, I can discard that review. Google reviews are often short or non-existent leaving you to wonder if they had a bad day or what if they left a bad rating.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"pay us a monthly fee and we'll your help page"
You some words out.
The yarr stands for yet another reviewer reviewer, modeled after yacc yet another compiler compiler.
It is meta reviewer site where we review the reviewer. Users look at all the reviews from many reviewers, yelp, trip advisor, google maps... Then compares the expected experience, expected price to actual price and actual experience.
Now the owner of yarr will become yaee, yet another exhorter exhorter.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
they do this. I seem to remember a judge ruling it was legal too. Maybe the exact specific practice of hiding the reviews wasn't proven though, but they were definitely promoting good reviews if you gave them money and bad reviews if you didn't. The entire thing felt sketchy, like a mob shake down or something. It's why I don't bother with yelp reviews.
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We've experienced the exact same thing, persistent badgering by a sales person, had over 30 positive reviews... Finally told sales person no, suddenly all reviews are filtered. They claim their algorithm determines review placement exclusively, but it's utter bullshit.
What we need is an honest, non-profit version of Yelp that helps you know if the business is good at what it does and customer service... Oh wait, we do have that, its called the BBB.
I refuse to use Yelp or Google because both are easily gamed by businesses and damaged by one or two unhappy asshole customers.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Well I can see why he wouldn't agree to pay. Yelp wont even tell him what they are going to do!
Yelp is still what people actually use if they want real info.
I've never gotten much useful information from Yelp. Yes there are reviews but I've never found the to have a strong correlation with my own experiences at the locations being reviewed. Basically I no longer waste any time looking at Yelp for opinions.
Too bad Yelp didn't think of it first! :-D
Guess what, i run a couple webshops for third parties, and I can clearly relate this, the companies that spend on adwords are the only ones with decent rankings on google.
I regret ever trying to do business with Yelp. In my case it was trying to close my account when I realized it wasn't driving enough business my way to justify the cost. One of several problems is that your reviews don't go away when you terminate your account, and Yelp then has all the leverage of what reviews they want to display.
Part of the leverage is that Yelp controls the first several listings you get when you google a particular type of business. So people have to scroll way down before they get to my own professional website. It really does seem like the game is, you pay Yelp or, "you know, it's a terrible thing that can happen to a business. Just terrible. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?"
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Censoring positive reviews while showing negative reviews is plain extortion when you act as an honest authority. Possibly even defamation, since they're manipulating the facts.
Unfortunately, no. They're not lying, but rather staying silent regarding good things. For example, this post doesn't say anything about your personal qualities - does that make it defamatory, because I didn't say that you love puppies or once saved a nun from a fire? No... Like me, Yelp is under no obligation to say good stuff about merchants, as long as they're not actually lying.
Now, this should reduce their credibility and people should stop using them, but calling it defamation is probably a step too far.
Because the first place you go for honest reviews of a business is their own website? It sounds like you were raised by rabbits, because you have no ability to reason.
No, the mafia don *implies* that harm will come to you.
From his speech, you *infer* that he is threatening you.
https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/imply-infer/
Any service that exists primarily to accumulate reviews of businesses or people aims to shake down said entities eventually. Either because that's a nice set of reviews there, and it would be a shame if anything happened to them (as in this case), or because you'll eventually get yourself into an unfortunate situation and they know somebody who could make it go away.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Obligatory Monty Python, showing how it works.
This mafia-like behavior from Yelp has already been through the courts, and they've won so far (circuit court level): http://www.sfgate.com/news/art...
One would think so. It is a rather incredible decision. Here's a legal summary which includes a link to the full text of the decision: https://apps.americanbar.org/a...
[U]nless a person has a pre-existing right to be free of the threatened economic harm, threatening economic harm to induce a person to pay for a legitimate service is not extortion.
WTF??? What is a "legitimate service"? I guess the mafia has been doing it wrong this whole time. If only they had been offering a "legitimate service" with a threat of economic harm, rather than a questionable service with a threat of physical harm, they would have been in the clear.
Perhaps I'm missing something though. Here's another article about it, where they talk about this ruling being beneficial to protect review/complaint websites in general: https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
I can see a need to protect the right of people to publish grievances with businesses, but this specific decision seems rather lopsided.
Use foodaroo! lol
... just for the halibut.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
An interesting question is "Who is this they?". If it's various malicious salesmen "getting even" with businesses for refusing to buy from them it's one thing, if it's company policy it's another, and if it's just the way the incentives to the salesmen are structured without any official policy, or even against official policy, then it's a third.
It seems pretty clear that the "malicious salesman" thing happens. But what's the backstory?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I had never been to slashdot before but I had heard about it from others, so I decided to give it a try. It was last Tuesday on my lunch break and I had finished my stewed pickles a little quicker than usual which left me with a couple possibilities. My first option (and it was a pretty solid option had I gone with it) was to download the asset depreciation schedule for facility 27 and cross check it against the running tally in the GL projection report. But, I also had another option: try out this slashdot site I had heard about. I was feeling a little adventurous (kind of like the time I showed everyone my impression of a cat at the office christmas party), so I made the decision to try out this website.
I typed "slash dot" into google and just 0.43 seconds later I had a list of 63,100,000 possible hits. And this is going to be my first complaint: How is a person supposed to know which of these 63,100,000 pages is the right one to click? I might suggest some sort of larger font, or something so it stands out. I think an even better suggestion would be to have each of the letters in a different color and the colors are moving from one letter to another. This is the kind of advanced trick I don't see on the web very much these days, but I sure would have expected a technical website to be able to pull it off, makes me wonder how good these guys really are.
After some sleuthing I decided to click on the first one and my suspicions were correct, this was the place "news for nerds, stuff that matters." My expectations were still pretty high even after that rocky start, and that's when I had my second letdown. I had clicked on the first story and was reading through the comments when it hit me: there were no avatars. No cute kittens pawing at you as you read the comment, no barrel chested lumberjacks strolling towards you, no mini-indi 500 cars zipping around the comment. This seemed to be a completely dead backwater of the internet. Wasn't this a technology website? Why weren't they employing the latest and greatest techniques in their comment forum.
At this point I was too taken aback to continue reading the site. I was stunned to think that a website could advertise itself as about technology, while ignoring some of the most important techniques. I decided to leave the site and quickly clicked the back button, returning to my favorite cat forum. As for this slash dot site, my experience rated one star and I won't return.
Yelp knew when they quit paying Yelp to show the reviews accurately.
But it seems that good old fashion protection rackets just move online. Yelp keeps emailing me to “claim” my business listing. So far I am ignoring them.
Yelp used to host a lot of tech meetups at their headquarters in SF. So I've met a few Yelpers. The engineers seemed like your typical startup drones - nice enough but pretty clueless.
The managers on the other hand seemed really shady. Like they know just how crooked the company is, but goddamit they hope to get rich based on that crookedness.
Just make sure your competing website is also backed by hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from the public by the Quantitative Easing programs.
How this extortionist company is still in business, and how its senior executives have not been jailed or fined $100's of Millions, is beyond me. Yelp = fail! 2-3 years ago I spoke with a small business owner who claimed that they moved negative review to the top of her review stream, after she refused several offers to advertise. I think Yelp has been brought to court for its abuse, and won. Sad!
True - this gets very close to the cyber-equivalent of a protection racket.
Publishing disproportionately negative reviews if you don't pay them is definitely extortion and possibly also defamation.
Publishing disproportionately negative reviews if you don't pay them is definitely extortion and possibly also defamation.
Not defamation for the reasons I explained in the post you responded to.
It could qualify as extortion, but that's also questionable. Extortion, under Federal law (18 USC 875(c)) requires a threat to injure the reputation of the addressee. However, Yelp isn't writing the negative reviews - customers are. Arguably, the business' own actions have damaged their reputation: i.e. if the business only had glowing reviews, then Yelp would have no negative reviews to publish.
If anything, Yelp is not threatening to damage the reputation of the business, but offering, for a fee, to help salvage the reputation of the business by publishing positive reviews. This is the opposite of "extortion" - it's "image management".
Simply put, it's not nearly as clear cut as you think.