Yelp.com review: Online scam 88

How yelp compares itself with google mail I have no idea but one thing is for sure Yelp is being actively exploited, By Users and There own employees. "Marianne" Of SF Yelp, told me she gets back at her enemies by finding them and Yelp bombing there Biz or the Biz they frequent...must be nice to have that power. I would have to say its probably the people that are currupt not the web site.

Honestly, that site is set up for people that really have no life in the first place. If a business makes a mistake and we all do then they should be given the opportunity to set things straight. I think the yelp community is setup just like the early chat rooms on aol or the like and is less popular than the myspace and facebook now. It is design so people can log in and get friends and either write good things about businesses or completely bad mouth them because they had a less than ideal experience. Well wake up people. Not everyone on the planet can be pleased and I find it sad that those pathetic few out there that really sit at home and think up this stuff is given the right to state whatever they want without recourse because they hide behind the cloak of the internet. Well I believe that some laws should be put into place that will make those losers responsible for their statements and make the sites that allow them to be posted responsible as well. I have a gut feeling that most of the negative reviews posted online are made by those that just didn't get their way. Well wah, wah cry your little hearts out you big babies. Why don't you do something constuctive with your time and acctually get something accomplished instead completely attacking someone who probably would like to make things right. BOO YAH!

Yelp is absolutely 100% a fraud and an extortion ring.

I wrote 6 reviews on the yelp.com site about 6 local businesses that I did business with: 3 of them were positive reviews and 3 of them were negative reviews. My negative reviews were very thoughtfully & carefully written and did not violate any of Yelp's terms of services. One of my negative reviews, for example, was for a taxicab company which never showed up to pick me up from my apartment, even though I waited 60 extra minutes past the arrival time for them to come, and after calling the taxicab company 5 times to check on where they were. ("Just 5 more minutes, Mr. Rose.")

Within 60 days of posting my 3 negative reviews (for 3 different companies) to Yelp's website, all 3 of my negative reviews had been removed from the respective companies' profiles on the Yelp site. Interestingly enough, the negative reviews still show up FOR MY EYES ONLY in my personal & private profile when I log into the Yelp website, but they have miraculously been HIDDEN on the companies' pages themselves.

So I started asking around, and lo and behold, many of my friends who had written negative reviews for businesses started noticing the same thing: their negative reviews were still in their own personal profiles (for their eyes only), but their negative reviews were NOWHERE TO BE FOUND on the company pages in question.

So I emailed yelp.com and asked them about my reviews being removed... they only replied to my emails with a form letter directing me to the FAQ's on the site. I replied back several times, asking to have a conversation with a supervisor about this issue, and they continually replied with form letters directing me to the FAQ's on their site. After trying to make live human contact with yelp.com on 5 separate occasions, I finally gave up.

Much more on my blog here:
http://scottworldblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/beware-yelpcom-is-fraud.html

I agree that Yelp is 100% fraud and extorsion ring. I know business owners who have been contacted by yelp stating that yelp can help their business if they pay yelp 300/month. This is after the business already had 6 reviews, 2 of them which were 5 star ratings. After the business owners declined their offer, the top 3 highest ratings we removed! It seems that if you pay them the 300/month, yelp will remove the negative ratings for the business but if you don't, the good ratings magically disappear!

Is there any way to organize against Yelp?

They are also scamming businesses removing good reviews and keeping bad ones if they do not pay 1000 to 300 a month. They have been hounding us for weeks to pay this and all of a sudden we got a bunch of bad reviews.

I am a business owner, I was contacted by a yelp representative about advertising on yelp. I refused but he was persistent and pushy, almost rude by the end I would say. Shortly after I opened a third restaurant and I was paying more attention at the reviews in order to correct lacks of my new business. We started with 4 awesome one and then a medium followed by a very bad one. As yelp suggested I contact it the yelper to apologize and to invite him for a second try since I was organizing every thing better. I didn't have any response so I started thinking that it could it be a fired employ. After I had some more good reviews that were always followed by very bad one. Same thing, I contact them no answer. Then I realized that my business rate was always 3 and 1/2 star and with all the good reviews I should have at least 4. So I started cheating and I asked my good friend to leave a good review. One was enough to jump at 4 star but unfortunately only for half hour. Yelp decided to cancel one of the old one that was good. So I asked another friend and the same thing happened. I started realized that no matter what we do my business will always show at 3 and 1/2 star. I did the opposite and I made my business go to 3 star but they would make sure we stay at 3 and 1/2 (I swear I did't ask or pay for it). Reviews of active yelper were cancelled and they don't realized because from their account it shows it's there but yelp left reviews of people with fake picture or no picture at all that logged only once and left one review only. They decide the rating and what show or not show and I'm sure that if I advertise with them my rating will go way up. It's a scam
Also there is a review for Dos Caminos were the customer only comment was that in the outdoor you can get wet and the people that goes there looks like Jersey people, I flagged as offensive many times but it is still there

As a business owner- I've been contact by Yelp - by phone only. They say they'll help my business if I pay a fee whereby I can remove X # of negative reviews...

SCAM

As of July 31, 2009 I am no longer a yelp member and I will tell you why. Some of the yelpers were making fun of me by calling me robot and copying my answers and using them as if it was their own. Writing the reviews was good because I got to really write my experiences about different places. But the threads were ridiculous and that was what got me in trouble.

I thought I was giving good advice to the person that initially started the thread in the first place. But all the responses were jokes and short hand sentences. Of course I gave long responses to threads. Nobody seems to like long responses and I sometimes write long run sentences. However, people always seem to like jokes and easy answers to things that are not always that simple in the first place. And many of their threads were too much jokes and ways to make people crack up. I have no sense of humor whatsoever.

There was a thread from a guy who asked who pays if he asked the girl on a date. So I wrote that if the guy asked a girl on a date, then he is the one who should pay. If the girl takes the guy out then she should pay. And unless nobody has money nobody really needs to go to dutch. I mean how stupid can some of these people really be? But then the responses to my answer were that I was robotic, I live in a world where society dictates everything and I should just walk around pregnant and bare foot and be a maid. There was another question that nobody liked my response and that was what kind of person nobody would want to date. I gave a list of ten characteristics of a person nobody wanted to date and of course I was told I didn't know anything about dating and all those characteristics have to do with a relationship. All those ten answers are coming from a recently married woman. Many of these people are single and still dating or have no desire to date and have a relationship. I was called a robot, the unlucky one and there was this guy in particular who started copying my answers and making them his own. That was the icing on the cake. I decided at that point to just cancel the account and leave yelp.

A month before I quit I wrote to the yelp administration asking if there was any monitoring to see if what these people are saying is inappropriate. Well their response is they don't do any monitoring and that if I want to complain about a yelper's response that I should just flag as inappropriate and they will check into it.

Many of the yelpers are elite status and think that because they are elite and have sense of humor they know more than anybody else who comes on this website. If god forbid anybody should ask for advice about certain things, the person that starts the thread or answers it very seriously will get destroyed by these group of elitest and humorous jerks I have ever known.

My experience with Yelp was like going to school all over again and being made fun of because I was either trying to be helpful, saying/writing the wrong thing or making a mistake that is correctable. Somebody always has something to say about me and what I do.

It took a month for the yelpers on the threads to figure out that I closed my account. one person actually posted a thread of me on yelp and plenty of yelpers actually copied all my responses to my threads during those months I was on the threads. actually i'm so glad they finally noticed. but you know what I don't care. why? because i'm just a robot. that is all I am to everyone my age. this is why I don't hang out with people my age. i'm not at their age level and never will be. I am either at a child's level or that of a much older person. anybody at my age level just makes me feel like a piece of #. and I really don't care anymore. socialization just isn't my thing. I have tried over and over again to socialize and start anew but no matter what I do it is never good enough. I don't have a sense of humor, everything I say and do comes out all wrong and pisses people off, I take every little thing too literally, I have difficulty understanding sarcasm and I can't process anything that is read or told to me and I simply can't have a convesation unless it is with an individual. I would be happy just being alone in my own little world, talking to myself and doing nothing. believe me years from now nobody would even care what I did, where I went and who I really was anyway except I was a robot with no feelings and no heart. for some reason I never make a good impression on people my age. I make more of an impression on a child or an older adult. that is why I always attracted older men and women. they don't judge me as quickly as a person my age does. and they have been there and done that. as for children they don't know me from a hole in the wall. people my age know me within an hour and find ways to take advantage of me and make fun of me to make up for their own problems. for now on I will keep everything to myself even if a piece of information could be important and that. let these people figure their problems out themselves. I mean they are so great at figuring out my problems I wonder what kinds of problems they have. I even wonder why some of these yelpers are not married. there is a reason for that. at least I found a man no matter what problems we have that loves me no matter what. that is what being married is about. if the a-hole yelpers can't figure this out then they are the ones that have problems. and maybe if they took one moment to think about what they are really doing to somebody and get away from their computers and yelp and meet human beings face to face they would realize there is a world outside of yelp that is full of people like me and people who have real problems and actually try to live their lives to the best of their ability and not ask anything of anybody. so for all yelpers: screw you and your high horse! what goes around comes around!

"Since the weather is going to be nice tomorrow take a walk on the Brooklyn Promenade in Brooklyn Heights. You get to see Manhattan across the water and also some parts of Brooklyn Heights. After that there is an Italian Restaurant call La Travalota. They have delicious Italian Food. They also have Height Players, which is a community theater group where they put on some nice plays even those that were once on Broadway but are now being shown here. You can read my review of the Brooklyn Heights Players when you view me. On Montague Street is where they have all the restaurants and that is where La Travalota is so if you can't get into La Travalota then there are other restaurants. There is also the Brooklyn Historical Society where the history of Brooklyn is shown plus some occasional exhibits. This is on Clinton Street and Pierpoint Street. There is also Prospect Park. But the restaurants are more further down the park. There is on on 5th Avenue and 9th Street called Daisy's. They serve very good diner food. But then there are the fast food places around there such as Wendy's and Popeyes. But Prospect Park is a fantastic place to walk around. You can even go to their zoo to see the animals. Check the zoo for the hours. There is also the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. You can spend the whole day there and then there is the Brooklyn Museum. If you were going the first Saturday of every month it is free after five o'clock in the evening. I don't know of any good restaurants around there except if you go down to Empire Blvd you will see Wendy's and Popeyes. Otherwise, you will have to go future down around Flatbush for various restaurants if you want to eat. There is also the Grand Army Plaza. Even though it is closed, you can still see the sight of it. There is also Sheepshead Bay where you can see the boats on Emmons Avenue, visit the Holocaust Memorial, eat at the Seaport Diner or the Steakhouse, or El Greco or Applebees and walk along on the other side where there is Manhattan Beach. You can even visit the beach further down.

I hope this is of help to you."

When my husband and I were getting married, my brother-in-law decided that the Bachelor Party would be at Hooters. Actually it was my husband's decision because his team Pittsburgh Steelers was going to be televised at Hooters. Hooters is sports bar and restaurant. If your friend is into watching sports this is ideal. If he is into going to sports events such baseball, football, hockey or any other sporting event then may be you can get a group of friends and family together and go to one of the sports events. I have heard of those. If your friend really doesn't like sports then may be a meal at a restaurant may be ideal. It depends on what he likes. Many people like diner food while others like Italian or French. Then after dinner you can go to a play or a romance movie or go anywhere that may be of interest to your friend.

I hope this helps.

And the eleventh thing is don't date anybody who is still married even though he/she says he/she will be divorced soon. Most of the time those relationships never work out.

If you really want to look for a job on the east coast, I recommend going through the various career networking websites such as http://careerbuilder.com and http://idealist.org. Those websites if you know how to work them can help you find the job you want on the east coast. You can also try going through the classifieds in the NY Times on their website. I'm sure they have a website and see what kinds of jobs they have in NY if you want to live in NY. I don't know what your goals are and what you really want to do but I hope these websites point you in the right direction.

Quick Diets never work. You can jumpstart weight loss by going on the various diets that are advertised such as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutra System; however, there is always a possibility of putting some of the weight back on because once you become used to the kind of eating these diets dictate you have to follow it for the rest of your life. The best way to do this is to eat everything in moderation and exercise for at least thirty minutes a day a few days a week on a consistent basis.

I know I have been overweight all my life. I went on weight watchers, lost ninety pounds and gained back sixty. I went on Jenny Craig, lost the sixty I gained and couldn't hold on either. Ever since I returned to Jenny Craig and got married I gained almost thirty pounds. The cycle never ends for me. There is always that special ocassion that screws everything up for me. If things weren't always spontaneous and there was a perfect world I would go on a rigid schedule and follow menus the rest of my life but in reality it doesn't work that way.

I know when I wasn't on any diet for six months I was able to maintain the weight by just eating everything in moderation and if I went off the wagon I got back on it the next day. And another thing that works is to eat six meals a day. I'm not saying eat six big meals a day. You can eat three small snacks between your main meals. For example you eat breakfast and then have some fruit or yogurt for a snack a few hours later. You eat lunch and then have like a vegetable or a fruit for a snack. Again you do this a few hours after you eat lunch. You eat dinner and then you have can some mini dessert a few hours later. That way you are not as hungry. If you make wise choices with every meal such as not having french fries with a hamburger but have a vegetable instead. Or eat a grilled chicken sandwich with a salad.

And exercise for me is usually my treadmill or bike at home. But there are others who join gyms or many people go out running. Others go for brisk walks or take up sports or go to exercise classes.

I'm not perfect and again I have battled this problem all my life but living a very restricted diet doesn't help unless health problem warrent it.

And if anybody has a problem with my advice or thinks I'm talking like a robot, I know exactly what I'm talking about because I have been there and done it and beleive me it gets harder as you get older.

Good luck :-)

The most rudest that anybody can do while shopping is cutting the line. However, it is even worse when you get off the line and the person behind you takes your spot and then by the time you return instead of getting on the line again like everyone else you try to go to the spot where you were previously. Then you have the nerve to tell the person that was behind you, "Do you remember me?" However, that person is already paying for his/her purchases.

Louis:

I know you are nervous and it is natural since it is your wedding. But it is more the anticipation and the preparation of the wedding than anything else. It is also a big change in your life. But once the day comes and you see your friends and then you finally get to the altar it is not bad at all. As long as you love each other and enjoy other people's company then you will be fine. Just take each day one day at a time and remember communication is the key to a healthy relationship and marriage. Good Luck!

I don't know of any vegetarian restaurants; however, I do know of places that will serve vegetarian meals. One of them is Peggy O'Neill's. They have a special section called vegetarian and there is a the vegetarian melt and the grilled cheese with a tomato. What I mean by the vegetarian melt is there are a bunch of vegetables such as mushrooms, zucchnni and peppers melted with cheese on a roll with french fries. As for the grilled cheese with a tomato that is pretty self explanatory. There are also diners such as El greco, Kouros Bay, Perry's and Daisy's that do serve vegetarian meals. Once at Daisy's I ordered a mozzerella vegetable melt on pita bread. I remember I went to Del Rio's a few times but I ate their vegetable platter with cheese of course. However, if you don't want cheese melted on your vegetables there is a vegetable platter where there are an assorted vegetables that you can eat. And they are at the diners mentioned. If you look at menus for many different restaurants closely enough they do provide vegetarian meals.

What made me angry today:

1-There was a sick passenger at Canal Street
2-Then there was a sick passenger next to me in the train
a-She threw up and got some of it on my pants
b-thankfully she didn't throw up all over me
c-then she says, "I'm sorry but people do get sick."
d-if I got sick and some of the vomit was on someone else he/she would have gotten pissed
3-I screwed up the original work on one of the budgets but luckily for my company there was a saved file on one of the drives. :-)
4-Then my mother told me that she had an accident; thinking that she wasn't feeling well or something. In addition she lost her cell phone.
a-It turns out that there was a big gap from the platform to the train and she almost fell onto the tracks.
b-thankfully two guys were there to help her out.
c-that was how she lost her cell phone, which is now been cancelled
d-now she is pissed at the MTA

Nobody is ever ready for Monday. That is when most of America has to wake up and go to work or school.

Yes she is dead for anybody who didn't know.

RIP Farrah Fawcett

[protected]

She leaves behind her long-time boyfriend Ryan O'Neal and her son Redmond.

If a guy meets a girl, gets her number and asks her out for drinks next week then the guy is the one who should pay. The girl is the one who should say, "Thank you." The girl should pay only when she is taking you out during your occasion, which is your birthday or Christmas/Chanakah or Valentine's Day. Otherwise, when you take her out the guy is the one who has to pay. If something happens such as you lost your job or you don't have money on occasion you might go Dutch.

I used to love junk food all the time. Then I found out it caused me to put on too much weight making me subject to ridicule. So eventually I had to find healthier options.

I used to love junk food all the time. Then I found out it caused me to put on too much weight making me subject to ridicule. So eventually I had to find healthier options.

If you read above those are the few things that these yelpers complained about! Now can you tell me what I said that turned them off. What is wrong with my writing? I want an honest answer.

I finally wrote to Yelp.com and included a copy of the thread that was posted about me a month after I canceled my account. My purpose of this was to get a human being to wake up and realize what was going on with yelp on the threads and suggested to them that they should have monitoring of the threads. No I'm not perfect. I have faults just like any human being but to be bullied for writing like a robot is just as bad as not having something nice to say at all. I know if somebody said something stupid or did something stupid I wouldn't say anything to them at all because it hurts their feelings. But these are adults that should know better and they don't. I mean it is supposed to be about real reviews and real people but instead it is just like any place else. It is a bunch of A-holes who make jokes about everything that is asked on the threads.

I spent much time writing my first 5 reviews, all legit and both positive and negative, and they were taken down after a week. A vague explanation that they don't take reviews from a business's competitor, which I am not, and they had absolutely no grounds for that accusation. I complained, and I have never dealt with employees as rude as Yelp in SF.
I switched to urbanspoon.com for my reviews, and urbanspoon in my city is growing like crazy. Their loss.

I am sorry but Yelp is a scam.I have been tracking it and seeing what they are doing.I have written a review of my favorite restaurant.They would delete mine.They also deleted several 5 stars for this restaurant too.I have been tracking it.They have many 1 or 2 stars that I know are not legit people because the things that they write are not correct about the business.It is a scam.I have read many business owners are upset because yelp calls them and trys to get money out of them and said they can control the negetive remarks if they sponser yelp.That's black mail.I don't trust yelp and I disregard peoples comments .Go to other websites for review, You get a true picture of businesses.

I strongly agree with the review by moey. I had the same experience with my business. I also filed a complaint with the Attorney General's office in our state and I'm contacting a local attorney. I was contacted by a sales representative from Yelp and told that if I bought one of their ad packages, it would "help" to control the negative reviews I might have in the future. I refused the ad, and of course, no matter how many positive reviews I have from clients, Yelp will only display the negative reviews that will bring our rating down to three stars. This is clearly wrong on every level!
Yelp is most definitely a scam.

In one word - EXTORSION.
Unless you are a paying customer - positive reviews get randomly removed, and negative review wtihout ANY facts stay, like this one:

20
40
Samantha W.

Let's start a lovealution
San Francisco, CA
Compliment

Send a Message

Follow This Reviewer
10/30/2006
I HATE ...
Rude
Rip Off
Rats

... while good reviews from real customers get removed.
No one to talk to, nowhere to email, no recourse, UNLESS you cough up $3, 000 a month.
What a great business idea! Scicilian Mafia really missed the Internet train with this one, becuase it would make a great Sopranos episode

Yep. I've written 3 reviews, one positive and two negative. All were taken down because Yelp obviously has favored businesses. I've not violated their policy, so I even wrote them about it. Their answer was 'we don't know but we're not posting your reviews anyway.' Honestly, they have some sort of backdoor payment scheme going on, I'm sure. They need to be investigated because they are putting people out of business with their unscrupulous and illegal behavior.

Yelp is untrustworthy. My reviews, both good and bad, disappear. My wife, who gets much of her business from Yelp, started seeing her 5 star reveiws disappear after she was contacted by Yelp and told them she wasn't interested in advertising. Lot's of ads for similar businesses, with good reviews showing of course, whenever you call up her business. Yelp deletes good and bad reviews and then just tells you their system logic deletes questionable reviews. My reviews are no different than others and before they've been deleted, I've had people contact me positively about them. BTW, if you think your ads are not being deleted, log out and then look a the businesses you've reviewed. When you are logged in, your ads look like they are still active!

A coalition of small businesses have put up a new site www.yelpscam.com I invite you all to visit us and if you wish join with us. If you wish you can put a link to your site. They MUST change their business plan and stop destroying good businesses and destroying jobs. Their system is extortion ..think about it if a company has all good reveiws why would they become a sponsor and pay them $6000.a year. So hire a person, pay them to put up bad reviews, then call them again and sign them up. Years ago the Mafia called it protection. If you didn't pay them you had your windows broken or a small fire started which deetroyed your business. READ www.Yelpscam.com.

I am personally documenting that Yelp has been removing every positive review within 24 hours after they started calling me weekly for money. They even removed a 5 star review posted 10 hours prior and double listed my only negative review which happens to not even be by an actual client but by a disgruntled "elite" yelper and always stays up. They are manipulating the reviews and extorting business owners for monthly payments. I will be filing a formal complaint.

I suggest you all go to www.yelpscam.com ..we put it all together ..nespapers stories from all overthe country ..magazines ..and TV consumer complaints ...all this will be going very soon to the FTC, and the Caliofnia Attorney Generals office ..asking them to pleade investigate ..Many ofthe reviews are paid for by YELP, in money and lavish catered free parties...THIS MUST STOP.

WWW.YELPSCAM.COM
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Yelp is a big scam -- bad business always mysterious have 3, 4, 5 stars and are overrrated. Owners who are active on yelp are favored by yelp and it is no surprise now how this works. When owners pay yelp "advertising fee", yelp helps them out by "filtering" out the bad reviews. What a scam. Never trust Yelp or that Jeremy Stoppleman guy again! He looks like a total [censored] bag. The Yelp wave is over folks -- time to find a new review website that doesn't "filter".

YELP IS A RIP-OFF of small businesses. Stoppelfish, due to his concern about 3 class actions law suits, and government investigations of their business practives announced yesterday that theyare making some changes.
These changes are a joke. All reviews that were removed will now be available to review.SORRY..how stupid does he think the public is, It took me over 10 minutes, olus respond to two codes before they were shown. People will never spend that amount of time on a site looking for business reviews. Secondly, their sales force is now caught in another lie, 9 months ago when their sales person tried to sign me up on their advertizing ( $500./month $6000. on an annual contract) I asked them if the old positive reviews by our clients could be re-posted. I was told by the sales person that once they are deleted, they can not be retrived, , liar ..liar ..hairs on fire...These good reviews were written by our clients who were happy with our services...somebody please tell me, how the hell could YELP say they were solicitated by the company...not one client was call by YELP. In most cases the negatives reviews were written by people who never came to our office and had ho idea in hell what we did.
I was told if we signed up for the one year, they would help to remove the negative reviews or "burry them on the bottom were they won't be read since people only read the top 3 reviews"
These are young kids who work on a straight commission, no sales, no paycheck. When I rejected their offer, within 48 hours 3 more bad reviews were posted, again from people who never came to our office. THAT IS EXTORTION..Go to www.yelpscam.com and see just how bad this company is...Google was smart to not buy them at any price. They will be gone, unfortunately before the law suits get to court.

Funny, i've had the opposite result happen - I have my positive reviews removed entirely - including 4 other individuals through their "imperfect" filtering system. my negative reviews have also been removed from time to time. oddly enough when I asked the business owner who had my review, along with 4 others (which were positive reviews) removed and the 3 negative reviews (some dating back to 4 years ago!). their only response was, I guess because I didn't want their advertising.

Hmmmm, yelp scam

My real experince with a bike shop in Toronto, Canada let me write a negative review. The service was bad . Yelp just filtered out my review. Shame on Yelp.

As a business owner I can tell you Yelp does NOT favor businesses. At least not mine. I have a small business and they constantly remove reviews after they are posted. Over 50% of my reviews to be exact. I've tried to contact them several times and they never respond. They say they have filters but don't seem to know what they are.

After reading where people had negative responses removed, businesses have been solicited to buy ad's, and there are three lawsuits for extortion against Yelp I don't know why anyone, business or client would use Yelp.

No review site is perfect - they all can be 'worked' by dishonest business owners but the key is to at least post all the reviews and let the consumer make an educated decision.

I got on Yelp and gave about 4 reviews of different businesses. Then, I noticed that all of my reviews had been taken off after I criticized Direct TV. They had been "filtered" by Yelp. I would not trust Yelp, period!

Let me start by saying that I am a business owner and whose business is obviously listed on http://Yelp.com. My business is called Kis Kiss Mediterranean Cafe & Hookah Lounge. We had good & bad reviews as any other place, but more good ones, total of 47 reviews sine we've been in the business for over 6 years.
Couple of months ago I got a phone call from a http://Yelp.com sales representative (whose name was Mathew) offering me to advertise on http://Yelp.com for about $300 per week, which I of course declined. A couple of days later http://yelp.com removed 42 of my companies' reviews! Leaving us with only bad reviews...this type of activity is clearly fraudulent so please sway away from http://yelp.com!

The "extortion" racket goes on, but the court action by thousands of business owners wll bring this to an end. yelp is evil. sadly, so many young people have been used to make a very few people rich. wake up yelpers you have been used for pennies, while the ceo and his gang rape good companies and professional people all over the country. join us at yelpscam, and join the class action law suit.

Yelp is terrible & I will NEVER rely upon their reviews ever again.

I went to a hair salon that had rave reviews & I started losing my hair after that.

I spent over an hour writing up my negative review & a few months later I happened to be on their site & saw that it's removed.

I e-mailed them & they claimed it's b/c the review could have been spam.

LOL, who spends over an hour on a spam review?

Happened again, I posted another negative review on someone else's profile & I just went to look now & it's gone.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

Michelle

Yelp is a scam for business owners and consumers as well. People abuse the system therefore majority of the reviews have different motives. Yelp should not exist. Personally I'm on a quest to shut them down. Big companies can hide for so long but more people are pissed than you can imagine. Just do an online search and you'll see more forums with angry reviews on Yelp.
Yelp sucks! Seriously

The big pity is that so many businesses and people have been hurt by Yelp. Eventually the courts will give them their day, but for some it will be to late. Many people lost their jobs and good companies were forced to close thier doors. People's reputation was damaged. All done by a few for greed.
But someday we must all answer to a higher court!

There are many pages on businesses, with high stars, that are promoted due to sponsorship, where positive reviews were apparently fake. I pointed it out right on those pages that the reviews were not only phony, but repetitive and obviously bogus. The next day I received an email saying yelp's "Support team has determined that your account has violated Yelp’s Terms of Service".
Now I'm sure for myself that there's some sort of glass ceiling going on there, for business owners, unless if you pay for some of their "marketing package" so that your reputation is not abased! I don't mean to complain, but that's just not fair! :((

I gave a 1 star rating about a business establishment on Yelp that have a 63% rating (Letter D) from the Los Angeles County Health Department. My review was there for a week and Yelp took it off from everyone's view later on. It sucks that Yelp is hiding the bad reviews from legitimate customers. Should we trust the reviews of Yelp?

Yelp = smal business extortion. as a new business owner, I rely on reviews for people to get information about my services. we are one year old now and at first, all reviews were showing and we were building a solid reputation as a 5 star business...

... then the calls from yelp's advertising division started and that's where it all went wrong. I explained that as a business policy, we do not do any paid advertising of any kind and rely on word of mouth and editorial placement in magazines / online as it works way better for our business model. within 24 hours of declining the advertising, 3 of our 10 reviews were filtered, and this number increased to 5 with 48 hours. I called back the ad rep who gave me all the yelp nonsense about the filter algorhythm and he told me they don't have any say over what gets filtered etc...

... but here's the scam:

Your list ranking (how high you are on a given search) is "calculated on a number of factors" (in yelp's own words). one of these main factors is how high your rating is in stars and another main factor is many hits (impressions) your yelp page gets.
We know that with good reviews, you're going to be higher on this list, but how do you get more hits? well, if you advertise with yelp, your page is shown as a mini banner on someone else's page, and yelp have defined this as a hit or impression. therefore if you sign up for their basic $350 a month plan, you're guaranteed 500 impression per month. for the vast majority of business types, this will give you a 1st page ranking. that means even if you have bad reviews, you're going to be high on the list.

But then, if you don't advertise, you can be high on the list with just the other factor: lots of good reviews... but yelp don't want this, so enter the review filter!
It's their way of making sure you pay to be higher on the lists. by filtering your reviews, you'll drop down, so you either have two options: 1, get tons of reviews (and remember, unless they're from elite yelpers, chances are a high percentage will be removed by the filter) or 2, advertise with yelp.

I actually kept a log of the phone calls and emails from yelp's advertising depatment - you know what's an incredible coincidence? that within 24 hours of getting a new review, i'll receive a phone call... but then within 48 hours of declining their advertising, that review is filtered. at one point I had 21 5 star reviews showing. three attempts from yelp to get me to advertise later, and i'm now down to 8 reviews! I currently have a 75% filter rate.

And before I hear those false excuses from yelp in my head, about "our algorithm filter reviews based on user activity, word content, balh blah blah" there is no logic to the filtering: first time posters get filtered, posters who have 10 reviews get filtered, posters who have 20 reviews and regularly contrtibute in the forums get filtered,. i've even had reviews that were initially filtered, then months later be unfiltered, then I get that *magic call* from yelp, decline to spend money with them and shortly afterwards that review be re-filtered forever.

I will be taking my log, records and research to both the bbb and court, to prove that yelp's filter and they way they practice business is a mechanism to extort money from small business owners, using their "review" site as a pretense for nothing more than an anit-competitive advertising platform.

Yelp is an organized well financed group of extortionists. Funded by multi millionaires and being allowed to unscrupulously damage thousands and thousands of small business nationwide. In my experience they posted a negative review that was unverifiable and bizarre, called us and offered to have the bad review go away and good reviews to appear if we paid them $4, 200 over 12 months. We couldn't afford that so we responded in what I thought would be the same grass roots freedom of speech method I thought they were founded on. We asked our customer to post reviews. Customer, after customer, after customer posted positive reviews. Each one was systematically removed, only the negative review remained. In years to follow customers who were obvious yelp users posted unsolicited positive reviews. Again they were taken down. Than another negative review appeared and the call from YELP came with the offer of removing the negative reviews and restoring positive reviews with a small payment of $350 a month and a 12 month non-cancellable contract.

As a society we have rules and laws that govern public domain to make sure it remains free and equal for all without corruption. The internet is the modern day version of the industrial revolution and we are still in it. Rules, laws and customs grew out of the industrial revolution that our society embraces as normal today. The same is going to happen as we progress through the information revolution.

Hazardous waste was transported across roadways without regard to public good until we regulated that activity. The internet is our modern day version of the roadways of the industrial revolution. It is the infrastructure that is being used to distribute modern technology as well as methods of communication and production. As distasteful as it is to me as a capitalist I do believe we need to regulate the internet for the common good; keep it a fair and level playing field without corruption. A Business structure such as Yelp should not be allowed on the internet. Of course a customer should be free to speak about their personal experience anywhere and anyhow they choose. That would be a facebook model or chowhound or cruise critic or Google reviews etc. Any business, even the legendary Nordstrom, or Stew Leonard’s would have a customer that they could not satisfy once in a while. No human and no business; which is nothing more than a bunch of humans working together; is perfect. I want to know when a customer is not happy. Give me a chance to make it right.

But this is a business structure that is exploiting a negative review that I have no reasonable way to respond to. I have no right to verify it. I have no opportunity to make it right. They are deriving income from it by selling it to my competitors and they are perfectly willing to make it a level playing field if I pay them. Upon payment the positive reviews from my customers, irrespective of the fact that they are yelp users, would be left up on the site in a visable manner. If I don’t pay them than me and most of my customers are blocked. I have a demographic that does not use social networking, certainly not Yelp, so they will never have an opportunity to present all the views.

I can understand Yelps justification built into their software that only regular yelp users can post reviews. You have to invest some time and prove yourself and that is how they weed out posts with suspect credibility. But we should be able to see that freely as consumers. Let us read the posts and discern for ourselves if we’re reading the post from the business owner disguised as a customer. That is not sufficient justification to be able to derive profits from slander without regulation.

The same way we wouldn’t allow businesses to transport hazardous waste on our roadways unregulated we should not allow businesses on the internet to sell services in a corrupt or monopolistic manner. Yelp utilizes the internet, a public domain, to exploit small businesses by demanding payment in order to avoid being hurt. This is wrong, this should be stopped, and that is why class action suits have been filed, have made a certain amount of progress, and will eventually prevail. However a lot of innocent, hardworking small business people are being hurt along the way.