This was just sent in by an anonymous reader, with whom we wholeheartedly agree.
I believe Yelp is in a legally actionable position to be sued in a class action, and here is why:
ANY business can have a bad day. What Yelp is doing is taking your “bad day” and using it as a banner ad for your business. If you had 2 or 3 bad days, all the better, Yelp will put them at the top of your search page. That in and of itself is gross misrepresentation of your hard work and jeopardizes your livelihood.
(When I use the term “bad day” it includes a business being subjected to a variety of unreasonable demands from socially repugnant individuals who happen to own computers, by the way.)
The idea that reviews of a business are impartial when they are not posted in chronological order as they are received is another problem. Let’s say your business uses a piece of equipment that malfunctioned on January 1, negatively affecting your product until you discovered it later in the day, at which point you ceased production until the problem was corrected. Unfortunately for you, 3 people over a span of the next three weeks write reviews about the product they recieved on January 1 that slam your business, saying your product is horribly defective. Now here it is December 30th and the negative reviews regarding something that happened a year ago continue to be what Yelp places prominently at the top of your page.
Now Yelp has you where they want you. Now the sales calls begin in earnest.
Here is my experience with these bloodsucking leeches at Yelp:
I own a 4 star rated business. The top three reviews on my Yelp page are a 5 star, a one star, and a two star. That averages out to a little over 2 1/2 stars, which in itself is a misrepresentation of our overall rating.
The one star review was written by a social misfit who was rude to my female employee and threatened a bad Yelp review if she did not accomodate him, which he did, giving us a long winded and rambling one star review. This wing nut’s mental garbage is now my Yelp banner ad.
Then I began receiving sales calls from these smarmy leeches. They want $350.00 a month for their least expensive ad package, which comes out to over $4,000.00 a year for some additional photos on your page and a low quality video link.
They can’t come out and say they will ‘alter’ the placement of your reviews, as this would place them in violation of RICOH racketeering statutes….but in their sales pitch, they refer you to one of your competitor’s Yelp page as an example of what you get if you buy the advertising.
On your competitor’s page, you can’t help but notice that many of his negative reviews are on the second “Captcha” page where they are far less likely to be seen, while all of your negatives are at or near the top of your first page, while your “Captcha” page contains nothing but 4 and 5 star reviews.
Anyone else that has had any similar experience and wants to do something about it, feel free to email me at LetsSueYelp@aol.com.
Yelp……your day is coming.
The person who said this is more retarded than some of these Yelpers. If a business has a 1 or 2 star rating with multiple reviews this proves they are consistently are having a bad day therefore their business actually does suck. Lame
But they do have a point about how Yelp will arrange their reviews and always put the worst ones first. Then offer you rearrange them after you pay. Legalize racketeering if you will.
I have never seen that, the reviews are all mixed up. I know at least 3 business owners who, against my advice bought into their sponsorship to “fix” their reviews and pull positives ones out of the filters. Guess what, Yelp did NOT DO IT. Those positive reviews stayed in the filters. The owners were livid calling their representatives every day and still nothing changed. They ended up canceling their contracts and wasting hundreds of dollars. I always read the filtered reviews.
Take a cruise around the net. Yelp is far more aware of this issue then they let on. There are law suits pending and being filed as we speak. I currently am also looking into this. From what i have read Yelp is potentially using the negative reviews as a way to sell advertising to small businesses in return for better policing on their Yelp space. People are entitled to their opinion but when malicious actions are being perpetrated , and Yelp takes advantage of this for their own potential capital gain by selling a “Fix” then they tread into liability deep waters. I know , I know , blah blah some guy has a company got a bad review now hes mad and sad . . .Nope , this is not the case. I am actually doing this for someone else , as I have this bone in my body that likes to protect people. Do some investigating for yourself , other then the disgruntled owners there are many many complaints following the same time line.
Company opens , starts getting reviews mostly positive, sales agent from yelp calls up to offer advertising , owner declines , positive reviews start to get filtered for no apparent reason , bad reviews get way more publicity even when coming from people with 1 post ( the negative one).
Owner contacts yelp , no response , or the one they get says they dont take sides , but hint if you spend some $$ they can help police better. Of course they wont come out and say it , that would be very apparent.
Dont take my word for it though , i could be some rep for another company trolling away. But im not , go look for on your own. I spent 1 hour looking into this and am all but convinced there is a bigger dynamic at play here.
Spread love not hate , love thy neighbor and love thy self , and above all stay away from Yelp is you are a business owner.
Im soooo happy I found this and know that I am not alone. I have PROVEN facts that have refuted negative reviews and yet they leave them but have filterted 3 5 star legit reviews!!! They are terrible.