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200 Comments
- MikeTrap, on 02/19/2009, -6/+358Shame on you, yelp. Hugely disappointing.
- mantrvl, on 02/19/2009, -4/+326This is insane. That makes their reviews useless. Man, I used to like Yelp.
- redcolumbine, on 02/19/2009, -4/+179Bye-bye, credibility. Bye-bye, Yelp.
- IamNomad, on 02/19/2009, -6/+152proving once again if you have enough money to throw at a problem, it will go away.
- jimbruno, on 02/19/2009, -4/+131Yelp's response:
http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/02/kathleen-rich ... - SocialSound1982, on 02/19/2009, -5/+132That's pretty shady... They would be manipulating the service that was built by the public. $299 a month to remove bad reviews??? What's to say they don't send out power users and pay people to write bad reviews just so they could have a better reason to sell this service?
- hypografik, on 02/19/2009, -6/+131Crooks.
- NathanielJ, on 02/19/2009, -0/+69I have noticed that your comment is getting buried. For the low price of $299 I can make those buries go away.
- Campfiresteve, on 02/19/2009, -4/+72Geeze, that's hugely dissapointing. And the East Bay Express article appears to be very well researched.
- chrismakk69, on 02/19/2009, -2/+61As a yelp user I am pretty disappointed to hear that they are trying to extort small business owners. As a small biz owner myself I can see the frustration these owners share and would never use Yelps services...
Who knows, maybe another competitor will come along and do local search the right way and treat their customers with the respect and honesty they deserve... - SnapETom, on 02/19/2009, -1/+52That was an obnoxiously arrogant response.
Her first point says that there were a heavy reliance on anonymous sources. Anonymity is a necessary evil in journalism. Attacks for it simply being anonymous is an ad hominem fallacy. Without anonymous sources, we'd all still be worshipping A-Rod.
There weren't just anon sources, though. The article named three sources. One of which had "credibility issues," says Jeremy. Ok, so one astroturfed. What did the other reviews say? What did the reviews on the other businesses say? You're going to dismiss what three people said based on that?
Yelp just needs to man-up and admit that some of their sales people have been shady in the past. They're not big enough to just ignore this.
*deletes Yelps' iPhone app* - assHOE, on 02/19/2009, -3/+53Dugg because well... The user has no friends, meaning the article must be good ;)
- nicmcc, on 02/19/2009, -3/+50Has Yelp totally jumped the shark? Total mafia behavior.
- Mankind121, on 02/19/2009, -0/+36Way to totally undermine the service you're trying to provide.
- YvesKlein, on 02/19/2009, -3/+38I like yelp also. Though I think there should be some sort of checks and balances system, especially as yelp becomes more popular. It's not right that pissed off employees or competitors can write fake reviews about businesses.
- Andy.D, on 02/19/2009, -0/+34That's really depressing if true. I like and use Yelp.
- TheVirus, on 02/19/2009, -0/+33I know for a fact websites like these pay for reviews. I should know, I used to write them. Not for Yelp, but for other companies. I never knew what the websites were, I was never told, but I was told what the product/service was and what generally to write. 90% positive reviews were requested.
Easiest $300 I made. - idreamwideyed, on 02/19/2009, -0/+32a friend of mine works in a tuxedo shop. he also happens to be gay.
someone who shopped at his store went on yelp and left the most horrific, homophobic threats in his review. nothing about the service he received, the price of the tux that he rented, only about how "disgusting" it was that his store "allowed fags to fit men for their tuxedos" to give them a chance "to get off on their sick fantasies of wanting to touch men," and if he had his way "all the ***** fags would be left for dead on the streets."
yelp refused to remove that review.
but i guess for $300 bucks they can get rid of a review which has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of service he received. if it bothered him that much, he should have left the store. instead he left my friend paranoid that this man was going to come back to the store or follow him home from work, and do serious harm to him. - StigNordas, on 02/19/2009, -2/+32Sorry, but that was the biggest pussy CEO response ever. Time to stop whining and take some action Yelp. The East Bay Express might not have a pulitzer prize winning news room, but local papers like that serve an important need of keeping local businesses in line.
- SwordOfShannara, on 02/19/2009, -1/+29"Hey guys.. we need more bad reviews so we can get more money. Let's hire some folks from India to generate a bunch of complaints."
- danaondigg, on 02/19/2009, -0/+25This prompted me to review Yelp....on Yelp!!
http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-beverly-hills - zerton, on 02/19/2009, -0/+25uh... so what's the point of the site then?
- owls27, on 02/19/2009, -0/+20same here. They must be destroyed.
- supermilliner, on 02/19/2009, -0/+19I was an active participant on Yelp with several reviews of local businesses, many first and only reviews, and received many site accolades from other users, until one day I noticed every single one of my reviews had been hidden. I could still see them in my profile, but for anyone looking at the business they were gone. Yelp's FAQ mentioned this issue specifically and offered no other explanation than "we can do whatever we want" and so, after writing them anyway to ask for some further explanation, I went ahead and deleted all my reviews, and closed my account. I don't know whether Yelp is a scam, but it's certainly doing something outside of common decency.
- diggduggDOOM, on 02/19/2009, -0/+17Yo dawg, I reviewed Yelp on Yelp so Yelp can pay Yelp to remove negative reviews on Yelp.
(am I doing that right?) - sockpuppets, on 02/19/2009, -1/+17To anyone that's advertised on yelp this is old, old news. I run a firm's nightlife websites and they've been having yelp reviews removed for at least a year. In their defense their main competitor keeps leaving bogus reviews.
- krets, on 02/19/2009, -5/+21Wow, I don't see that as much of a refutation at all.
- ExSlashdotter, on 02/19/2009, -0/+15Jeez Yelp. What's with the sense of entitlement here? You just don't realize how short-lived and fleeting internet popularity can be, and you underestimate the fickleness of us hardcore web users.
Enjoy your impending demise. - drbadass, on 02/19/2009, -0/+13Wow, agreed. I have looked at this site for reference on maybe a weekly basis since I found it last year, but I have visited for the last time. I hope they're paying attention to the backlash. What a load of crap.
- scottschiller, on 02/19/2009, -0/+13Via JWZ, "Yelp Shakedown" (he owns a bar in SF):
http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html - asah, on 02/19/2009, -0/+12While I can't confirm these specific reports, my girlfriend worked at an east bay food company, and experienced similar types of sales tactics, tying promises to change the site if you agreed to ad sales.
- st0ney, on 02/19/2009, -1/+13@meruru
Actually I'd be pretty easy, let the businesses respond to reviews. - johanm, on 02/19/2009, -1/+13this has been going on for a while. Its been the buzz around San Francisco at least.
- Otto, on 02/19/2009, -3/+14Never heard of Yelp, but clearly they are not a credible place to find reviews.
- atmarcin, on 02/19/2009, -0/+11Unfortunately I'll never be able to look at Yelp without wondering if the reviews have been altered. I hope there's no truth to it, but the cynic in me thinks it's probably accurate.
- DirtyVicar, on 02/19/2009, -0/+11Someone finally figured out how to monetize "he who has the gold makes the rules".
- crisrodrigo, on 02/19/2009, -3/+14It's what Republicans believe too. This isn't a partisan idea.
- Rogem002, on 02/19/2009, -1/+11Yelp is so awful,. I signed up 2 years ago and all I got was Junk mail...Yet I can't remove my account/listing.
- inactive, on 02/19/2009, -0/+10Damn, really? Do you have a link to that review?
- Khy2k, on 02/19/2009, -0/+10The same exact thing happens to businesses with Ripoffreport.com . They do absolutely zero verification to check and see if you ever bought a product or service with a company, post whatever negative reviews they receive, and offer to remove them if you pay money over time. It's the 'hot new business' I guess.
- DaPM, on 02/19/2009, -0/+10Yelp - How did they think they will get away with it?
It only takes a few people to start a class-action lawsuit, and then the victims will come out of the woodwork.
Oh well... I guess Yelp was great until they turned evil and will now proceed to slowly die due to lack of credibility. Are you paying attention, Google? - browe07, on 02/19/2009, -0/+9Its a shame. Its hard to find a review site with user reviews for so many different places.
- sockpuppets, on 02/19/2009, -3/+12Bye bye
Don't wanna be a fool for you
Just another player in your game for two - Nintendesert, on 02/19/2009, -0/+8That's actually a pretty good extortion racket. Write up a bunch of bad reviews and then offer to remove them for a certain price.
- fancycwabs, on 02/19/2009, -1/+8I'll personally remove the bad Yelp! review I wrote of the local MINI dealership if they'll pay back the $7500 that the new engine cost when the old one blew at 50,000 miles.
- alricsca, on 02/19/2009, -0/+7I know a user called Gus had his comment removed about the owners of the Mid City Nursery in Vallejo, California supporting prop 8. He wrote to me that it had been removed shortly after I posted a similar comment. Since I saw his comment myself and it is now removed, I believe that they do remove these post. Given it was a relevant comment about the owners of a business's actions and it was not graphic or rude, I do not see any other reason they would have removed it.
- alpineswirl, on 02/19/2009, -0/+7can't /b/ just take care of this?
- idreamwideyed, on 02/19/2009, -0/+7i do, but i would rather not post it for my friends privacy. you're more than welcome to look for it tho, im sure it's still floating around on yelp.
- Rapter09, on 02/19/2009, -0/+7Welp, See ya later, Yelp.
- centran, on 02/19/2009, -0/+6I am not sure about removing reviews... I am sure if you buy the most expensive package they will do it for you. Their sales people are very pushy and will do anything for a sale.
What they OFFICIALLY do is let you bump a review to the top of the list. So if you have a negative review on the top then you can permanently bump a positive review to the top of your review list. One of the other shady things they do is even if you search for a business BY NAME they will place other businesses on top of your result in the search list. You need to pay to remove those listings and in doing so they will place you on top of other peoples search. They also place competitors on your yelp page if you don't pay. Very shady stuff. -
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