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Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

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Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#41

Post by timr »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #17
timr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked there for years. Your "friend" is wrong. The way they make money is rather transparently described in their quarterly filings with the SEC. Since they're a public company. Actually, I'm not sure what your "friend" is accusing them of doing, so it's a hard claim to rebut. It's embarrassing that a vague hearsay accusation (of...what, exactly?) is considered worthy of attention here.

Can you comment on the link in the OP? I thought at this point it's almost assumed yelp removes negative reviews from advertising customers and posts fake negative reviews when customers have cancelled. There's plenty of similar experiences just in these comments.

It is "assumed", but these assumptions are false. See my other comment on this subthread for the actual reason why you see these stories.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#42

Post by xapata »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
p49k wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is making these stories up, but with tens of thousands of businesses on Yelp, the chances of these two events randomly happening sequentially is high enough to have a steady stream of people who think it happened to them intentionally. Also, I've been reading these anecdotes on HN and other sites for years, and have never seen anyone tell this story and provide enough data for anyone to take a lo…

I suspect that is because they're afraid that their 'two star reviews' become 'zero star reviews'. Just like you don't complain about Mafia customer service in public.

In this litigious society, I'd imagine a plucky suit-sponsoring hedge fund would be excited to hear of all these instances of fraud. Yet I haven't heard of any class action.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#43

Post by golfer »

metalliqaz wrote: post #37
golfer wrote: post #33

My wife runs a small business and is furious with Yelp. She gets a lot of 5 star reviews, legitimate ones from customers she knows, but Yelp embargoes lots of them and doesn't display them on her Yelp page. She gets frequent cold calls from their sales department, promising that if she signs up for advertising, they can get those 5 star reviews un-embargoed and live on her page. 21st century cyber-extortion?

I became active on Yelp after a new Cafe opened in my town. I loved it so much I just had to go home and write a good review. I did so, and it was embargoed. A user with one 5-star review is usually not taken into account. After I had written more like 5 or 6 reviews, all my reviews started to count. Remember how viral those recordings of Comcast shenanigans went? If she keeps getting those calls from Yelp, record on…

Why would those embargoed reviews start to count after she paid Yelp? That is what the Yelp salesperson is implying. Embargoed reviews shouldn't suddenly have more legitimacy due to her buying ads on the site. Something is shady here.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#44

Post by koolba »

Free Side Project Idea

This might already exist but how about a history tracker for rating sites. Not sure how it'd deal with terms for scraping information but assuming you maintained history you could see ratings over time. Could also be used to validate claims like this or just overall trends for a business's ratings.

Bonus points for throwing in blockchain based timestamping (because "bitcoin" ;-))

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#45

Post by jps359 »

Louis Rossman (the guy who makes mac repair videos) had this happen to him too, and did some investigating of his own/connected the dots between the Yelp salesperson and the person leaving 1 star reviews on his business page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#46

Post by timr »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
p49k wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is making these stories up, but with tens of thousands of businesses on Yelp, the chances of these two events randomly happening sequentially is high enough to have a steady stream of people who think it happened to them intentionally. Also, I've been reading these anecdotes on HN and other sites for years, and have never seen anyone tell this story and provide enough data for anyone to take a lo…

I suspect that is because they're afraid that their 'two star reviews' become 'zero star reviews'. Just like you don't complain about Mafia customer service in public.

Or maybe it really is a made up story. Or embellished. Or mis-remembered.

Other than really wanting to believe, why do you assume that some random internet guy telling a second-hand story is "hard evidence" of anything?

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#47

Post by xapata »

ninjaranter wrote: post #40
metalliqaz wrote: post #13

I would like very much to grab my pitchfork and point it menacingly at Yelp, but I have yet to see one of these stories with hard evidence. There are many, many stories of bad (and incriminating) behavior on behalf of Yelp salespeople over the phone, but I have never heard a recording. Even though most claims indicate that the harassing calls are repeated many times. Somebody record one of these calls and become Inte…

I found the company name from that user's Reddit history. Here's the link to the Yelp page https://www.yelp.com/biz/full-channel-warren-5?sort_by=date_... They currently have a total of 14 reviews. Only 4 out of the 14 were "out of state" and one of them was 5-star, so the accusation seems overblown.

This also could be simple mistake of users leaving a review on the wrong page. I see this done in both directions. Just yesterday I saw a 5-star review that raved about a restaurant, only at the end they were thanking a different restaurant.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#48

Post by cerved »

metalliqaz wrote: post #13

I would like very much to grab my pitchfork and point it menacingly at Yelp, but I have yet to see one of these stories with hard evidence. There are many, many stories of bad (and incriminating) behavior on behalf of Yelp salespeople over the phone, but I have never heard a recording. Even though most claims indicate that the harassing calls are repeated many times. Somebody record one of these calls and become Inte…

Your standard of proof is very high. Who records all of their phone calls (presumably without consent which is illegal in my jurisdiction) and makes an archive of their yelp page periodically?

This is not the only company to face such allegations and afaik it's not the first time yelp has been accused either. I think you'll have to base this one on anecdotal stories.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#49

Post by edoceo »

I have a business on Yelp, not a restaurant, I've never paid them. My listing is mostly correct, I've tried to update but the settings never save. Yelp sales call about every three months to sell me on improving my profile. I say I'm not interested and the conversation is done. Have not experienced aggressive sales tactics.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#50

Post by asdfasdf222 »

swsieber wrote: post #10

It'd be interesting to figure out how Yelp generates the negative reviews. I'd love to see somebody setup a "honeypot" business - fake, doesn't exist in real life (well, physically/location wise)... and then sign up with Yelp and then cancel. Do that with a good 10-100 fake businesses, and could you drum up a case against Yelp?

I remember reading long ago that they don't generate negative reviews, but they change their sort magic to let the negative ones bubble up to the top.
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