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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

#51

Post by swalsh »

cerved wrote: post #48
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.

Especially when most of the calls are cold calls, and you haven't had the opportunity to record them.

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

#52

Post by jly »

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…

A business I used recently for some tree maintenance in my town had a 1-star Yelp review which was perplexing. In this case, the business and owner are well-known in the area as one of the best at what they do and top subject matter experts.

While digging a little, I found that Yelp was highlighting only the four 1-star reviews and factoring only those into the score. Each of these reviews is responded to by the owner with an explanation, all of which look fairly reasonable to me.

Below this, hidden away under a link and not factored into the score were 15 other reviews that Yelp tagged as 'not currently recommended'. These reviews span a period of 4-5 years+ and are mostly positive 4-5 star reviews. I am no expert but they do not look faked at all to me. Why would this be the case? This business also had 42 5-star reviews on Google. Seems a little odd to me and this really swayed my opinion for good on Yelp.

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

#53

Post by chinathrow »

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?

What a racket. However, it looks like it's their site and their rules - hence you live by the sword or you die by it.

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

#54

Post by smt88 »

timr wrote: post #39
Someone1234 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who worked there, what is your take on these fake review stories? I've read the same or highly similar accounts from other small businesses over years. Did you do this when you worked there? Did your colleagues?

To be blunt, they're total bullshit. Which is why you never see any evidence , outside of vague hearsay from someone's uncle. Yelp has a small army of people cold-calling every business in the country to sell ads. Simultaneously and independently, they have a system that filters out bad reviews, all day, every day. Just by chance, someone is going to get called soon after reviews have been filtered. This leads, inevi…

Have you ever worked at Yelp?

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

#55

Post by p49k »

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.

It's possible, but it's also possible that the owner doesn't really know if Yelp is actually guilty of anything, and they're afraid that an investigation would find that the reviews are legitimate, making the owner look bad.

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

#56

Post by chinathrow »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #27
HappyTypist wrote: post #4

I have a friend who left Yelp after 2 months. Told me that he'd get aggressive legal action if he revealed "how Yelp really makes money".

This is such garbage. Yelp might be the worst company on the planet, but "anonymous internet poster who has a friend who worked there two months and claims something unspecified-but-fishy is going on" is completely worthless. "A friend of mine said he'd be threatened with legal action if he revealed what HappyTypist does on Saturday nights."

What I learned from all those stories about Yelp: If there's smoke there must be a fire. Lot's of smoke recently.

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

#57

Post by tulop »

xapata wrote: post #47
ninjaranter wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More likely, changing their Yelp profile location is nowhere on their list of things to do when they've moved.

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

#58

Post by chinathrow »

timr wrote: post #39
Someone1234 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who worked there, what is your take on these fake review stories? I've read the same or highly similar accounts from other small businesses over years. Did you do this when you worked there? Did your colleagues?

To be blunt, they're total bullshit. Which is why you never see any evidence , outside of vague hearsay from someone's uncle. Yelp has a small army of people cold-calling every business in the country to sell ads. Simultaneously and independently, they have a system that filters out bad reviews, all day, every day. Just by chance, someone is going to get called soon after reviews have been filtered. This leads, inevi…

"Yelp has a small army of people"

Like how big is that small army? Your terms imply like, I dunno, maybe more than 1000?

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

#59

Post by swalsh »

p49k wrote: post #31
jacquesm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I have yet to see one of these stories with hard evidence. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14237684 You think they made that up?

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…

The video posted below has pretty good evidence of what's going on:

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

He shows how he talked to a sales person at Yelp, received a bad review, which he proves is fake by showing a search from his CRM, than digs into the social media accounts of the Yelp sales person, and finds the yelp reviewer who left the bad review (but didn't have an invoice) was a friend of the sales person.

even if this is just a rouge yelp sales person, there is clearly something systematically wrong here.

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

#60

Post by MS_Buys_Upvotes »

victorvation wrote: post #19

I'm surprised that even on HN, people seem to unquestioningly accept that Yelp extorts businesses using reviews, where any other topic would be subject to a higher level of scrutiny. I've heard countless anecdotes about peoples' friend's account of how evil Yelp Sales is, but never any solid proof.

I'm surprised that you're foolish enough to fall under the assumption that people here are somehow smarter or better. They are not. This is simply a web site with zero barrier to entry.

I don't trust Yelp either. There have been too many stories like this over years - and even some in the comments section of this HN story!

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