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Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

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Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#351

Post by dang »

bg4 wrote: post #51
ilikehurdles wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.yelp-support.com/article/Does-Yelp-extort-small-... I've kind of gotten tired of diving into the whole "yelp extorted my brother's cousin's friend's coworker's business for better ratings" anecdotal story schtick so I'm just going to link the above -- or are you suggesting they're getting away with lying on official communication? If yelp is altering reviews for paying clients, please show the evidence as…

How's your internship at Yelp going?

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#352

Post by TAForObvReasons »

navigatesol wrote: post #347
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk is one of the paypal mafia, but it seems that many people who aren't "in it for the profits" profess blind adoration

I can't tell if you're saying he's a good or bad example. But Musk has managed to get himself wealthy from many businesses that mostly burn capital, including the biggest CEO pay package in history. He may be the ultimate example of the PayPal Mafia.

Criticism of Musk or the operation of any of his companies (such as the arguably nepotic acquisition of SolarCity) are generally downvoted to oblivion here, and it's hard to tell if everyone is an investor or just blindly support him. Actually surprised that my comment managed to get upvoted back, it was -3 within a few minutes of posting the comment.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#353

Post by nemothekid »

deogeo wrote: post #349
dymk wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they provide a search/aggregation service that many users find useful.

Lets say the internet isn't around yet, and people still use the yellow pages. One day, they decide to charge a 10% tax on all the revenue of a business, if they want to keep their listing in the yellow pages. Those that don't pay, get delisted. There is a competing service, the blue pages, that charges only a few cents for a listing. But it has far fewer readers, so any business that has only a blue page listing, no…

I don't think your definition of rent-seekers is apt - how is your example any different from what Google has been doing for years?

I could pay Bing a fraction of the price, but I still need to pay Google for traffic.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#354

Post by deogeo »

nemothekid wrote: post #353
deogeo wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets say the internet isn't around yet, and people still use the yellow pages. One day, they decide to charge a 10% tax on all the revenue of a business, if they want to keep their listing in the yellow pages. Those that don't pay, get delisted. There is a competing service, the blue pages, that charges only a few cents for a listing. But it has far fewer readers, so any business that has only a blue page listing, no…

I don't think your definition of rent-seekers is apt - how is your example any different from what Google has been doing for years? I could pay Bing a fraction of the price, but I still need to pay Google for traffic.

> how is your example any different from what Google has been doing for years?

If the shoe fits...

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#355

Post by m463 »

mikestew wrote: post #148

I've been in this industry 30-some years. I thought I'd seen the worst SV has to offer, but my jaw is just on the ground. I mean, I knew Yelp was constantly up to no good, but...just wow. I suppose I should be furious at Yelp (or GrubHub, or...someone), but I'm really more furious at Apple for having not cut that partnership a long time ago. It just gets my goat every time I click an icon in Apple Maps, Yelp pops up,…

Does anyone remember getting out the phonebook to dial a local tow truck?

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#356

Post by gjreda »

lancesells wrote: post #331
mabbo wrote: post #142

It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value. In this example, what benefit is GrubHub providing to anyone? The person used Yelp solely to look up the phone number of a restaurant. GrubHub deserves 15% of his order for that? Why, because they made a deal to give X% of it to Yelp, and convinced…

I really wish there was a GrubHub competitor that charged a monthly fee instead of the model of paying more the more successful you are. Restaurants pay x per month with normal processing fees and that's it.

This was GrubHub's original model. Restaurant's don't want to pay a flat fee when they don't see enough orders they feel is necessary to justify said fee.

[1] https://youtu.be/a2oTps7tKS4?t=893

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#357

Post by rurp »

spunker540 wrote: post #326
rurp wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you happen to always download mobile apps doesn't negate the fact that many people don't, and deliberately crippling a mobile site to coerce people to download an app they otherwise wouldn't is an extremely clear case of being user hostile.

Are they obligated to maintain feature parity across apps and websites? Is focusing on one or the other acceptable to you? If I prefer an app, and a website doesn’t have a high quality app or the app constantly pushes me to the website, is that also user hostile? It sounds like your definition of user-hostile is “things you don’t like”.

Criticizing a company for purposefully crippling an existing site for certain users is not at all the same as saying all companies must support all platforms equally. I'm having trouble seeing how you could even make such a mistake arguing in good faith, so I'll just leave things here.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#358

Post by braythwayt »

cloverich wrote: post #238
braythwayt wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of a tangent, but it feels to me like using wads of funding to try to create hypergrowth is a good fit for "winner-take-all" markets, like those with network effects. Social media fits. Syncing documents, maybe not-so-much. So Dropbox invests in areas where there are possible network effects, like collaborating on documents. Because that's what fits its funding model. But simple file syncing... This is not a wi…

> But simple file syncing... This is not a winner-take-all market. On its own, probably not. But you could imagine several avenues they could naturally grow into, that would _eventually_ turn them into the equivalent of a full OS. Its not something I would personally bet on, but also not something that, if it worked out, would totally surprise me. E.g. maybe _they_ should have invented Google Docs, and then...

As a customer, this is a problem for me.

——

Analogy: I offer to cut your lawn every week, and to shovel your driveway/walk when it snows, all for an annual fee you find attractive.

I get a lot pf customers, put together a pitch deck, then raise a bunch of money to expand.

With the money, I buy a fleet of massive snowplows, trucks that can carry ride’em mowers, equipment for doing landscaping, and while I’m at it, I start up a property management company that specializes in AirBnB owners.

“Sorry,” I tell you, “But I have to raise my fees, your property is too small for me to take a advantage of my equipment, and Also it’s inefficient to have lots of small customers so I’m tacking on a per-invoice surcharge.”

Lawn-cutting can indeed grow into a bigger business, and for me, that’s great. But for you, maybe the best thing would be to hire a teenager who is happy cutting lawns for a decent price.

Summary: If a company is in business A, but it isn’t happy doing A and really wants to do B, C, and D to satisfy its investors’ ambitions, that may be an excellent play for the company, but a terrible play for its existing customers.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#359

Post by reilly3000 »

m463 wrote: post #355
mikestew wrote: post #148

I've been in this industry 30-some years. I thought I'd seen the worst SV has to offer, but my jaw is just on the ground. I mean, I knew Yelp was constantly up to no good, but...just wow. I suppose I should be furious at Yelp (or GrubHub, or...someone), but I'm really more furious at Apple for having not cut that partnership a long time ago. It just gets my goat every time I click an icon in Apple Maps, Yelp pops up,…

Does anyone remember getting out the phonebook to dial a local tow truck?

Tow truck companies and PI lawyers routinely paid $5k/mo+ even in small markets to get those calls from yellowpages ads.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut

#360

Post by tempestn »

mabbo wrote: post #142

It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value. In this example, what benefit is GrubHub providing to anyone? The person used Yelp solely to look up the phone number of a restaurant. GrubHub deserves 15% of his order for that? Why, because they made a deal to give X% of it to Yelp, and convinced…

"Something else" indeed. Recently a scam site popped up that copied the branding of our site, autotempest.com. (They registered autoStempest.com and copied our logos and such.) They claimed to be a dealership based in Texas, but were actually posting fake vehicles and having people wire them money (which they obviously kept).

One of the things these scammers did to appear legit was set up a Yelp page with a bunch of fake reviews. We informed Yelp, but they refused to remove the page, because they "believe that the public benefits from sharing their experiences with local businesses." Obviously that doesn't make any sense since the entire business is fictitious, not to mention trademark infringing, but that was their response. So I did the only thing I could—posted a 1-star review of the fake business, warning people about the scam. Yelp removed my review, with the explanation that I did not appear to be a customer of the business.

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