Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019)

#261

Post by rualca » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 3:46 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #247

kens wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the start of an era of "mechanical honesty" I'd like to mention the under-appreciated development of the cash register in the 1880s. Prior to the cash register, the owner had to trust cashiers not to pocket money. Cash registers became enormously popular and revolutionized sales since they kept everyone honest, as well as letting business owners know what was going on. (The book "Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burr…

And remember that receipts aren't for you. In fact, it might cost them money because it facilitates returns. Businesses don't care if they give you a receipt. They care if a receipt was generated by the machine, and are a check on the employee. those signs "if we didn't give you a receipt your meal is free" take on a different meaning in that light.

> They care if a receipt was generated by the machine, and are a check on the employee.

Aren't receipts used to track the store's revenue, as in the numbers reported to your local tax agency?

As far as I know, it's common for cashiers to have a daily/weekly/monthly slack value that they are allowed to report as a difference between the number reported by cash registers and the amount of cash delivered, because SNAFUs do happen during a day's work.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019)

#262

Post by retsibsi » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 3:58 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #82

fairity wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Yelp page that is returned is not very helpful to me. At best, it contains menus, pictures, hours, phone number, and reviews. Menus, pictures of food, and honest reviews aren't helpful to you? I think most people get a lot of value out of Yelp. Yelp's review system is among the hardest to game, so it has the most trustworthy reviews for service-based businesses. That said, that's largely besides the point of th…

"$10 off your next service if you give us a review on Yelp" is just the tip of an iceberg of complaints people have about online review systems, including Yelp. I was once traveling and some friends found a highly reviewed place on Yelp. When we got there it turned out the glowing reviews were all written by the owner's son. At least he felt bad enough about it to give us free dessert.

> When we got there it turned out the glowing reviews were all written by the owner's son.

How/why was this revealed to you?

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019)

#263

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:00 AM UTC

Can_Not wrote: post #248

FireBeyond wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look (listen?) for the cagey answers: "Is this Restaurant X?" "I can help you place an order!" "But is this Restaurant X?" "I can take your X order when ready!"

Hypothetically, what happens when the answerer wrongly replies "Yes"? The yes would indicate "yes, that is the restaurant your order will goto" but what's next?

I suppose, _hypothetically_, if you were a restaurant owner and didn't violate audio recording laws, and you got this, you'd have a good case against Yelp for fraud or dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019)

#264

Post by pavon » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:03 AM UTC

yaur wrote: post #234

BlueTemplar wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally, in TFA : > In June, H. Claire Brown at The New Food Economy reported that the food delivery platform Grubhub has been creating thousands of websites in restaurants’ names, sometimes surpassing the restaurant’s own website in search engine visibility, in order to drive more online orders and commissions for Grubhub. The piece sparked a backlash from conscientious customers pledging to order directly in the…

Isn't this the exact thing that trademarks were invented to prevent? I don't really get how they are getting away with this.

Suppose I pay a marketing firm money to run an advertising campaign to promote my business. They wouldn't be violating any laws by using my trademarks as part of doing this job, according to the contract we signed.

That is what Grubhub claims they are doing. They aren't doing this to random third-parties - just restaurants that signed up with Grubhub's marketing service and agreed to allow them to do these things in their terms of service. Unfortunately, in this world of EULAs that are far too numerous to ever read and understand, most of the restaurants didn't realize what they were signing up for.

This behavior absolutely scummy, but the question of whether it is legal is more of a contract issue than a trademark one.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019)

#265

Post by anaganisk » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:05 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #3

"The question is, is there a path to independence?” Stoppelman said. “Distribution is always the centerpiece. If you create a great product or service, how do you get it in the hands of the people? The problem with Big Tech is they control the distribution channels. Distribution is the key. If [company x] is the starting place for all of the people...to the extent they get in front of consumers and block them from fi…

Every big tech is a hypocrite, suprised?

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019)

#266

Post by anonytrary » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:40 AM UTC

It's basically just a forced affiliate program. I mean, they have a case for taking e.g. 10% or something, but it's sort of silly to not ask for consent as such a large company.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019)

#267

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:48 AM UTC

krisgee wrote: post #152

ajb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. It just used to be harder to build in, and to do so precisely. In your example, dropping calls from an area code, that's a relatively coarse filter. There's a whole strand of academic research [1] arguing about whether people can build prejudice into technological artifacts, eg one disputed example was an underpass with low clearance, supposedly so that white middle class people in cars could pass, but black po…

>These days that dispute is ridiculous - obviously prejudice and bias can be built into technological artifacts. It's one "if statement" away. And with machine learning we're building our biases into the algorithms explicitly; see all those "resume parsers are racist" articles. This is clearly an issue that needs to be dealth with but the problem is that it's not a problem we can engineer our way of, we need to confr…

[deleted]

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019)

#268

Post by xivzgrev » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:53 AM UTC

I never call the “delivery number” since I became aware of this sham. But most people probably don’t, so good to keep talking about it.

I’d encourage you to do the same and tell your friends too.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019)

#269

Post by areoform » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 4:59 AM UTC

There's an impolite term for someone like them in politics. Ratfuckers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking

Yelp is ratfucking the entire tech industry.

When the post dot-com wave of consumer companies arrived, they found a market that was more likely to trust them - the scrappy underdog - than the big, evil corporation. They were a breath of fresh air. A needed change in a stale ecosystem.

Jon Favreau said he based Iron Man off of Elon Musk. Tech was cool. And more importantly trusted.

And then Yelp & co arrived. Uber at least had the decency to start out by screwing over the competition. They did their best to avoid screwing over the customers. But Yelp? Yelp doesn't give a fuck.

They're ratfuckers to the core, and they'll torch everyone and everything if it helps them get a quarterly bonus.

Or, so I've heard.

Re: Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut (2019)

#270

Post by hnick » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:01 AM UTC

rualca wrote: post #261

m463 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And remember that receipts aren't for you. In fact, it might cost them money because it facilitates returns. Businesses don't care if they give you a receipt. They care if a receipt was generated by the machine, and are a check on the employee. those signs "if we didn't give you a receipt your meal is free" take on a different meaning in that light.

> They care if a receipt was generated by the machine, and are a check on the employee. Aren't receipts used to track the store's revenue, as in the numbers reported to your local tax agency? As far as I know, it's common for cashiers to have a daily/weekly/monthly slack value that they are allowed to report as a difference between the number reported by cash registers and the amount of cash delivered, because SNAFUs…

This could be stored on a computer now, though. But numbers can be fudged.

Taiwan had an interesting way around this with a receipt lottery. Ask for a receipt, it has a number on it that enters you in a lottery. Presumably the generation of this number means the sale was reported.

https://guidetotaipei.com/article/taiwan-receipt-lottery-%E7...