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

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

#281

Post by greggman3 »

pavon wrote: post #264
yaur wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was once told in the some countries you're not allowed to mention your competitor directly in an ad. No idea if it's true. At first I thought it was a bad idea but maybe not?

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

#282

Post by greggman3 »

cgriswald wrote: post #229
Kalium wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, restaurant websites appear higher than their online ordered alternatives They do, in the case where people are looking for a specific restaurant. What about the now-increasingly-common case where people are looking to see what's open and doing delivery nearby? Looking through a dozen restaurant's websites to hunt down all that info (and hoping it's current) is a pretty miserable experience. Yelp makes i…

> Looking through a dozen restaurant's websites to hunt down all that info (and hoping it's current) is a pretty miserable experience. Yelp makes it trivial to filter on a map. On desktop, maybe. Here's my experience trying this out on mobile (safari/iOS) just now: I searched for "Pizza" with "San Francisco, CA" pre-filled. I am presented with a screen that ostensibly gives me a choice between "Open in the Yelp App"…

That experience sucks and I totally hate it as well.

FWIW, for Google Maps, Youtube, etc. if you don't want them to try to open the app browse them in an incognito tab (I use Chrome so I don't know if Safari does the same thing in a "private tab") but I'm just guessing the thinking is, in a private tab, auto launching apps would defeat your privacy so it doesn't happen. I didn't try that with the Yelp app. I don't use Yelp at all. There are more reviews on Google Maps for most of the places I visit (not the USA)

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

#283

Post by unishark »

markdown wrote: post #272
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.

Just as business owners don't trust their human cashiers, governments don't trust business owners. In my country, the cash register of every company that makes over x amount of annual revenue is connected via the internet to the taxman.

In the US, the govt outlawed the software contracting industry in the 80s because they suspected people weren't reporting their earnings when they filed their taxes. forcing everyone to become employees of companies that were better monitored. I suspect the same motivation is partly behind the attempts to eliminate other kinds of gig work now.

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

#284

Post by durnygbur »

ajb wrote: post #33

In 1891, the first electromechanical telephone exchange was invented by Almon Strowger, an undertaker. He was concerned that the human operators were diverting his customers (specifically, the wife of one of his competitors was an operator). If you think about it, every business interaction before the twentieth century was mediated by 1:1 interactions with humans, who brought their own prejudices and self-interest to…

> exchange was the start of an era of "mechanical honesty"

This is only the early stage. With more parties and money involved "mechanical honesty" turns into betting race and the "machanical exchange" redirects to where the highest bidders desires.

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

#285

Post by disillusioned »

OliverJones wrote: post #131

When I order from a local restaurant, I want THEM to get my money, not somebody in sili valley. Yelp skims using this man-in-the-middle attack on the restaurant's telephones. (Payment card companies skim too, but there's a lot of competition in that field so it's under control.) Yelp might argue that I, the purchaser, am not hurt by their shenanigans, so I shouldn't worry about it. But, on the contrary, I am hurt whe…

Nightmare scenario: the yellow pages have replaced all the business numbers with Grubhub numbers...

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

#286

Post by jcampbell1 »

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…

It is pretty important to do mid-shift counts randomly as well. A common scam is for the cashier to ring no sale if the total is an easy price, say $2 for a coffee. Then mid shift the register will have extra money which would have been pocketed at the end of the shift. If there is too much money in the register, the employee is skimming.

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

#287

Post by pomian »

proverbialbunny wrote: post #259
pomian wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TripAdvisor

Thanks for the reply. Any idea how to sort by rating? It's not giving me the option and is recommending food I'm allergic to. I searched for Mexican and got, Chili's, Chipotle, and Taco Bell, instead of listing hole in the wall places near by me, which are the restaurants I can eat at.

Sorry. I see it doesn't go to that detail. I usually use TripAdvisor when traveling, and appreciate the reviews - which don't have a vested interest as far as I can see. Possibly it isn't detailed enough for big cities with lots of great hole in the walls. Maybe we should suggest it to them? They used to have a great section where you could ask locals for advice and suggestions - which led to great ideas when traveling. I just checked, and it's called the travel forum. That would be interesting, to post there, with a specific question, and see who answers? I just checked locally, and people are still monitoring, so it may work. Good luck.

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

#288

Post by eru »

ajb wrote: post #33

In 1891, the first electromechanical telephone exchange was invented by Almon Strowger, an undertaker. He was concerned that the human operators were diverting his customers (specifically, the wife of one of his competitors was an operator). If you think about it, every business interaction before the twentieth century was mediated by 1:1 interactions with humans, who brought their own prejudices and self-interest to…

Mail and telegraph were perhaps an earlier move in that direction.

A paper trail keeps people honest to some degree, too.

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

#289

Post by jacquesm »

Google results for businesses and even government institutions here in NL are rife with numbers that have been replaced by expensive 1-900 numbers that connect you through to the business whose number you intended to reach. Very lucrative and highly unethical, and Google being part and parcel of this makes them look particularly bad. If anything Google should know what the right phone number for a business is, and if they can't even get that right you have to wonder about the quality of their results in general.

Of course the page of the business or entity you look for should be the top result for its own search query.

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

#290

Post by tim333 »

ajb wrote: post #33

In 1891, the first electromechanical telephone exchange was invented by Almon Strowger, an undertaker. He was concerned that the human operators were diverting his customers (specifically, the wife of one of his competitors was an operator). If you think about it, every business interaction before the twentieth century was mediated by 1:1 interactions with humans, who brought their own prejudices and self-interest to…

>The public still retains the expectations of the mechanical honesty era

As part of the public I more expect almost everything internet to be biased by commercial interests. Best you can do is seek out the less corrupted.

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