On a related note, yelp's been criticized for similar practices:
http://eater.com/archives/2013/01/23/ftc-complaints-about-ye...
Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews
21–30 of 181 posts
Re: Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews
#22http://www.yelp.com/biz/sauce-san-francisco-2?sort_by=date_d... (see Andy J's review)
Yelp needs a "Useless" flag. All kidding aside, the fact that a reviewer has complete control to destroy a business reputation without any sort of accountability or credibility is wrong. There's nothing saying that Andy has ever physically visited this establishment. Of course a "Useless" flag would be useless itself because every active business owner would flag every negative review as "Useless".The unfortunate reality is that Yelp attracts only the worst in human emotions. In this case, it wasn't even related to the product or service.
Re: Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews
#23Isn't this a protection-money racket (extortion) from a legal perspective? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket > "Extortion is a criminal offense of unlawfully obtaining money, property, or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion." > "In the United States, extortion may also be committed as a federal crime across a computer system, phone, by m…
This isn't a story about Groupon except insofar as they hire unprofessional, immature sales reps. The sales punk didn't like how he was treated, so he gets revenge by (threatening) to leverage his own personal network. It's pretty unlikely this is some organized practice at Groupon.
It doesn't have to be organized. There just has to be a "results at any cost, don't tell me how you did it" atmosphere at Groupon.
Re: Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews
#24Doesn't USA have any DoNotCall rules with some teeth, if, as the owner is saying, he "... asked you twice to remove me from you call list, as I have EVERY time I have been called by a representative from Groupon"? In my place, this would mean that their customer acquisition costs would skyrocket from fines for such incidents.
Clearly they don't care.
Re: Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews
#25http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=hnH6RaPkJ2Tfw9ZkKMfL... see how many bad reviews he already wrote for Sause! I think his profile should be flagged, you can't trust a person who does this kind of things. Edit: He just changed his name to West C. what a guy :) Another Edit: Just look at his reviews date - they all are written on July 29-30 - why would anybody write so many reviews unless you receive a commissio…
Interesting. He just got one of his cronies to write a review: http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=BfVinuuuFVCAr77TnI9k...
Re: Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews
#26Doesn't USA have any DoNotCall rules with some teeth, if, as the owner is saying, he "... asked you twice to remove me from you call list, as I have EVERY time I have been called by a representative from Groupon"? In my place, this would mean that their customer acquisition costs would skyrocket from fines for such incidents.
AFAIK, there's an exemption if you've conducted business with someone, which it sounds like it's the case here (in the past). But sure how severed business relationships are handled.
Re: Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews
#27There should be a yelp-like service for rating people like this "salesman" so that he doesn't accidentally get hired again.
There are any number of reasons why service-people don't give their full names or unique identifying information over the phone; surely, this is one of them.
Re: Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews
#28On his LinkedIn account: "Specialties Technology, Local commerce, Social media, SEO, Online marketing, Consumer and retail marketing, Sales, Salesforce, CRM" How come every other scumbag tend to be everything above? Does it naturally attract these sorts of people? http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andy-johnston/41/81/119
I'm not American but I thought Berkeley was prestigious and yet this graduate's job is to cold call restaurants touting coupons. No wonder Andy's mad!
Re: Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews
#29[deleted]
Re: Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews
#30I wonder what this guys week will be like starting monday morning?
Is this HN story going to do anything negative to his career?