Business Owners Raise More Complaints About Yelp

Business owners are raising more complaints about the popular consumer review site Yelp.

[Yelps bs]

I have had yelp remove several positive comments by real people who posted them. When asked about it they gave some BS about only leaving the posts on for a certin amount of time....

[Yelps bs]

Do not waste any of your time thinking yelp will help you market. I also had ALL of my positve reviews removed from my listing. They also have addmitted to having fake reviewers submit posts....what a scam

[Yelp is a joke]

Positive or negative reviews on yelp are welcomed BUT....
Ive been to places that had only positive reviews on the yelp.com site and had terrible and rude service there. When I wrote my negative review *all within the guidelines* the site quickly removed it. It wasnt removed by the BUSINESS but another "loyal customer 'the initials "Just another member ingnorances ensured Because" they were angery b/c I didnt like there hot spot.*
She raised so much H**L that b/c I gave her favorite spot a bad mark that she had yelp remove it.
With yelp, negative reviews are always removed by a consumer/customer and not a Business owner. RARELY an owner.
Ive had rebutals from the business owner saying that they were sorry and HAVE ACTUALLY cleaned up there act, but Ive never been paid off.*and my review remained negative*
Some businesses WILL AND HAVE HAD employees write positve reviews only and point out that my review is a 'lie.'
So it goes either way.
If this yelp site was against business owners, then why did a customer* not a business owner* on yelp, reported yelp.com on the ripoffreport?
Think about it.

[Yelp the foolish]

Yelp is: Young, bored, ignorant kids with no social skills saying crap they would never say to another person face to face....Yelp's a flash in the pan, here today, and gone tommorow.

[Kasra Kamooneh]

Yelp is a nightmare.
We had a hating and ungrateful customer who wrote a mostly dishonest and terribly negative and biased review of our company. We had no opportunity to address all of the non sense this person was claiming. A few sentences would have put away the long and dramatic review of this hating customer.
A whole handful of our old customers reviewed us afterward, all with five star rankings. I tried to address the gross inaccuracies in the comments this person had made and eventually the people at Yelp even stopped sending me their boiler plate responses.
After many positive reviews and more interest in our company had occurred, not only did the negative review remain at the top spot but some of the positive reviews also disappeared. I tried to correspond with the yelp people quoting the policies that they had uttered to me earlier and how there was contradiction in how things where taking place. They sent me another boiler plate response that did not even address my points. It is of course puzzling why they would behave this way but I had to accept this ridiculous situation and the undeserving bashing this person that does not have a life away from a computer screen had given to our efforts.
Oh well this kind of stuff makes you believe in God cause someone must know the truth..(haha)

[Willy Whiner]

I suggest taking anyone's opinion, anonymous or not, with a grain of salt...Including this one.

[Tired of Yelp]

Yelp needs to create a feature where the respective business owner(s) have an opportunity to respond to negative reviews. There's no mechanism in place to keep a disgruntled employee or even worse a competitor from writing a negative review against a business. So many things on Yelp seems contrived. Case and point Yelp's "ROTD - review of the day".

[Yelp is a joke]

They gage their Elite status given to members as a popularity contest. Many Yelpers write very good reviews but are denied Elite status because they may have stood up to the "powers that be" for an wrong done and now banned forever. They are very unforgiving people. They have made members Elites who haven't written reviews in months.
Which goes to say that the ROTD's are just as much of a joke. The quality of reviews chosen are very bleak. So many good reviewers out there and you never see their reviews receive recognition.
The entire site has become a popularity contest and nothing more. I wouldn't lose any sleep over any review that is posted.

[Yonkers NY]

I think people are focusing on the reviews and not what Yelp is about.
Obviously you cant satify everyone, when it comes to business, e.g. cutomer owner relationships.
This is meant to be a place where you can take all of these reviews and then decide,do I go or not.
Personally outlandish and biased reviews are an eye sore that I take with a grain of salt.
I dont give them any credibility.
I feel that I get great feedback from Yelp overall.

[janet ficarra]

I too had good reviews taken off, and in november saw a review from someone who said he had services at my business, but his name and the circumstances don't match with his information. It may have been his partner, so there's no way to ask him why he felt compelled to yell ( which seems to be what yell-pers do) his complaint to other yelpers rather than talk to me directly. As a business, it' hurts to have only three reviews on this not-so- well- known site, and one of them negative and untraceable.

[bye bye yelp]

Can you say crash and burn?, Yelp is one site I will not miss. They got caught attempting to rip of advertisers by intimidation.

[Frank]

Yelp has been hounding me for weeks to sign up for 300 to 1000 dollars a month. When I told them no the first time bad reviews started showing up. They then called again and said they would remove them. I still declined.

I am hearing all over the Metro Detroit area that this is happening.

[Los Angeles CA]

We too have had an anonymous/untraceable reviewer post a negative comment against our business. The reviewer did not include any info in his comments that could link him to a customer in our database, just general garbage. We replied to the reviewer via Yelp's site, asking for more info so we can research his issue and take positive steps to resolve it for him. We invited him to call our shop or visit us in person to address the problem. His reply was, "I will not provide you any information through this forum. If your service improves through normal business interactions, I will consider editing my previous post. Thank you." This reply is ludicrous, and we suspect this bogus "reviewer" is either a competitor or friend of a competitor, or some other bogus reviewer who is not a legitimate customer trying to solve a genuine problem with our business. We complained to Yelp asking them to remove this reviewer's original comments/thread, but they gave the boiler-plate BS, "because we don't have any firsthand knowledge...we are not in a position to judge the merits of the reviewer's statements."

[Art]

if a business doesn't agree to pay their fees, yelp removes good reviews also! Countless good reviews have disappeared while competitors seem stacked with them still. check out the businesses with tons of good reviews versus those with only a few. Undoubtedly, the numerous reviews are for the business that succumbed to paying fees for enhanced listing services. So not only are there no or few bad reviews allowed now, but also only a few good ones get to remain and no new ones can be added on some of the business listings. Extortion coming and going. Avoiding negatives to fend off lawsuits and then penalizing good businesses to extort for fees so they can keep their reviews. How can yelp.com have any credibility left as a "review" site? surely yelp's days are numbered??? it's all just too stupid and inane at this point to make any objective decisions from that site!

[RoBoyle]

I agree. Yelp is a farce. I posted a comment to a frozen yogurt site that I visited the location, had a cup of froyo plus toppings and did not think this particular chain of froyo stores were anything unique and that all frozen yogurt places tend to copy each other. Apparently a fan of that particular frozen yogurt place objected and yelp pulled my post stating I did not have *personal experience* of visiting the place and posts must be based on *personal experiences not hearsay* WHAT?? I was there. On the other hand, I also own a business, a small ice cream store. someone posted on my yelp review site that our ice cream was geared solely to kids and we were a fad. This poster had apparently not spent anytime at my store and was completely ignorant about our companies history. Our product is unique and has been around for over 20 years, I think that qualifies us as more than just a fad. When I asked yelp to remove it, they didn't. Apparently yelp plays favorites.

[RoBoyle]

Additionally, I have found certain businesses have multiple, if not hundreds of positive posts, especially when they first open. It appears that perhaps the business has planted posters? When I travel to these "fabulous" trendy places with the glowing yelp posts, I find a totally different situation. Leads me to ask How reliable are these yelp posts?

[Frances]

Yelp is the worst thing that was ever invented. I was on there for a few months and I posted a few responses to various threads and the yelpers on there called me a robot and told me that I do what society dictates. Because I took what they said too seriously, they made fun of me by calling me robot, copying my responses from various threads and making it their own and telling me that I said all this assinine stuff. Finally I had enough so I closed my account but a month later the yelpers had the audacity to write a thread about me and make fun of all the answers that I wrote on the threads during the months that I was on the threads. I filed complaints and wrote a letter to yelp and made a copy of the thread about me so that yelp can wake up and realize that there needs to be some monitoring on the threads. And I agree with some of these posts. All yelp is is a popularity contest based on people who are humorous and elistest jerks and god forbid somebody bans one of these people from yelp another yelper will be picked on for being as literal as I am. Have a nice life yelp.

[Frances]

I was looking at the front page of yelp and again the yelpers are at it. This time they are not at it with me since I'm not on yelp anymore and that makes them happy. But there is this new yelper that needed advice because she went out with this guy for a short period of time and they went on various dates, which they seem to be doing fine and it turns out that the guy was still thinking about his ex and he had a lot of problems. He stringed her along and now is no longer talking to her. She was asking what she should do, which in my head is just dump him and lose his number and forget him. But most other yelpers had to be sarcastic and make fun of the situation. I mean all some yelpers really want is sound advice. They don't need jokes or sarcasm, which is what got me in trouble in the first place. I had no sarcastic remark or joke and wrote very long messages and I was a goner. But with the exception of two yelpers all the others don't have a clue as to how to help other people. I would love to know what these yelpers would do if they really needed help with something. I wonder what kind of responses they will get.

[Frances]

The thing is I don't know what I did so wrong to make people make fun of me.

[Frances]

What did I do wrong? What did I write so wrong? And Yelp's attitude is they don't do any monitoring of the threads but when they mention stuff that doesn't seem appropriate to me nobody says anything.