Yelp Controversy: Online Rating System in Question

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Wow....thanks for the insight and open candor about your individual experience I'm in the middle of putting money into online advertising and of coarse Yelp is telling me how green there grass is so to hear this allows me to truly weight whether or not the $3,600 for just the 1 year contract is worth it!
Thanks again
Andre Holmes
Thrift Store Family
Advertising & Social Media Manager

Andre Holmes of MD 8:32AM September 16, 2011

the controversy continues in Hermosa Beach http://www.easyreadernews.com/29690/rockefeller-yelp/

Jared Thompson of CA 8:07PM July 18, 2011

one should be able to not have their name listed on yelp. i askef them to remove mine and they said no.
they use my name for profit. end of story.

dismayef of CA 11:14AM September 19, 2010

The last time some brainchild attempted to use a "sophisticated" computer program to judge what was worthy, it almost took every financial institution on the planet down. So Yelp has a "sophisticated" computer program to "weed out" unworthy comments about merchants and services. This is the height of absurdity - but worse - it defeats the very nature of the Yelp offer to the public. Couple that with the tactics of Yelp advertising solicitations, and you have the makings of a lawsuit (in fact several) - which are now in progress. Anyone who advertises on Yelp is not perceiving the actual cost per business lead it generates - or they are simply reacting in fear. Yelp offers no advertising trials - but only a 12-month contract for about $300 per month (the minimum cost plan). They give no guarantee that anyone seeing a business on Yelp will go to that firm's web site - or become a customer. There is no measurement method for advertisers to determine if Yelp advertising is working. Yelp needs a makeover, starting with its top management and its overall business model. If the courts don't mandate that, then the public will.

W. Thompson of CA 5:33PM March 14, 2010

Yelp is playing hide and seek with some of the negative, but truthful comments. When was not logged on Yelp, I could not see my review on Mountain State Toyota near Denver, which I received a rude service. When I logged into my account, the review magically showed up.
Not only they remove my review from the public, they try to hide the fact that they do. Yelp is a sleazy business.

Jason Chen of CO 1:23PM December 29, 2009

At Yelp anyone can write anything they like about any business. I help run a dental practice and we see good reviews (16) about us in Google from people who we actually recognize as our patients and suddenly we see real bad reviews (2) from people whom we don't even recognize; saying things that does not exist! sure enough there is some bad intention going on here - how can anyone write anything they like without any credentials or check to see if it is real - next thing you know this becomes a battlefield of businesses bad mouthing each other - I hate to think that anyone can buy good reviews - wait till the word gets out about yelp way of doing business. This becomes an issue especially when you can not contact any yelp person to understand their way of doing business! No way of talking to anyone at yelp! Hiding!

Irene of CO 2:43PM December 08, 2009

I posted three Yelp reviews - none especially positive, but all containing factual, and verifiable information. I then got a note from a Yelp monitor, and my reviews were all pulled, and my account was closed.
Wow - kind of like Fox news, eh? "Fair and Balanced" ?
After a little checking, it seems there are some lawsuits against Yelp arising as a result of this behavior.
see:
http://yelplawsuit.com/
...and:
http://www.yelp-sucks.com/

Rennison of MI 3:44PM December 06, 2009

Just a note to put my 90 pounds of weight in here...
I'd written over a hundred reviews that got tons of compliments and thank yous before suddenly, when visiting Seattle, where I now live, I opted to review a few restaurants at once because they were all Tom Douglas establishments here--Tom Douglas, in case you don't know, is a big cheese that everyone kisses the arse of here. Well, after a ruined cashmere coat (he was getting loud and overdramatic fussing with another table and there went my elbow into my food when he hit me)... and a ran-away-crying waitress he told off and belittled in front of us (because there were 2 duck options and they brought me the wrong one--which I was totally calm about and understood was an honest mistake) thanks to TD, I finally got the nerve to yelp about it. I wrote a 3 (disclaimed as 3.5) star about one place, a 1 star about another, and a 2 star on another. ALL were removed and they made some excuse that I--a professor--was trying to settle an employer/employee dispute with them.
I don't trust them anymore as a result. Sure, I still use them... but trusting the ratings is like trusting someone's mom to sell you on how handsome her son is. It just doesn't work.

Negatives schmegatives of WA 4:32PM November 28, 2009

I am also restaurant owner who also experienced good and bad reviews. One day I happened to be at the restuarant when I witness an unhappy customer, I comp their meal and tried to get their feed backs. After talking the particular customers, found out they had no clues about the food. I came home told my husband how this customers said food was bad but she has no ideas that she had ordered the wrong thing and thinking it was something else. My husband looked up on Yelp and sure enough they wrote a 3 pages long bad review about my restaurant rating one star! Strangely, this one customer barely can form a sentence to tell my why he did not like the food, but able to write in details about his experience. People should not be able to write about businesses negatively when they have no idea or background to justify what they are saying.
I think Yelp is a bad thing to have!

Thoa Nguyen of WA 11:22AM November 19, 2009

Dawn, the "elite" said, "As for 'Scouts,' etc... Yelp has been very transparent on how that works."
Actually, they only admitted that scouts exist after being caught in a lie. Yelp is not transparent, and therein lies the major problem with their site. Transparency is a must in today's business environment, and that is why yelp is struggling to repair its horrible reputation.
They refuse to provide an explanation for reviews that have been removed, they refuse to explain their "algorithm", even in laymen terms, and they refuse to change their anti-business sentiment. It isn't just business owners that are upset, as they receive plenty of negative reviews from their own yelpers, including some elite. Yelp is in serious trouble.

blogorama of CA 6:42PM April 25, 2009