Yelp for Business Owners

I wish I could give them 0 for rating. As a small business Users I warn you to not use Yelp service ads. In 30 days I was charged over $400 from that company without getting any visible traffic onto my website but still they've been claiming over 200 clicks on my business page. When I asked for a refund even partial it was denied. To avoid any surprises stay away use google, Facebook or instagram ads way more reasonable and honest. So disappointed.

Have nothing to do with this company. It's a total scam. There's no contract, no invoice, no receipts or billing history. The business page is advertised as free, but then they charge you hundreds of dollars without notification. Be prepared for months of disputed fraudulent charges and having to change all your credit cards as a result of Yelp fraud.

It's about time yelp has had repercussion's for their shady business and high pressure sales tactics. Lucky I only lost $170 with them (it seems that many people have lost much more). When I first read some of these reviews I didn't think their experience would be my experience but after a month it definitely has been. I got sucked into a month of advertising on a $300 promotional. After they up sold me to an enhanced profile - by the end of the month I was somehow down $170 with absolutely no leads whatsoever. I even ended my campaign early because I was seeing no results and my card was still charged this amount! Avoid these people! Totally useless. Do not trust what their sales representative says. Do not give in to the high pressure sales tactics they use.

Same as everyone else. I was called by a persuasive Yelp rep and got the whole package. They said I had $900 in free advertising which I was like cool, great why not? Then after 8 DAYS. I get a bill for $200 at a cost of $10/click. I own a marketing agency and we avoided Yelp like the plague because we knew they were shady. We decided to give it a chance because they gave us the deal and showed us everything. Obviously we should've listened to our gut. I'm just thankful that we tried it first before referring any of our clients for it. Absolute sham.

Overpriced and unethical. If you want real results use Google Ads. Yelp is ridiculous and scamming hard working entrepreneurs out of their money.

As others have noted, you post a "free" ad and afterwards are contacted by a pushy account executive who convinces you that based on what you offer, you should be able to reap high profits. It's hyperbole. I received a total of four actual contacts all requesting services I was not provided and three of which I suspected were illicit if not illegal enterprises, like flying out of town and delivering a packet or overseeing painting of a home. I believe Yelp has hit upon a good thing. You offer pie-in-the-sky assurances and once the person is billed for the number of visits to their page vs actual acquisition of business, you are billed. I paid $430 and got no results. This is a legal scam.

I was sold by a Yelp representative that purchasing their ads would increase traffic to my website and overall visibility to potential customers. My budget was $450 for 30 days. I canceled the ad after 20 days of receiving only 7 clicks out of 5,274 ads, which is less than 1%. I was charged $407.24 based on 7 clicks at $58.18 per click and the service of ranking my listing higher in search results.

I am providing this review because Yelp Customer Service refuses to accept any responsibility for their ineffective ads. Customers that are not satisfied with their service has no recourse as Yelp offers no refund or partial credits. I want to warn others to NEVER run ads with Yelp.

I will use an old adage from my grandmother and it is "when you learn better, you do better." Hope this helps other small business owners avoid the Yelp Trap!

2 of my employees were so proud after a customer left them an awesome review and called me to express how happy she was with their service. Being a long time business owner and knowing full well how yelp operates I told both employees to take a snap shot of the awesome 5 star review because in 3 days it will be put into the not recommended section! And you know what? I was correct. 72 hours later it was dumped into not recommended along with 29 other great reviews. I am a retired law enforcement officer and this is in my opinion should be looked into by the district attorney fraud division for each occurence.

The system is not very helpful and designed to bill the business owner with far to costly an agreement to "advertise, " on a site. There was no figures or product selection to advertise. Basically all is thrown into your site, without proper information during presentation. You believe you are just having a site only. Not realizing they will be racking up outrageous ad charges. These figures are deceptively placed into a page the rep shows you. It's all over when you get billed at end of period. It's a shameful process and takes advantage of customers.
Customer service contacts you days after you email for assistance. All too late. They are adequately able to answer questions and get back to tell you they can't do anything. Well, the customer is always right!
I will be contacting legal counsel on this to know where to go from here.

JS

This is a terrible service for businesses. They want you to buy all these upgrades to make you business page look better than the next guy. Even charging you to put your own logo up LOL. Then they want to pick and choose which reviews left by your customers that they will actually show to other potential clients. They over promise and under deliver on their advertising platform. Spent $75 and it didn't generate one lead. I will spend my money elsewhere.

I have a new small business. As most owners know the marketers attack you. I figured I would give yelp a whirl. Locked me in 3 month contract max 325 a month in leads. For 3 months I was charged 325 and got zero calls. Contract finally ended so I called to cancel and of course they need 30 days notice. But turns out the account representative did not activate my account properly so people could not contact me. They said oh well and offered to correct it now. No refund or credits. Said my ad appeared and that is sufficient. Total scam

If you are a business owner and are thinking of advertising on Yelp, stay miles away from it. I have stopped my ad campaign several times, yet every month I have been charged $ 300 or $ 150 on our company card. I am FURIOUS and fed up with them. They make difficult for you to find where to stop the campaign. I feel ripped off, deceived and worst of all; our money was wasted--just down the drain. A nightmare dealing with such a deceptive company. The outcome is just awful, expensive and they generate no business leads at all. As long as I live, I will spread with family, friends and the social media the kind of business practice they have. If you don't believe me, take their bait.

I too as most reviews here was conned into their advertising program but was promised that it worked similar to Homeadvisor or Thumbtack where you pay per lead. I did not receive any leads nor invoice so I just figured the ad was not generating any leads. It was however generating revenue for YELP to the tune of $1000. When I received my bank statement, I almost had a heart attack! I called customer service to be conned some more about the great exposure they were providing my company at the low low rate of $47 per click! If they come calling on you, you have been warned.

6 yrs ago we advertised and it was bad, no good customers, Yelp blows my phone with soliciting calls every day, on august I said " will look into it" to a representative and 4 months later I get a collection letter of $1000, of course Yelp will take responsibility because we are the idiots who answered their call! Yelp does not know how customer service works, is not an enthusiastic agent on the other line, customer service is about getting things done and "care" about us, the "customers". Yelp will put you in a bad financial situation if you are not be careful!

It is sad that anyone would make things worse than they already are for small business owners. They have some sort of "algorithm" that they won't disclose to anyone and can't explain how it works. But it magically highlights your negative reviews and hides your positive ones until you spend money with them. This behavior is disgusting. With their high-paid lawyers they even won a class-action law suit. Look it up. Please don't feed the internet mafia and let's put them out of business.

In a summary, Yelp business ad manager had called me and while on the phone signed me up for my company and my fathers company for the "free ad spends". Yelp sales people hounded me for many months so I thought if it was really free trial why not give it a try. I asked the manager several times if it was truly free and he assured me several times throughout the call / sign up process that they will not charge my card! Well you can guess what happened. They charged me a month after i cancelled. I am not just saying this, but i really believe the manager and their sales peoples are knowingly misleading people to sign up. There are so many similar complaints! Something needs to be done with Yelp!