Yelp for Business Owners

Very overpriced clicks with no results, do not waist your time advertising on yelp. We got supposedly 6 month advertising with promotions with option of cancel any time if you dont like, but no one told us that if you cancel it early, Yelp will take full amount from your account, basically ripping you off. For example let's say you try the add and it is not good for you obviously you have to stop it, they charge additional for the promotions they gave you. After we lost lots of money on Yelp adds we decide to stop in a 3 mounts and we got charged extra. With advertisement was included also page enhancement, which is $90 value (this is a small yellow line on you page that attract very little people) complete another waist. The enhancement was removed from our page, but yelp keep charging our credit card, and when I called them they say it is mont to mont enhancement and you can cancel anytime, and I asked "can you show me that feature on my page" she played dumb pretending does not understand what i am talking about. No feature but getting charged every month. Another problem with Yelp, they will show or remove any reviews they want, doing that they control your search position on the page, and you cant do anything. This is very important tool for them to get you buy nonsense expensive adds.

I rejected the interview and this was my response to

Dear T*****y H**l,

Thank you for sharing the "Pro Tips" for the job interview. I actually read the link and watched the video too, I was wondering if you have seen this one as well?

https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/biz.yelp.com

After reading the reviews, several pages of negative comments left from hard working business owners. I feel applying for this position goes against my core values. I am withdrawing my application and Resume. I have been doing my own research. I have a huge network of business owners, I have worked with in sales. I surveyed much of them. I asked if they have placed adds with Yelp. 80% of them said that they reject any sales calls coming from Yelp and constantly get (Bombarded) with repeated calls asking to advertise on Yelps platform. I ask you this, how is this fair to your employees and business partners. After reading countless reviews and knowing what the expectations are of Yelps sales representatives or employees. I sincerely hope that you will share this experience with your management team. This does not reflect positively on the culture of Yelps employees and strategic thinking as a marketing company. I cannot work for a company that lacks honesty and good faith. Your company just has too many negative reviews.

Thank you for your time.

Respectfully,

Christen Diamond

I am a physician and a cranky idiotic and ignorant patient give a bad review of my office without seeing me, just because did not want to pay his due deductible up front. Yelp has dedicated to remove my good reviews and as far as I know will continue doing it.
As per other evaluations of Help by different businesses they expect to get money from business owners in order to delete the false the bad reviews. This Yelp needs to be kicked off the social media.
BE WARNED
DO NOT PAY EVEN ONE PENNY TO THIS YELP.

I spent 300 dollars per month and received 50 clicks to my yelp page, most being from random places or mostly California or not verifying at all which means it was most likely yelp staff themselves clicking. They say when trying to sign you up that "on average you will receive 3 dollars from clients for every 1 dollar you spend". I didn't receive any business or clients. Using google, Craigslist, cards, signs got me more clients in two weeks than yelp did in a month. Yelp did nothing for me. It let me arrange photos in order and that's about it. If your reviewers do not yelp then their review won't even show up on your page. It's a scheme to get you to make people yelp and use their service more. It's a joke and a waste of money and as a small business I want to warn others that this service is horrible. Go with google! They post every review and have so much more to offer for less. They are an amazing service with more advertising benefits for no money or schemes. Also do it yourself and educate yourself on advertising the best you can.

I consider myself to be a very empathic, honest person. I opened this app in order to receive an extra source of clients for my business. What I received is $278.00 less and a TON of disappointment. My sales rep seemed very nice and attentive, but in reality he was making it seem like nothing was going to be charged and I only had a bonus. If I surpassed this bonus then the remaining amount was going to be charged. All LIES! Basically the girl I communicated with later from the customer service ADMITTED i was tricked. SHADY SHADY SHADY! STAY AWAY

Terrible customer service - in fact no SERVICE at all! Treat people like criminals and like they don't care at all. They put through unauthorized charges and threaten to send you to collection. Really great business model - alienate the only group of people that are paying your revenues. I can't believe how UNBELIEVABLY HORRIBLE they treat people. They've gotten too big to care, I guess. Will NEVER be doing ANY business with them ever again.

There is no accountability, no leads have been generated in 3 years, I cancelled account and just found out they have been taking money out of my CC for 21 months. Bad company DON'T DO BUSINESS WITH THEM

I signed up using their free $300 credit. Stupid me didnt read the fine print saying it would auto bill after the trial at $300 a month. During the trial, I assumed I did something wrong because I coould never see the ad when seaching and my dashboard never shown a single click. Well, miraculiously, after the trial period was up I had 3 or 4 clicks at $30 a click. I called and owned the screw up even though it's very clearly a setup. The person on the phone canceled the ad. The next month I get another $110 bill saying that in the 6 days it took me to cancel I had 3 clicks at $36 a click. Complete and total scam. They're praying on small businesses! STAY AWAY! Spend your money elsewhere.

I've utilized Yelp in the past for a couple years and used to get legitimate customers from this platform, however they have now charges more to "enhance" your business and I have literally not had one call or email come in for this platform. All I have ever received are solicitor calls. They have not credited me $1 for these solicitor calls. When I recently signed up, the very same day a Yelp employee called me and encouraged me to add more $$ per click stating I would receive more calls. I increased it by $1 or $2 dollars and didn't get 1 call. DO NOT UTILIZE YELP TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS. THEY ARE A SCAM!

This is similar to many YELP complaints. We were contacted multiple times by their sales representative. They indicated that YELP can provide us more business leads than any other service. They offered their bonus promotion, etc. After we agree to try the service we no longer received responses from either of the people that signed us up, but they were able to respond during the sales process. YELP produced less than 30 "clicks" in a month when they indicated there analytics showed we should have far more leads than our budget allowed, not far less. Once we received our initial invoice we realized we were billed for the budgeted amount not the delivered service. Basically, YELP is taking money regardless of if they deliver the service level offered. When I asked for a refund or reduction, they said they delivered as promised. I feel they are guilty of deceptive advertising and then they try to hide behind a lengthy T&C document. I request a refund. I do have the charges disputed with my credit card company as well.

Jessica Miller called me several times over a span of two weeks offering a limited time $300 in advertising credits if I signed up on time. I missed the deadline and she claimed to have a code for $900 advertising credit which is supposed to help small businesses. She stated a card would have to be on file in order for her to set up my profile. She reassured me the card would not be charged, that the credits would allow me to see if ads would work for my company and I could cancel anytime. After a month I was contacted by my bank for suspicious activity, Yelp attempted to charge $390! I called Jessica right away but the calls were not going through. I called the billing department and ask them to explain whats going on. I was told in a very rude manner "well when did you expect to pay?" "you committed to $500 ad campaign by selecting this in your profile" WRONG! I did no such thing, in fact the app was not easy to navigate. It was hard to see what was selected and what was activated by the rep. I would not have committed to paying for something when I was told I had $900 in advertising credits. I would have at least waited until the credits ran out or expired. I eventually managed to get through to Jessica yesterday and she said she would resolve this after she had met with her manager. I heard nothing back, her number doesn't seem to be working and the other reps I spoke to place me on hold and then hang up. Some refuse to disclose their name, stating "I'm not at liberty to share that information with you" Very shady business practice. BTW the ads will only get cold callers reaching out to you.

Yelp has an army of fake accounts that pretend to be real customers, don't be fooled if you have a business, in a month and a half they charged me 1100 dollars

Yelp ads campaign was sold to me in a way that was deceitful. I got manipulated and taken advantage of. I DO NOT recommend yelp for any business owners to run ads with them. When I signed up with Yelp I was hopeful but they turned out to be BIG DISAPPOINTMENT. The way they communicate their promotion is unethical, deceitful and is a Fraudulent. I did not find out that I got scammed until they already collected payment from my credit card and when I contacted them. They would not give my money back and advised me the only solution was to cancel ad campaign, which I did.

During a slow time, I created a yelp page. Immediately i started getting solicited to pay for advertising. All of a sudden i had an account manager, whom i did not need, calling me relentlessly. I blocked his number. I started getting what appeared to be fake leads via email. They were always from far away, no one sent contact email because yelp charges you when someone replies to you. I looked at the fine print of the email and it said the average cost of a lead was $202. I unsubscribed. Then, i started getting texts that were all similar. Again, they were quite far, the area code did not match the area they were calling from and 'kindly respond with your email for details' I view this as a way to entrap people to have apparent use from the site, then bill them. What they don't know is how much their site sucks, how few people use it, and how transparent their fake leads are. I think they are trying to rack up your bill figuring you will not notice the fake 'extra' leads and just bill you for them. Finally I got another call from someone FROM yelp that almost made is sound like a customer was calling so i left a nasty message a few days later, said i wanted nothing to do with them, and got called back immediately by someone else. I cursed him out told him it was a scam and said i would start a class action suit if they kept sending me fake leads and harassed me to pay for advertising.

$202 for a lead? Never. Just 'say no' to yelp, for your own good