Yelp for Business Owners

I am a professional headshot photographer located in Toronto. I was thinking about getting more exposure for my business. I got a call from the yelp business advertising sales about a month ago. They told me that Yelp had much higher popularity than Google in Toronto. I was stupid enough to believe them. They were trying to sell me on doing an ad on Yelp. The salesperson offered me a "$300" ad credit because I was not sure if this platform will work for my business because people use Yelp primarily for restaurants and stuff... I decided to give it a try since they offer $300 ad credit at the beginning.

Then it became really fishy. The coupon code they gave me on the phone didn't work repeatedly. But they sounded so confident that they will be able to put the ad credit through later on. At this point. They completely gained my trust so that I signed up for an ad account.

I never got that $300 ad credit. Next thing you know, they charged me $280 for just 2 weeks of advertising with 0 usable leads... I emailed the salesperson who signed me up and asked about $300 ad credit he promised me and got no response. I was totally ignored. Such unethical people!

Please BEWARE OF YELP. A sales woman called me, harassed me rather, to try a promotion for $12/click to which I responded I could not afford it. She insisted that I would pay no more than $21 for a weekend trial and I agree and entered my card. 5 days later, after receiving no calls, I tried to cancel. They stated that my bill was now $214.52. (tHAT WOULD EQUALL $1,287 for 30 days.) I was in shock and told them what the sales woman told me. The manager replied that they had no such promotion and could not do anything.
PLEASE ALERT YOUR STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND CANCEL YOUR DEBIT CARD YOU USED WITH YELP. THEY ARE A DISHONEST BUSINESS AND USE LIES TO LURE BUSINESS OWNERS TO PUT YOUR CARD IN FOR PAYMENT. YOUR BILL WILL NOT MATCH WHAT YOU AGREED TO.
By the way, I'm assuming he was being truthful about me having 12 clicks. No one ever called me. So now I'm a new business owner with a $214 bill and no results.

In the last few months I realized Yelp has reviews of my business, so I decided to set it up like I did with Google Business... Anyway, after adding photos and updating my listing etc etc... I would get an email, from clients, here and there asking why I removed their review. I was like WHAT?! So, I looked and yep, all but four 5 star reviews have been removed (hidden). Yes I have 1 star reviews, I run a fishing business and sometimes people don't catch fish, which is expected from those who think you can catch a fish on every cast, however, Yelp has made it that the 5 star reviews show less and they keep all the 1 star reviews on your listing. So... I wrote this on my about the manager... And as for the reviews on here... You cannot always trust reviews on Yelp. Seems that quite a bit of our reviews, 1-5 star, have either been made invisible to the public or removed. So if you have left a review and I did not respond or you do not see it, it is because Yelp has removed it for some reason... Let's see how long it takes for Yelp to realize I wrote that and take it down and how many of the 5 star reviews are removed. I will update... OK 5 minutes later I get a rejection for the update on my profile. YELP IS A JOKE! I wish more people knew that and realized that YELP wants you fail and it's like they want you to pay a ransom to release your 5 star reviews!

Horrible. I think it could have worked, but they have zero customer service skills ironically. I paid over $200 for for 7 days before I threw in the towel. I'm a new biz. I told them how I assess a move to give a quote. They then told me I should do request a quote which was a horrible idea. Me not knowing really what they meant. I got one phone call. Which unfortunately I missed and they booked with someone else. I called the number back within 2 min. She had just moved to the next ad though. I take that one as my fault. I then got 4 inquiries via the request a quote. 2 of which were asking about services that I did not provide. The other two just wanted an estimate based on a few basic questions that yelp gave them. These questions in no way helped me provide an accurate quote to the customer. So I asked them to call me. Obviously they did not. Then when I tried to work with yelp and get something more geared to my biz. I was told my ad was doing great and it was their way or the highway. Literally they didn't give a f@&$. I figured like hey sorry we gave you the wrong plan here's a little credit and we can change some of the ways we have you set up. Nope none of that. I didn't even get a chance to ask for a discount. Hell I might not have even thought about asking had they cared to talk to me. Long story short they don't care about you they just want your money. I wish I would have taken a pic of my yelp ad page before I canceled to prove this, but I didn't and I don't want to pay $18 to reboot for one day to take a pic. 0 stars

To all you business owners out there, I highly recommend staying away from Yelp! They do not care about your business they only want you to spend money on ad's. Even if you get a bad review that goes outside of their guidelines, they will not remove it. They dont want to hear the businesses side of a circumstance and protect the consumer even if they are in the wrong.
I asked for them to cancel my account and they will not take the content down.
The people who work there are RUDE, OBNOXIOUS, and down right MEAN!
They dont give you a number if you have a problem, you can only call them if you want to buy an ad. What does that tell you! They just want your money for an ad that will not help your business on this site because its a complete JOKE!
So, ALL YOU BUSINESSES OWNERS, DO NOT BUY AN AD. Most importantly DO NOT SIGN UP TO HAVE YOUR BUSINESS POSTED ON THEIR SITE! Please please dont do it. You will be sorry if you do.

I got the phone call try to let me use yelp I said I don't need it and they said just try for 90 days if I don't like it I can cancel without any charge before 90 days that why I use it after that I haven't get any reservations from yelp and I want to cancel and they said I have to pay 750 it call early termination and I told them in my call they didn't talked like this but they said I signed agreement! Any way they going to my records voice and will send to me back about I and sell person talked but never send me back and change me 325 for first month and another month change me again 325 and 420 with any bill how can I do this! In this situation I am so stresses

So I was receiving daily calls by yelp marketing reps, they wanted me to give their website another chance. I explained to them over and over that for a new business who is not where they want to be, Yelp would be just a waste of money. They charge you anytime someone clicks on your page or something. So they offered me a credit of $300 to reinstate my account and a rep assisted me and supposedly wanted to show me their features. I asked many times during this call if they would be charging me, I told them I was ok with using their credit just to see if it is worth joining or not. She and many other reps would assure me that I was not being charged that I had a credit. So after a week or two I decided it was not for me since I never ever got a lead using them. So I asked again Ann's they assured me they were not charging me. So I matter I canceled with available credit left over I get charged 85 dollars more or less. I called customer service and they changed their whole tune, telling me that it is in their contract and disregarding any L anything I said explained my case and asked for a manager, rep claimed to be the manager in corporate and was being very aggressive. I told her if they monitor calls they could heat my ask on. Every call if they will charge me and each rep said no not maybe but no. So they flat out lied and. Will not give me my mo ey back. Total scam.

I have used Yelp in the past and paid over $4000 in my purchasing of ads. As of a year and a half ago I cancelled my ads feeling that they had not produced the returns I was looking for. I received a call from a new rep asking me to come back and try the company again, with an ad credit. This then turned into a paying ad service on my credit card that I had tried to cancel online, but for some reason it didn't work on their site (you click cancel and cant... hmmm) so the ad runs were not cancelled and my credit card was charged again for another two months. I just called Yelp to complain explaining my experience and was told that Yelp felt that it wasn't their fault, and by their policy the don't issues refunds that are not their fault. So basically their button to stop your campaign and stop charging my credit card doesn't work and yet its my fault. The person I spoke to was diligent and said she totally understood my frustrations but had to stand behind their policy. I explained to her that company growth is about listening to your customers and exceeding their expectations, not falling short of them. I also explained that I would be going onto social media platforms to warn others about their suspicious tactics and billing practices.

Watch out! Save your money and go buy yourself something nice because this service isn't worth it.

If I can save other people the $500 this cost me this time around, I will be happy that I have done my part to cost this company the way they have cost me personally and financially.

Yelp is a SCAM - They make you PAY for reviews to be posted and REMOVED! The only thing they are interested in is if you advertise with them. The sales staff is rude and clueless about the company's extortion practices. I worked for a National company that had to PAY big Money to get branches that they did not even add that had bad reviews taken down but that took Thousands of Dollars a shady agreement that the company had to help push and sell YELP to their contractors then the reviews would come down. This is EXTORTION at its best. YELP IS A SCAM and their people are SCUM!

I have to hand it to Alex, my Yelp sales rep. His persistence and what I believe now to be bogus facts, convinced me to give Yelp a reasonable chance to improve my coaching practice. There was a base fee that grew each time a Yelp user clicked on my site up to a maximum amount. Not surprisingly each month, Yelp provided "statistics" to prove that the maximum number of people clicked on my site, while the activity feed and my own experience did not reflect nearly that amount. Yelp opted not to display two 5 star reviews because the people did not use Yelp often enough. After 4 months, I received two calls from Yelp users, which resulted in one client and two coaching sessions. When I called to cancel the service I was informed I could lower my monthly rate to a third of what I was paying for the length of the contract and avoid the costly cancellation fee -- an option I was not informed of at the onset. If you are thinking about using Yelp I'd call business that are similar to yours who do and ask them if it has helped. It has not helped mine.

Yelp is not just hard to work with they also have sellers that lie or are not specific about promotions they giving, they told me that if I start advertising with them they will give me $300 to use for a week and see if I like working with Yelp, after one week I got charged $145, so I called back and I've told them this is not what I sign up for and just $40 were used from the $300 that they gave me, they were not able to give my refund so I canceled, after a week I got a client from Yelp she needed a cleaning in the same day i I scheduled her for a cleaning service and she was so happy that left me a review but Yelp removed it!
Yelp are not just liars but also they making it impossible for new Bussines to grow!

I own a popular small business. Yelp has their fast talking sales reps pressuring me to buy their ad services. I do not believe that any business should have to pay a "review" platform for services due to the obvious conflict of interest it represents. A review site should be just that, a review site, with no motive other than posting real opinions of consumers.
Since I will not sign up for a Yelp contract of $300 to $900 per month, they have hidden all the positive reviews that come to my business, and keep posting negative reviews. I would go as far to say that they have created additional fraudulent negative reviews.
Yelp controls the content that review users read. If the business pays, the review content is good. If the business does not pay, the review content is bad.
Yelp is a form of business extortion. It is at best; unethical, at worst; illegal.
I choose to ignore Yelp. Yeah, I could pay them for good reviews, but I wont be a victim of their scam. Less and less consumers take them seriously anyway.

Yelp is a vivid example of the new era American business ethics. Instead of creating a legitimate and trustworthy business model, they stoop to schemes and scams.

I was offered a free ad that cost me over 500 dollars only to find they were recommending the competition. When I canceled online it didn't work and they refuse to acknowledge the scam.

Those are the only 2 ways in which this business can be described!
I've received the same ridiculous email rejecting my profile photo because I have glasses with transition lenses (that I wear 24/7). Called and explained, the CSR said she'll get the photo approved, 2 days later back to square1 with same email!
Awesome 5-star reviews have been hidden, supposedly 'just by the algorithm' without ANY ability for CSR intervention. How f'ing STUPID is that! If this were a bank or credit card company, they would be closed by now. The CSR was more intent on getting me to sign up for ads, than even hear about my issue!
A waste of 3 weeks, with real stress and sleepless nights only to make peace with the ridiculous situation.

And after placing this review, I get this seemingly caring call that turns into a nightmare while driving! This utter i*iota calls me saying he wanted to address my concerns, then starts arguing that every concern I have is not really a concern, and that he is 'calling me out on it!'. I couldn't even understand what he thinks he is calling me out on! These people take advantage of common human decency to force people into agreeing to advertise. I even warned him that I'd not continue with the argument and just put down the phone, but m being courteous to end this conversation on a decent note. This mor-on couldn't even get that!

I HAVE JUST HAD ANOTHER GREAT EXPERIENCE WITH THIS TEAM. I WANT TO GIVE A SPECIAL SHOUT OUT TO RENEE C. "OFFICE MANAGER". SHE ALWAYS RESPONDS ENTHUSIASTICALLY ANY TIME THAT I MAY NEED ASSISTANCE WITH MY INSURANCE PLAN. IF RENEE DOES NOT KNOW THE ANSWER SHE WILL PROMISE TO GET THE ANSWER AND CONTACT ME ASAP. RENEE HAS GAVE ME THE TYPE OF ASSISTANCE THAT IS ALWAYS "OVER AND ABOVE MY EXPECTATIONS".

SHE WOULD BE A GREAT ASSET TO ANY INSURANCE COMPANY WHO WOULD NEED AN EXEMPLARY TEAM PLAYER. ALSO, DANIELLE L. AND SHERYL E. HAS NEVER LET ME OR MY HUSBAND DOWN WITH ANY ISSUES AS WELL. THEY ARE THE "GLUE" TO HELPING THIS AGENT JEFF SAMFORD IN BEING SUCCESSFUL.

SINCERELY,

TIUANA & HERMAN D.

YELP is worse than the Corona Virus. This company strives to spread Negative reviews for any BUSINESS that works hard in the service business. All of us know, it's hard to please everyone in the service business, but we certainly try to. My company has been open for over 15yrs and a lot of my clients ask me, WHY DOES YELP ONLY POST NEGATIVE REVIEWS? I TOLD THEM THE ARE JUST LIKE CNN AND SPREAD FAKE NEWS. My clients after leaving my business tell me they are writing positive reviews and have shown me emails proving that. The emails show me they have taken their time after a few days or hours to write good reviews and Yelp just deletes them. I can wait for THIS COMPANY TO PAY FOR WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN DOING TO MANY BUSINESS THAT DON'T DESERVE BAD REPUTATION.