Yelp for Business Owners

I signed up to get my husband's photography business a profile. They offered $300 free ads. On the phone I was told they needed my credit card, but WOULDN'T BE CHARGED ANYTHING! After the $300 was used, I would be notified.
LIES! I was charged $54.76 today. I never received any emails stating my card was going to be charged.
I called them and they would not refund my money, so I had to call my bank to put a block so they can't charge me again and am doing a chargeback on my account. DO NOT TRUST THEM!

So I opened by restaurant about 3 months ago. After the first month I started to get calls from Jojo A specialized agent for Thai restaurants... He persisted on calling about every other day trying to get a hold of someone to talk about there services. I work a full time job and then go to my restaurant to help my wife after 1pm in the afternoon, So I am very busy. I finally got to talking to him and he initially told me it would be about $300 a month for advertisement. I thought to myself $300 is way to much for us rite now. He persisted on calling still every other day. So I finally talked to him and told him I would only do this if it was free. His next words were "Done" " it will be free for you to try", Oh I thought yeah I guess if its free I will give it a try. 3 days before my one month I wanted to see how my progress was on new people checking my page and getting directions. It literally was almost the same as one month before. BUT... I checked and I was just charged $428 for the first money... WTF. I called the agent that signed me up I emailed him and no response. I finally called Yelp and told them the story and they said it was my fault that I checked the boxes... But how was I supposed to know this agent did not have the authorization to say it would be free for me to try out? The persisted on saying they could not do anything I checked the boxes.
If I can tell anyone anything is, its not worth it in the long run. Try Google or any other service out there, it will be cheaper and you will have a greater return.

Yelp allows us business owners, and affiliates (spouses, family, etc.) to write 5 star reviews, and allows them to stay up, but when customers leave me reviews for my indie shop, and they push my total of reviews past a particular number (ex: 100), the 101st review cost me an additional $$$ to keep my reviews. YELP HAS BEEN BRIBING ME TO KEEP MY REVIEWS UP, AND THE ONES THAT ARE UP ARE NOT EVEN REAL REVIEWS... THEY'RE FROM MY FAMILY! PATHETIC

They are like starving hyenas, they will call you and email you so you can purchase whatever yelp is selling and THEY won't LEAVE YOU ALONE, if you get a new phone number, somehow, someway, THEY WILL GET IT AND BOMBARD YOU. The small amount of exposure is simply not worth the headache. These people are RUTHLESS. Considering yelp is money hungry and so greedy they are charging you monthly TO ADD A PROFILE PICTURE. If I could give 0 stars for them being unjustifiably greedy I would.

All of these reviews are spot on. The sales reps are persistent and aggressive. They will tell you anything to get you to sign up and they will lie about how you will be charged - before you know it you will have racked up a few hundred dollars with nothing to show for it. When you try to contact them to resolve the issue the billing reps will tell you it's all your fault, that it was either a "misunderstanding" or that you weren't listening closely enough and that their reps follow tight scripts. It's obvious the business reps deal with this all day long as they will shut you down before you even have a chance to begin - I even had one hang up on me. It seems clear to me the company lawyers attend training sessions to make sure the reps deny deny deny til they are blue in the face. It's just awful. And honestly dehumanizing as you realize you've been had and you are completely powerless to do anything about it but pay so they don't try to further ruin your life. Companies like this should 100% be held accountable for their indiscretions - they are not interested in costumer service or satisfaction whatsoever. At this point it truly is a scam marketing platform where they just take your money and run to their next mark. Shame on you Yelp.

As s business owner -- if you want a mobster like company to make you feel like $#*! daily! Apply to work with yelp if they contact you --
IF NOT STAY AWAY FROM THESE MOBSTER LIKE SALES AND ENTIRE COMPANY ATTITUDE TO CHEAT YOU OUT OF YOUR MONEY.
DO NOT ANSWER OR COMMUNICATE WITH THEM AT ALL -- THE ARE SLICK TO CHEAT AND FURTNER CHEAT AND LIE IN EACH AND EVERY DEPARTEMNT. NOT REAL STRUCTURE -- UNLESS YOU THING BEING CHEATED BY MOB LIKE PEOPE A FUN AND GOOD THING. NOT ME -!? STAY AWAY FROM THEM ENTIRELY!

Yelp for business is not ethical. The salesman who explained their ad leads program mentioned I would get an ad credit every month, I would be notified if the activity exceeded the ad credit and be capped at $570 per month. He didn't mention this was only for the first month. Since this is a "cancel at anytime" deal, there was no contract. Since I didn't receive any notification of charges exceeding the supposed monthly credit, I didn't think there was any activity. By the 3rd month, I checked and they were charging me over $1500! This was not my understanding of how it was supposed to work. I was scammed. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY, YELP DOES NOTHING FOR SMALL BUSINESS!

Anyone who gives these people high reviews clearly are working for them. Jay S said it was going to be a trial period meaning he was going to give me 600 ad credit for the month. So i am thinking i am not going to get that many clicks anyway. Which is what he said as well. However that wasnt the case. The credit was just extra, i still had to pay even though he made it clear i wasnt. I called three times to talk to him, and apparently he was MIA. I tried to talk to the supervisor but apparently ( this is 100% fact what i say next) they couldnt switch me to that division? So the air head moron on the phone was basically saying i cant get a refund becuase you signed up for that. But i wanted to explain what Jay S told me. ( also by the way they refused to give me his last name). So i told the air head i want to talk your supervisor, she refused because i think she was too dumb to press the right buttons. All she was doing was saying i cant give you refund. Also i told them Jay S helped me do what i needed to do on my end. It never once said i was going to pay and he never once said i was going to pay for the month. This is absolute ridiculous. Stay away. I am going to call my bank now and tell the BBB. Hopefully this reaches people

I signed with Yelp Biz on 12/04/2022. On 1/18/2023, I contacted Yelp to cancel my account due to unsatisfaction. Brandon from Yelp did not cancel my account. I received e-mails from Yelp on 2/01 and 3/01/2023 asking me $300.00 monthly.
On 3/03/2023, I contacted Yelp via phone due to these emails and to confirm that my account was closed as I requested. Yelp representative stated that they don't have record of my account being closed and that I owed $600.00. My account will be sent to collections if I don't pay!
I contacted Yelp again on 3/09/2023, the representative stated that Brandon and Emily during my calls walked me through the cancellation of my account and that I did not cancel it. This is a lie!
If both would have walked me through cancel my account, it would have been cancelled.
I already paid $108.73 on 12/22 and $149.00 on 1/2023. Yelp representatives lie about what have transpired during customer phone calls and don't help their customers. It's not worth it to do business with them!

What a daunting experience in every sense of the word. I was introduced to this through professional Con artists, using full upscale online advertisement for Avis Car Rental. It was excellent in its presentation, I requested documentation before paying. I received this in minutes. This was a special promotion with Avis and A. E. Serve. Offering a discount of 40% for the rental. To get this you have to load A. E. Serve cardl with cash $160 for Rental. $300 for security refundable on returning the car. Fully loaded with the cash it was not acceptable. Avis now had the critical info of the card. I rush with card to transfer the funds into my Bank account. Bank will not accept this even Though I have been a customer for many years. I go to second bank and get the same reply. Very concernedI I contact A. E. Serve security, they reply register this card with us for protection of funds. I tried many times to register this, each time I had to expose my vital information on their applications. I Contact their security people on a number of times, they could not help me to register to secure my money. The bottom Lionel was to go spend this money on something, before the Con men get it, Not only was this absurd, the time and stress was to terrible.
Never ever again American Express your problems proceed you.

They are horrible to do business with, no real person to talk with. Our account rep Nicholas Misagal offers no assistance.
I just want to close the account

I have a business Yelp account and I'm paying for the services. I had 5 good reviews from clients that were contacted via Call to Action and hired our company. One day I only saw 3 reviews Yelp said 2 were not recommended so I called customer services and I was told it is a software managing the reviews and they can't do anything about it so I express my intentions on closing my page and I was told that I can do what ever I want with it when ever I want to. This morning I logged in to my page and I see another review is showing as not recomendable so this is leaving me with 2 reviews only. I called again and they said not to worry about it because the two reviews I have are 5 stars and not affecting my rating, what they don't get is that it does affect, personally if I'm looking at a business with 2 reviews and at a business with more reviews guess who will I call? So now Yelp will make me look fraudulent to the rest of the clients who will see 3 reviews as not recommended and they will think that I'm making fake reviews on my page. I'm so disappointed with Yelp.

Company carged me $500 even after the $300 free credit. Guess how many leads/Clients I received... 1. Cannot reach right channels through calling and it is always you fault for everything.

Very unhappy with Yelp. They charged me for ads that I didn't approve. They act like giving you a credit of $300 is such a wonderful thing. Yet what they don't tell you is the ad does not discontinue once you reach the amount. Instead it will continue to run it and they will charge your card without even giving you an invoice first. I called after it first happened the guy wouldn't refund me that first charge of over $220 instead he said all they can do is give me another credit of $300... And even though we were discussing what had just happened... he held back information and did not inform me that they were going to be charging me a second month in a row this time around $90! This was something he could have warned me about ahead of time instead I was blindsided (a second time!). I decided to go ahead and take advantage of the second $300 credit they gave me and was watching the ad very closely this time. I had stopped the ad but some how the ad was restarted without my knowledge and I was just charged another $50 which overdrew my personal account. I'm extremely frustrated with them and refuse to do anymore business with them... they are just going to scam you for every penny they can and will never give you a refund for the money they take from you. This should be illegal! On top of that you can't even post your logo without paying a daily fee... Who does that?!

I, like many others here was offered $300 free ad credits. As a small business owner I thought this would be a great opportunity to drum up more traffic to my site and get more sales. Unfortunately Yelp's business model completely takes advantage of business owners. I signed up for the program and did not hear anything else from Yelp. Not a call, not an email, not even a 'here's how you're doing on our platform.'. Two months later I notice an almost $200 charge taken from my bank account. There was no communication about any impending charge, no detail about why a charge was assessed and no explanation. When I called a representative, she was rude, condescending and threatened to end the call when I asked to speak to a manager. She refused to offer a refund or allow me to speak to a supervisor, instead saying she'd have one call me back in 24-48 hours. Yeah, I'm not holding my breath. It actually seems more like these 'account managers' are only there to tell you 'no we aren't giving you a refund, we are keeping your money." She didn't offer any apologies, accept any responsibility or try to accomodate me in the least. DO NOT ACCEPT ANY FREE OFFERS FROM THEM! It is a scam to reel you in and take your hard earned money. If you do, read ALL of the fine print, check in to the account daily to see your progress and set a reminder to cancel that crap AS SOON AS THE $300 runs out because Yelp will NOT give you any update on how the ads are performing or when to expect a bill or a chance to opt out.

I had Emily called me to advertise on Yelp I was going on vacation then so I have told her to call me back she called me a few times but I very wrong timing when we finally read all the reviews and we decided not to move forward and I told her that I wasn't going to move forward she was very nasty to tell me that I should have told her a month ago she wouldn't have wasted her time maybe in the future I will have thought of putting my business in Yelp but after that response in the way that she reacted though it's my answer I will never use this company very very pushy

RIPPED ME OFF and 354 others as well. REPORT TO THE FTC AND BBB, STOP letting YELP Rip people off for hundreds and thousands of dollars. SUBMIT FTC COMPLAINT: *******357 SUBMIT BBB COMPLAINT: https://www.bbb.org/scamtracker/reportscam I was called by a representative and told he wanted to "Give me a Tour" of yelp business. He then told me to click many features and said he was giving me $300 of YELP AD "CREDIT", I ran $250 of ADS when got me 2 Clicks and NO calls, and I was billed $250 for the ADs. So much for the Yelp AD Credit huh? I reported the account manager who maliciously lead me into this mess and they "investigated him" and reviewed the 1 hour phone call of my wasted time and deception and refused to issue a refund. Thanks for the $125 clicks to my website. Stick with ANY other advertising platform.

First my business have a lot of review from my client but noon of them published. If you don't give ads they publish you reviews. I tried their ads for 3 months and did not get a single leads. They called me a lot so I said let me try again for a week daily $15 plus $5 upgrade package and after 8 days ( from 16 Nov till 24th Nov) I canceled the adds. And they charged me $213.85 plus $36.68 and i just got 6 leads, Once i called the yelp they told me that we charge per click they told me that in 8 days you had 26 click that is why it cost you $213.85. I told them the person that she called me she said you will only charged $15 per day.
I called them again why they charge me $36.68 they said it is the upgrade package cost.
Please don't sign up because they don't remove your company once you ask them to remove it they only give us a paper that shows that your company get closed than we will remove your business from our page.
They are scamming people and you don't get any leads and they don't publish your reviews.

I recently signed our business up on yelp to get our name out there. Same day a sales rep from yelp called me to set up an appt, Keith. Next day he called and briefly told me about how our competitors are getting a lot of business through yelp. He gave me a walk through of the website that pretty much lead to the page where you plug in your credit card info. I told him I didnt have the company card with me at the moment and that it was something I would need to discuss with the owner and think about before we plan on paying. He said its no problem, that I could put in my PERSONAL card info for now until I get ahold of the company card info. Definitely wasnt comfortable doing that. He sounded really annoyed that I wouldnt purchase right at the moment. I kept telling him it was something we would have to think about before buying, but that we were still interested. He wasnt having it though, just kept pushing. Ultimately I told him yo give me a day to discuss with the owner, he said fine and goodbye and quickly hung up on me. Completely threw me off, dont plan on using yelp now