Yelp for Business Owners

Like many others here I tried to take advantage of the free ads as a new business startup.
I was painfully surprised to learn over $200 had been drafted from my checking account.
Evidently, somewhere along the line of setting up my yelp account with my new godaddy account, this was activated and then I was charged for leads I never saw or heard from. Can't even see visits on my website. Nothing but a fraud - avoid yelp at all costs.

Their vetting process is silly and makes no sense. Why would you post a main picture of a hair cut under an eyelash extension page, without letting me change it to eyelash extensions and hair. There should be no reason i cant add hair to my page its not that hard. I have all the pictures to prove it. The people on chat are rude and of no help. It costs a small fortune, and i wish we could all find a better site to do the same thing. This review will not be recommended most likely lol.

As a new business, Yelp will send you this wonderful offer of $300 in bonus advertising credit. What they fail to tell you is that the $300 is spread out over 6 months, and during that time they will be screwing you in the back. Within less than 15 days, I paid Yelp $655. I'm a small business; it was a HUGE LOSS for me. Also, it would have been nice if Yelp actually sent me business inquires. Their analytics show a total of 70 clicks on my ad (costing between $8.96-10.38 per click), but I never received a call from anyone telling me they found me through Yelp. And as a new business owner, I always ask. I saw all of the charges too late. When you call them, they tell you this is what you signed -up for for. "Cold Sneers" is what you feel across the telephone line. They are cruel, scammers, heartless, and evil! Run, Run Fast and Never Look Back!

Yelp, how are getting away with this. Legitimate reviews were discounted and reviews from direct competitors are featured front and center; I have a review of my business posted on yelp from a woman (direct competitor) who showed up to a yoga workshop in a mini skirt, disrupted the class by talking about how hung over she was and then wrote a review. When I asked yelp to remove the review as it is a breach of their policies, they refused and tried to force me to sign up with them. Yelp, not in a million years, would I do business with you. Seriously messed up.

Sales Rep::" Erica Bloom" I emailed customer service: please make sure my personal CC# that I gave your agent doesn't get charged! I don't have time to deal with Yelp right now. The owner is no looking to spend any more money on marketing... we will use only what is free service on Yelp. Please confirm you got this message and will make certain my CC# is not charged.
They charged me anyway and now won't give a refund! Horrible customer service! Never do business with YELP! I will fight this through my bank! I'm so furious...

Not waste your money on a yelp ad campaign. Or waste any money whatsoever with yelp. The sales people are also charming but God help you if you need support from their customer care team. They are rude, they talk over you, etc. The sales person I worked with lied about the pricing and, despite setting a budget for $300/mo, I had been billed far over that within two weeks. It is a total scam.

Sign up for yelp on the 23rd with $900 credit. Was charged over $100 on the 28, then another 58 on the 1st. What happened to the credit? Well they keep saying is for additional adds and pay per click. Total lie and their representatives do not answer emails when confronted about charges. No leads received in 8 days. Only 8 days and no clicks so how can I be charged over $150 in less than a week? I called to cancel more than 5 times, each time I was on hold for over 20 minutes, finally the 5th time, I was on hold for 5 minutes and then I get an email saying everything was cancelled but I'm still going to be charged at the end of the month. I did not had any adds running so for them to charge me is a complete scam.
Avoid YELP, craigslist is cheaper and has a better return than YELP, at least the people that calls now they want to hire immediately.

Launched my biz on yelp, then a few days later a guy named mark as yelp advertisement manager called me in a pushy way to pay a couple of hundred dollars for yelp advertisement. I had budget not allowing me to do, then he had to call me every week.
My clients wrote reviews on my yelp page, and yelp software decided those were not recommended. I called yelp customer service for the reasons today 8/13/2017, she simply threw a ridiculous answer-software did the job to determine if the review is recommended. I was confused and had to require more details about how software decides whether or not a good review. Then, she seemed losing her temper, but still didn't answer the question I concerned.
I wonder why Yelp.com would hire these people to work. Seriously, the staffs I talked thru phone, who either passively aggressive or helpless. These people will push the biz owners decide to use alternative--google.com and yahoo.com for their business.

Found a 50 dollar charge on my credit card, then found an extra 83 dollars about to be charged. Called in and there is nothing they can do, did have a 400 dollar credit but since my account wasnt set up with an daily ad buy high enough to qualify for the promotion they had sold me, it didn't stay on the account.

Really unhappy with the sales person and the person on the phone when I called in. She didn't spend any time on the issue just offered to cut off the service. Really hoping they can at least get that right.

We are a 1-year-old company, Yelp had been calling us to upgrade an pay I don't how much money a month... Make long story short we told them we were not interested... Months later we got 2 yelp reviews, what happens, they took them off. Why? We called and the girl on the phone told us it was because the customer posting the reviews did not contact us through Yelp directly... This is B. S, good thing there are other sources to build reviews.

After having a $300 credit explain to me as supplemental add boosters I decided to go with it. In one month they used $25. Some simple math will tell you that to save $300 you have to run ads with Yelp for a full year. This was not properly explain to me. I will be taking legal recourse, $#*! YELP!
Don't pay for it.

Brandon was pushy and eventually signed me up fir yelp ads saying they would be free, only to find later in the week that I was signed up for a very expensive plan. When told I would need to fill out a form in order to be refunded, I said fine, only to find the first question was impossible to answer without contradicting what I already told them. I've called them twice since, and the girl was nice, but the other guy Collin was a pawn. Not happy at all and glad others have come to express their dislike. Oh, and when my payment didn't go through, my 5 star yelp ads were deemed no longer reliable. Of course.

They are the worse company I have ever done business with. They charged my account $570.00 for so called advertising. I never received what they promised. Madeline the territory manager is a scam artist. I think she really needs to evaluate herself as a person as to what she so called offers on the Yelp platform. God doesn't like ugly and when you false promise with no delivery and they charge your client a whopping 570.00 knowing damn well it isn't worth it. Yelp Advertising is a scam and they are despicable. I pray you find a better way of selling your products.

You cant get and keep legit reviews unless you pay them this is not okay.I have had many People tell me they have left my business a review one day I see them.Then I get a call from a unrecognized number with some who has such a strong middle eastern accent I cant understand them so I figure its spam so i hang up cause what's the point I don't understand them any ways then boom my reviews are all gone like they never happened. Like I said its a money grab.

My experience with Yelp is that when you sign up for $300.00 in free ads you will get $300.00 in fake customers! I believe they are Yelp employees pretending to be customers while burning up your free ad credits. I had tried it numerous times so I see what happens. A common example is I get an email from Yelp Biz claiming to be a customer interested in my service. I reply 5 seconds after the email and they reply "we got some one else" or "we don't need the service anymore!" This happened multiple times. Its a scam in my experience!

This is clearly based on previous reviews what Yelp does. The salesman calls tells you you're getting free ads explains it in a way where you believe the first 3 months are free but in actuality its not. They tell you how the billing works on the call but its presented in a way that its after your trial then you look up 2 weeks later and you've got a bill. Called and they lied and said it was explained yet won't let you listen to the so call recorded call. It's all a scam and gimmick and they getting over on small business owners pretending they help startups with free credits.

Like many new businesses, I was convinced that Yelp would be the answer for getting new clients to use my services. I signed on early December 2022. I received my first bill payment (automatic) and noticed it was for $535, but I already paid $272 and $17. I received one job lead from them, which made $150 total. So once I realized that it was not worth using their services, I cancelled Jan 19th. Then I got a final bill of $625 due. This was for only 19 days of services that netted ZERO job leads. What a joke, I ended up settling for 30% less because I pay my debts but still $435 for nothing gained in return. I paid $1239 total with only a $150 return. That is only a 12% Return on Investment. I was promised much better. I literally wrote a blank check. I definitely do not recommend their services or any other lead generating services.

Yelp sales invited us to try their business ads, after I tried for a month for $450, I found they can not bring any real order, just a couple of inquiries with no real intention, I stopped their ad service plan on January 2021(Attached image). And they didn't bill me since February. Today, when I checked my account, I found they have started to bill me $450 monthly since June. This is ridiculous, I never know leaving YELP a credit card is so risky! They can bill you monthly without your knowledge at all! Actually, someday in May, one of their sales emailed me to tell me to finish my business's ad page and turn on it. I didn't reply to her, did she turn on the Ads in order to finish her sales quota?