Yelp for Business Owners

Yelp claims to post unbiased reviews that can not be changed or removed by the business owner, but also claim to use a "computer" to decide whether or not a review is relevant. For our business Yelp has posted the only 2 negative reviews we have received and removed ALL 6 of our positive reviews. When I signed up so that I could at least question it, I got a computer generated response saying it cant br changed because it is a "computer" that decides if the review is relevant. Most ridiculous review site out there! Now that I'm reading these reviews I think maybe the "computer" only finds positive reviews relevant if the business owner is willing to "pay" for it. Customers beware of you use Yelp to research a business. You are likely not getting accurate info.

Signed up for a free profile but near the end of there was an issue with their site. I received a call back from their support people to help resolve the issue. I believed everything was set. Today I check our business accounts and find they billed us 120.00 for an ad campaign we did not ask for and did not use. When I called support they said they don't ask for a card and that if a mistake was made it was our fault and refused to refund the amount. We have not benefitted one bit from Yelp. They are as useless as their customer support is unfriendly.

I am a successful business owner of 18 years plus and yelp is always trying to manipulate us business owners by paying for an ad... and that's the only way that they will put a good reviews on the top... then they allowed someone to post photos of different people that have nothing to do with my business whatsoever and then they claimed the only way to remove that is you have to pay for an advertisement through yelp which is BS I warn everyone do not use yelp it's a manipulative vindictive company

I would not recommend signing up for yelp ads, its definitely not worth it. I have not gotten a single customer from yelp, yet my bill was $500. I now doubt if yelp has some people working just to click these ads. And when I tried to cancel the advertisements, it doesn't go through and I had to wait for support for almost half hr before I could talk to a rude support agent, who squarely puts the blame on me, in a way telling me that I was lying (I guess I lied just to wait for an hour to talk to a rude person).

And one more important note, they don't notify you, about your billing statements or monthly statement.

They offer incentives to customers who write reviews, so you have people who go out of their way to throw a business under the bus and as a business owner Yelp does not look out four your best interest. I tried to remove my business page from their site and was unsuccessful in doing so, that site is such a scam.

Signed up for monthly recurring payments without my knowledge or consent; it took my accountant 8 months to notice. When contacted they told me they didn't care. My business was closed for 5 of these months. Total bunch of scammers that DO NOT CARE about their "customers" (marks) at all.

I wish I could give Yelp a review on Yelp so more people can know how terrible this service is. They basically snuck me into a $200 charge when they told me I would receive a free $300 credit to try their advertising service. I received like $30 from the available money from the credit before my bank account was charged $200. Now, I am trying to get my money refunded and I'm being passed around this ridiculous voice operating system and I was basically hung up on by a customer support member. I don't even write review but I want it to be known that I will never use Yelp for Business Owners again, please don't let them steal your money.

I was being charged about $6.40 per click for my photography business. Ad generated little results. The Yelp salesman did not fully explain the charge per click approach. Other photography competitors can simply click on your ad and drive up your ad cost. I closed my account and will never do business with Yelp biz again.

Don't sign up for the Yelp for Business free profile and CTC ads! They bait you in with a free $300 credit to be used toward the ads, but what they don't tell you is that down the line they will charge you for creating the profile needed to run the ad campaigns. After I created my account, I was charged $110.90 2 months later for the profile itself. The only reason I found out about this charge was through looking at my bank account-- they did not call me, email me, send a letter, or reach out in any way to let me know that they had "spent" my $300 credit and were about to charge me.

YELP offers a free trial opportunity to advertise your business on their platform. During the free trial period, YELP shows you decent engagement with spiffy graphs, charts, etc.

Then, when it comes to the end of the trial period, the very expensive ad campaign (that you automatically enrolled in) has about an 80% reduction in engagement, and almost ZERO website clicks. $15 per engagement, $428. Lol what a joke! You will get more business if you hang a sign on a tree in the wilderness.

YELP for BIZ is a complete waste of money, time and energy.

Yelp reached out to me and stated they were giving $300.00 of free advertising. This is not the case. They sent me to collections for $485.08. I have called numerous times and called when the bill initially happened. The representatives are not pleasant. I was hung up on twice and they were very disrespectful. They stated they attempted to reach me numerous times which they did not nor was my situation handled when I originally called in. This is really messed up. Business owners beware.

Called and offered me free new program for reservations, no charge at all for 3 months, can cancel at any time. My credit card got charged at 2 months, called, took 2 weeks to resolve. Month 3 was charged again, called, this time only took a week to resolve. Wanting to cancel my service, all of a sudden i'll be charged a $700 contract cancellation fee. What happened to it being free to cancel anytime? We are in Arizona, attached are a few AZ reps and reps for reservations.

They are scammer. They claim to offer $300 credit but it's a trick it's for advertising which only use about $2 a week, but you getting charged per clicks averaging about $20. Run! It's false advertisement. They deleted recorded calls and each time you call they act like they never spoke to you. You will end up spending at least $450 in clicks before you realize you been duped

To start... I should have known better than to have trusted them. Normally, I take my time and study reviews and hopefully get word of mouth before making business decisions. I am in a pet sitting business with only my wife. Our business dropped off in January like last year and... Right on time... we get a call from YELP to get our business booming. Looking back I must have been crazy desperate! Because during the sales call I noticed 16 of our hard won Reviews had been AXED... This brought our 26 reviews down to... Yes 10:-( Well, long and short we got three new clients 1 FaceBook TWO word of mouth ZERO YELP. I just been billed $318.00 FOR ZERO results and YELP refused to cut my bill one penny... After waiting on hold for 26 minutes! My fault for trusting a wolf. Beware.

I do not advertise with yelp, first of all because I can't afford it. But, more importantly, because I don't like their practices. In the past I've had legitimate reviews categorized as possibly not legitimate ( my words not their's, I don't remember how they termed it). Today I just noticed that the very first review and the last review posted have both disappeared! No explanation. No indication that they ever existed.

Yelp allows people who are business competitors to make up lies and post them as "reviews". They also allow provable fiction as "reviews" as well, without taking them down, even when you prove them 100% false and dishonest. Sometimes if you are lucky they will move them to a "not recommended" section, but the lies and slander are still there. Proof they care about corporate greed and not their business customers.