Yelp

I wrote a very honest review about Alta Vista Florist in Ottawa. Obviously not good! Owner rebutted with lies, attacking me and displaying very personal information about me and where I lived. So incredibly unprofessional but Yelp allows this. In other words few will leave their reviews up. Meanwhile owner gets all her family to put up 5 star reviews that stay, making her business look unfairly good. Cost myself and others a lot of wasted money.

My wife and i went to Furniture Row / Sofa Mart on this evening with the specific intent of purchasing a living room set but to our demise we walked were not ever greeted by sales person or ever asked how can i assist you with anything not one time and we were there for over an hour as we watched all the sales people at the counter sit laughing and talking to one another as though they were at a bar. What is really too bad is that we did see a set we were very interested in purchasing but we decided against it because of such poor customer service. We have no desire to return to this location to purchase or even look at anything.

About 2 months ago we started business with yelp advertising, after 5 calls everyday we decided to give a shot. Person who was managing the application ensured us that we would get more than 20 leads every month for the budget we specified. Well, turned out that every click we were getting in yelp was costing us $53 dollars, yes you heard it right. $53 per click. That is insane, basically steeling small business money. Please do not fall for this trap. Google ads are much more cheaper than yelp, or facebook ads or anything else I think it would be better than Yelp. SAY NEVER TO YELP

If there is rating below 1 I would choose it, they are shady, manipulative and misleading, always deleting your positive reviews under a shallow excuse that this is automated, until you subscribe and pay by then miracles happen, if you're a customer searching through their app for a good service and products you'll be deceived, on the other side if you created a business account with them you are trapped.

Please stay away from yelp if you are thinking of advertising with them. Once they have your credit card information, they will keep charging frivolous charges on it. They have been trying to charge my credit card for people just visiting my page when in fact, it was only supposed to be charged for client leads. Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.!

Wish I could give them no stars...they stole my money. Nothing but bot calls and bot clicks. Nearly impossible to talk to someone. Charged me $140 for 1 month worth of use that I didn't even realize I signed up for or noticed a difference. Pure garbage. 2 hours of sitting on hold to be told, "sorry, no refund". I was so mad, I wanted to be completely removed from the site and they refused. Highly recommend that you run from Yelp as quick as you can.

These people sweet talked me into doing a ad for my business. I am a one man freelance painter. Well I told them I could not take work until mid April but I all of a sudden get $400 direct withdrawal without my permission. This company needs to be reports to IRS and Justice department, these so called "clicks"
I get $400 charge from clicks in one week! No calls no jobs

I was not expecting to pay anything... then woman gets smart with me when I call in. Yelp just took $400 I need to feed my family! My account bounced!

Whenever I decline to buy their services, they take away the good reviews from the list and broadcast the negative ones more prominently. This is now shape of mafia style of conducting business in digital era.

I recently reviewed a business on their site as well as some other people I know (reviewed the same business). 2 days after I posted my review somebody asked me why it was taken down. Except when I go in my profile all I see is my review and another negative one. Same thing happens to them. Yelp even removed a positive review from years ago so that this businesses rating would remain low! It seems to be their sales tactic- and quite frankly it's wrong!

We were hooked for an advertising promotion with a $450 limit per month and a $150 discount. As other reviews have said, we did not get any bill and after we cancelled, because it was not working at all, the billing online showed a $600 charge for less than a month. That included additional charges of $240 for some booster advertising and competition ads not to be displayed, which we had no idea about!
Absolute thieves! Besides, the ads do not really give any information about leads and how to actually improve your business to attract more people.

Yelp is horrible for small business owners. I tried two months in a row to cancel my membership through the online portal because every time I call support it was a 30-40 min wait. We got zero result from using this company and 8/10 of our clients never had even heard of yelp. I was a sucker for even thinking they could help expand our business and now I am out a couple thousand. DO NOT waste the money that you work so hard for on this company. Customer Service is very low and they continue to give you the run around.

Beware of doing business with this company. They will take your money without giving you real leads. They claimed lots of people clicked on my company profile, yet I never spoke to a real human being even though I requested these supposed leads to call me on the phone so that I could ask them some questions about the type of service they were looking for. I do not believe these were real people but fake leads just to charge me their fraudulent fees, They are really stupid and greedy. If they would have gotten me real leads and fulfilled their end of the agreement they would have stood to make almost $7000 a year from my company in advertising revenue, instead they ripped me off for just under $500 before I cancelled their fraudulent service. Real dummies. You will be sorry if you deal with these scam artists. "F" RATING

While Yelp has gathered a marvelous collection of business reviews, their app hides reviews of their own Yelp business. Why? Maybe its because most of them are from pissed-off advertisers like myself. I tried their pay-per-click scheme, which cost me hundreds of dollars, and brought me ZERO paying customers. Yelp refused to honor the $400 credit that my Yelp sales rep offered to get me to try Yelp advertising in the first place.
If a Yelp salesman entices you with: "Don't you think if somebody clicks on your ad, that they will probably buy your service?" -- Remember my testimony and tell them, "I would be a fool to think that."

As a contractor we value our word more than anything. The man named Chris from yelp made guarantees about leads that we would receive before we ever got charged and told me that he would call in 2 days to finish setting up my account. Both guarantees were proven false when I never heard from Chris again and a month later I was charged $698.54. I never received a single call or email from potential customers. They claimed that I was "clicking on my own page" but still claimed that this was a valid charge. This is a malicious company and contractors, do not trust anything they tell you! If I could value them at zero stars I would have!

Our business never agreed to Yelps terms of service and after we popped up on their site with a negative review written by someone supposedly in San Francisco (we are a small clinic in rural Idaho!) we began receiving calls from Yelp to join their plan and they would help us with outreach and managing our reputation. All for a substantial monthly fee, well substantial to us anyway. When we denied them and told them not to continue us calling we received another negative review. Not from any patient we have ever heard of either! Yelp corporate may not endorse this behavior but it is clear they do not monitor their own sales force. Shame on you! One day I hope the Justice Department shuts you down!

My family-owned construction company was also affected by Yelp's unfair business practices. They make sure the one negative review we had by a customer stays on the website, but then remove two positive ones from long-time customers of ours.

I encourage anyone who has had issues with Yelp to file a complaint on the Federal Trade Commission website about their unfair business practices. This is the website.
https://www.ftc.gov/faq/consumer-protection/submit-consumer-complaint-ftc

Maybe if enough of us take action they will treat us business owners more fairly.

Yelp cold called me and convinced me to sign up for a free trial but requested my card details "to access discount code". My rep said no charges would be made. They immediately began, without my authorization, to fraudulently charge my account. They hit my account 4 times within the first 3 hours. I notified my rep who did not answer my calls or emails. I filed a claim with my bank. Had to cancel my debit card to stop Yelp. My bank said Yelp is known for these fraudulent business practices and pressure sales tactics. Don't get sucked in. They are liars and will bill you even when they have no legal right to do so. I am told that Yelp performs terribly for the exorbitant fees they charge, to make matters even worse. Don't sign up with Yelp unless you want to be ripped off, disappointed, lied to & annoyed to no end!