Yelp

Don't ever advertise with Yelp. The worst possible place to spend your money. Stay away. They never post customer reviews. Disgraceful

They try to rip me off asking for a monthly payment otherwise burn my business. I said no and give 1 start review

There is No value at all since Yelp keeps deleting negative reviews for some specific organizations.

Yelp is a useless bully, just like Donald Trump. They hold small businesses hostage with their tactics.

It's a toxic website and predatory. They live off of businesses paying them to remove bad reviews. Not cool.

Cancel over a month ago, they are still taking money out of my account. Don't give them your Credit card.

Look, I've been on Yelp since 2006. Like all crowdsourced opinion sites, it had merit when it first launched, and a couple of years thereafter. There was a cool community of like-minded people who enjoyed food and drink, and in the Talk section, we'd BS about where we ate, or joked around with each other.

Many of us got dates.

Then, as with all sites that have grown beyond their usefulness, they have degenerated into a cesspit of angry and elitist snots who think their opinion means something, or being a Yelper means anything to a business owner other than "This person is nothing but a headache."

With crowdsourcing, the more people that flood in, intelligence dips precipitously. The ability to write a cohesive sentence deteriorates. The Talk section becomes porn, and the business model essentially extorts money out of small businesses who struggle to get their feet off the ground.

What you won't see is anybody representing Yelp bothering to stop by here or any other site ratings to defend themselves. They do not care. Nobody has ever received a legitimate correspondence from Yelp that wasn't a canned response or form letter... written in that sickening, kintergarden-teacher, sing-songy prose, signed off by an obviously fake pseudonym like Dino, Bam-Bam or Scooby (I kid you not.)

They don't value the contributors, they don't value businesses. They are the worst exercise in Machiavellian corruption online, next to porn and outright scams.

Why did I give it two stars? I got laid a few times, so Yelp has its limited purpose.

My reviews on Yelp have been challenged every single day by the business. My original review took near an hour to write & was an extensive honest account of the nightmare that's taken over my husband & my life for last several months. Everything I stated was real life facts which actually occurred. After the 1st removal, I re-read the regulations, edited a few names used, took out any remarks of the biz not being ethical (smh!) & reposted. This then went on to occurs 5 more times, daily. My very last account simply said in ONE SENTENCE, I had zero respect as the business had Yelp take down my reviews & shame on the both of them! How could they remove that?!?! I USED TO LOVE YELP! BUT THEY'VE PROVEN BEYOND ANY DOUBT IF THE BIZ GREASES THEIR HAND, THEY WILL REMOVE ALL BAD REVIEWS! SHAMEFUL! Yelp's reasons for removing the last 4 reviews, which were perfectly compliant, was that I never shopped at that location! HTF do they know that?!? & when do you need to show a receipt to post a review?!?!?! YELP IS BIASED & UNFAIR! Shame on you Yelp! SHAME!

Yelp.com uses all kinds of spy cookies and other means to infiltrate consumer-based reviews. In simple English, their programmers have (and use) ways to discover who you are, your identity, email, and possibly a lot of other information.
Considering they lead you to think you are reporting possibly anonymously, it is not such whatsoever. Example: I wrote a legitimate review about an optometrist who has really bilked me for the money using a pseudonym. They had someone respond to my review presumably from the optometrist company. Indeed his name sounds familiar but it is fake because the respondent also offers another name.

Here's the telling fact: Respondent addressed me by a previous pseudonym, one I had stopped using over a year ago. Respondent named a franchise that had closed down over two years ago that I had once used satisfactorily. I may even have given them a positive review a few years ago. Respondent could not have possibly dredged up all this information (previous pseudonym, reference to previous glasses at previous franchise as a basis for customer compliment) in just a few minutes (the responder from the optometrist posted just after I finished the review on a late by east coast time weekend evening).

So it's obviously Yelp has IT specialist posing as respondents from the company but addressing the customer using details obtained from previous Yelp postings and reviews.

We also have reason to believe Yelp is not a safe site. Try to open Yelp as a proxy website from IE and it will not open if you have a decent safety wall. Warning that the site has suspicious attack code embedded. I don't think it's unsafe, but I do believe they use spy cookies.

The review on the optometrist was warranted because, if I make a Trumpian assertation, it was. The franchise may change, but my visit was unpleasant enough that I did not want to go back. They work at being intimidating, and the doctor at being vaguely harassing. And the place is overpriced. And they take advantage especially of middle-aged women of color. That is my opinion and impression. I share it because I want to prevent other women from being exploited. It's just the decent (not at all sociopathic as 4% reviewer believes) thing to do.

I created a Yelp account in 2012 for my small business, since then I've had 17 reviews from 2013-present, all "5-stars". Of these Jaimie S. Has written 41 reviews, Denise W. Has written 10 reviews, Jeanette T. Has written 5 reviews, Rebekah K. Has written 3 reviews, Julie T. Has written 8 reviews, Derek G. Has written 3 reviews, Meg M. Has written 3 reviews, Jessica T. Has written 6 reviews, William M. Has written 5 reviews, Chad H. Has written 8 reviews, and so on. Of these 17 reviews only 3 are being shown, and none of the ones I just noted above were accepted, though each had their other reviews approved.

To be clear, in the past Yelp showed significantly more of these same reviews, just over half of them. I contacted Yelp in 2017 and asked why they would not recommend half of my reviews since each was a client, and can easily be verified as such since there is a developer notice on their website, and their website is included in my portfolios? Yelp's reply was that their review approval system is automated and they have no control over it. Since I contacted Yelp in 2017 I received a sales call and/or email from Yelp constantly, often 2 or more times a week. I had noted to their sales staff on more than one occasion that as a small business I could not afford to pay for their service. When the calls and emails didn't stop I asked them to take me off of their list (not to contact me again). Within a week all of my reviews (previously approved) were hidden except the 3 that are shown now. Hiding my legitimate reviews was clearly a retaliatory effort by Yelp to punish my business.

Yelp notes that "Your trust is our top concern, so businesses can't pay to alter or remove their reviews". This sounds GREAT if it was true. It's not.