Yelp

I signed up for a business account on Yelp and was completely disappointed with their service. I'm giving them one star because they are only concerned with taking a small business person's advertising dollars over helping that small business gain customers and succeed.

I started paying for advertising with Yelp a few months ago, but stopped as soon as they accused me of soliciting reviews from my customers. Apparently, they use some type of software that tests a reviewer's past history of submitting reviews and uses other algorithms to decide is the review is legitimate because they hid three reviews that customers posted about on my service by telling me that their software found those reviews to be inauthentic because their software says I asked my customers to post them.

This is a lie and when I escalated my dissatisfaction for being accused of soliciting the reviews to their customer service, they read a script over and over about their antiquated review policy. So when I stopped paying for advertising on their site, the Account Manager called me and had the mitigated gall to ignore my complaints about the reviews that they didn't recommend. I also asked them to remove one of the reviews that the customer wanted removed but just didn't have time to do it, but they said it was against their policy.

The account manager went on to tell me that since I had only spent $1000, that this was the reason why I was only getting two clicks per day in their pay per click advertising program.

Ironically, since I stopped paying to advertise on Yelp Biz, I continue to get those same two quote requests per day on Yelp. This makes the money that I was paying to advertise on it, unnecessary.

The AM proceeded to tell me that in order to get more clicks that would lead to more quote requests, that I was competing with other businesses that were paying upwards of $10,000 dollars each month to advertise on Yelp to get more clicks.

This is totally ridiculous and their review policy is outdated and delusional when they take a non-paying consumer's review over a paying advertiser's requests to post the hidden reviews that Yelp lists as "not recommended" because of their faulty software programs. I also responded to each customers review in a manner deemed professional and rational to resolve any dissatisfaction.

I will never spend another dollar on Yelp nor will I look at or take into consideration any of their reviews before I make a purchase. If Yelp was really concerned about their paying business client's ability to gain more business by advertising on their site, they wouldn't make such a big deal about reviews when certain circumstances make a review inauthentic anyway.

Look for this company to fall in the next few years if they don't change this policy! I'm going to post this review in Google as well.

WARNING to consumers who live in Az. There is a flower shop in Cave Creek "AVAS FLORIST" do not do business with I repeat donot do business with them. I did this past weekend ordered flowers for my grandson and his new wife, on there web page the flowers look pretty. Mario promised me they would be deliverd to them on sat April 30th. When I checked my E-Mail to print receipt I saw they were going to receive them on May 1st. Then I spoke to Tony I told him flowers needed to be sent before 11:00 the were checking out of hotol at that time, they had to wait for the ugly flowers more than 1/2 hour For the price of the flowers and what they received was HORRIBLE, wrong color flower vase no ribbon that I asked for. When I called the next day to complain I received no help from any of the agents. I told one of the agents I wouldnt take these flowers to a funeral I would be ashamed. The arrangement was small and some of the little flowers were wilted and this cost me $84.00. BEWARE OF AVAS FLORIST IN CAVE CREEK AZ.

YELP is one of the worst companies on earth. Here is an example of how worthless YELP is and how YELP spreads garbage. This person's review was allowed to stay posted to our YELP business page. Wilkinson Wine Cellar LLC has no record of an order from anyone with the name JAMES G from Boca Grande, Florida. This person is fraudulently describing a purchase made by another person (suspected LYNDA VIEHA G), not themselves. The actual customer also violated our "Terms of Service" three times within a single order. When a customer demands that a shipment of wine occur outside of the temperature ranges, we guarantee, they accept 100% of the risk for the condition of the product. It is a violation of our service to ask for any type of refund, return, or adjustment to their order. We cannot be responsible for customers having their orders shipped during times of the year that would absolutely damage their wine. This person, James G from Boca Grande, Florida also initially sent a harassing and threatening email in response to our professional email response concerning the issue. These types of fraudulent reviews and customer behavior, should not be acceptable on Yelp. Please read below our complete email response to James G and Lynda Vieha G of Placida, Florida. We plan to make an example of their extremely poor behavior and of customers that we DO NOT WANT on our website. James and Lynda have also been reported and added to a number of merchant databases of those people identified as undesirable customers. Given the nature of the pathetic and repulsive platform of YELP, we will "socialize" our seller experience on our website where you will have no opportunity to respond or contradict our opinions.

As a business owner I found I had a listing on Yelp (didn't put it there myself) so as one would expect I went ahead and claimed it to ensure the proper information would be used and no one else would try to sneak in and claim it. Over time I decided to ask some of our clients from time to time to leave a review there as we have done on various other sites but mostly use the BBB since the reviews are verified.

Since we have quite a few repeat customers I ended up talking to at least two who I had asked to leave a review but to date show 0 reviews on our company. Both told me they HAD left a review. One had never left a review before so I chalked that up to maybe they didn't know what they were doing. But the other said they leave reviews quite a bit mostly at restaurants but once or twice at shops for car repairs and such.

Well it took some time and having several customers leave reviews that it finally showed the truth - each time someone left a review within a day or two I would get another sales call from Yelp trying to sell us premium services. Each time the answer was no and each time after a review posted and was visible but their offer refused... the review disappeared. Not once, not two or three times - EVERY SINGLE REVIEW... every time a phone call trying to sell and every time I said no the review disappeared.

So it's very clear now that YELP REMOVES GOOD AND VALID REVIEWS UNLESS THE COMPANY OWNER WILL PAY. Now a bad review... they will definitely post when you don't pay. Not good ones. So if you are desperate to keep one or two good reviews up then pay them but that's the only way it happens. And now I know it's A HUGE FREAKING SCAM.

Let's start from the beginning! I have an account with vagaro. It said Yelp would post my business for free so I signed up. Literally once I signed up I have three people called me about free ads. The third person I spoke with was Tomoya! She told me I had 900 free ad advertising credits for signing up! So, now to the phone call she told me all about the free ads and how the people that did it got 2 to 3 customers and blah blah and it's free credits all I have to do is put my card on file and a pre authorization charge between $20-$30 would be charged but it would fall off. The first charge I received was a charger of $27.05 I immediately emailed Tomoya and she said oh it should fall off now I have a charge of $570.00 now I'm going through a dispute with Yelp because they said I did this. Mind you since I was driving Tomoya told me they not allowed to do this but she could fix some things for me and asked me once I got home to fix my about me and etc. it's been a week now and Yelp finally calls me back saying it's no way she was on my account and they have ip addresses and they had listened to the phone call which I know they didn't because if they did they would of heard her say she sign in for me, they would of heard her say free 900 credits, they would of heard me tell her I have sprint and my internet connection is not strong while I'm on the phone and asked her could she do it for me! I'm extremely upset and I wouldn't recommend anyone doing business with Yelp. I had to call multiple times I sent multiple emails I was hung up on by Justin and today I was just over it! DO NOT USE YELP GO TO GOOGLE ITS FREE and you wouldn't have to worry about unnecessary charges!

There was a point in my life that I loved Yelp and rose in RANKS and became an Elite!

This is my warning to Yelpers who post reviews including Elite Yelpers!
Don't waste your time doing reviews on Yelp. Yelp is using you to write reviews to promote their service in which they blackmail businesses. Use Foursquare, Tripadvisors or SiteJabber to do your reviews.

I made several reviews on several doctors and all these reviews stayed up for several years. Some even stayed up over 5 years and a few of them got many support from other Yelpers and Elites. When the doctors eventually started paying for their monthly membership fees my negative reviews about them disappeared and Yelp claimed that I was making personal attacks on doctors instead of the businesses.

SECOND, my Whole YELP experience became a nightmare when one of the doctors sued me to Stop me from exercising my 1st Amendment rights even when my review was similar to many other victims of this doctor! Yelp started removing other reviews by this doctor who started opening up multiple locations. Yelp did nothing and even cooperated with the doctor by removing my negative review even when this doctor had over 100 complaints against him on Yelp and with the State Medical board! I ended up costing me $20k to defend myself!

In conclusion, I was USED by Yelp and others feel the same! I did so much to HELP Yelp and to promote Yelp. I even carried Yelp business cards and suggested businesses to get themselves registered with Yelp.

There is absolutely NO REASON to use Yelp for business reviews because all the negative reviews are removed by monthly membership fees that Yelp extort from Business Owners!

Yelp is a horrible site filled with entitled snobs who proudly wear their 'elite' badges, questionable business tactics and mob mindset.

I'll start with the admission that I was once an elite yelper. At first I really loved the site and getting involved with the yelp community though after some time I learned that yelp really isn't as wholesome as it would have the masses believe.

Basically what yelp has created is a platform for self important people (aka 'elites') to whine. There are some great elite reviewers out there who do take the time to write thought out and fair reviews however they make up the vast minority. Elites are the most entitled people in existence and use their badge which gives them immunity against the review filter to their advantage and will say anything they want about a business and usually top off the review with a obligatory catch phrase or inside joke. Aren't they clever? They do this because they can and will continue to do so because they get away with it.

Yelp also creates a mob mentality with it's monthly review challenges and events that the community managers create. This makes the elites feel so special as they get invites to the most exclusive parties where they are given free booze. This is a complete contradiction of one of yelp's terms of service because elites are being given freebies in exchange for writing reviews. If you take a close look at the terms of service that yelp itself posts on it's site you'll see that getting freebies in exchange for reviews is a big no no in yelp's eyes, though apparently it's ok when you're getting the freebies through yelp itself.

The whole issue of the extortion claims against yelp is a pretty hot button issue. Many business owners all across the globe have come forward claiming that a yelp rep offered to remove their negative reviews if they pay for advertising, The excuse many yelp elites will offer for this is that what the yelp rep is actually saying is that with the fee for advertising they can include the service of a yelp employee to personally go through your reviews and check for legitimacy outside of the automatic review filter. If this individual finds legit reviews caught in the filter these will be released. However this service costs yelp money so that is why this service can only be offered if the business coughs up dollars for advertising. Whether this is true or not is anyone's guess, I however find it hard to believe that billions of business owners are completely misunderstanding what is being told to them by the yelp sales reps.

Bottom line, yelp is a terrible site and does not provide honest feedback on businesses. It is a site used by many as a place to post their personal vendettas and in many cases flat out lies. I have abandoned yelp for good and suggest you do the same!

I have thrice or more tried to post a review of a very dangerous apartment complex in Canyon Country California. However, the owner and the draconian manager keep taking down the review. This is very dangerous, because the REASON WE MOVED THERE in January 2016 was based on Yelp! Reviews, and the genuine ones did not appear until months later. Now there have been so many bad reviews it is hard for the manager to keep up on her removal process so upon reading you'll see a bunch of genuine 1 star reviews and a score of 5 star review from her patsies. Here is my latest review, and please tell me why Yelp! Finds it worthy of taking down:

DIAMOND PARK APARTMENTS, CANYON COUNTRY CA

I'll keep this simple. Cara treated us horribly from the moment we encountered her. Our disabilities towards poor indoor air quality were ignored. Reporting the neighbors, who moved in new tenants on a rotating sub-let basis and who were constantly slamming the doors, walls, and ceilings with sometimes as many as 20 children and several families below us, were ignored. We had no heat in November. Chemical smells drifted from neighboring apartments that made us ill and made everyone who experienced them hallucinate. A tree fell over because there is almost zero maintenance, and it smashed a carport and the car below. Shady people come and go night and day, pause, someone comes to their door, and they drive off. Most have brand new cars with dealer plates in an otherwise poor community. We were not allowed to view our unit until the day we moved in, and the carpets were so worn they became black with filth again 2 weeks later, yet Cara is trying to charge us to replace all of them at many thousands of dollars. We had a health inspector over and he noted numerous building defects.

There is NOTHING in this review that needs to be taken down, nor is it inconsistent with other reviews of this property. It is neutral, fact based, has supporting evidence, and is from 1st hand experience. There are absolutely no allegations in this review. Everything is substantiated from first hand experience of an 11 month tenant. Do not remove it, nor allow the owners to cause it to be pulled down, Yelp. This is your third warning. If you do remove it again, I shall take every effort to announce your actions across social media, as is my right and obligation. Thank you.

Cant stand them deleting my own customers reviews from my page for my company because they THINK its fake

Yelp permits reviewers to give inaccurate ratings for personal reasons that have nothing to do with the business and the service that is provided. Yelp has no interest in helping the consumers who read the reviews. Yelp rewards reviewers for quantity with no regard for the legitimacy of the reviews and ratings. Yelp obviously has no concerns for the businesses that have listings.

A reviewer had written inaccurate information about my business and the way that the services are done. I replied to explain that the services were altered, due to her needs and demands (which I did explain to her at the time of the appointment). I needed for the public to understand this.

A year after my reply, the reviewer changed her rating to one star, due to her dislike of my response to her review. Side note: This violates at least 5 of Yelp's policies, which I pointed out to Yelp but I was repeatedly ignored, with no response or explanation.

She hadn't been back since the first time, so there couldn't have been any issues with a decrease in the value of the business or the service.

When I reported this to Yelp, I got an insincere reply that "they allow for the reviewers to stand behind their reviews " but it was so obvious that they didn't even read about the issue! The new review completely contradicts the original review and isn't really accurate or consistent enough to stand behind! If they would have read the reviews they could have seen that.

It was recommended for me to respond to her. This advice was not only unhelpful but has caused harm. There was clearly no way for me to correct this issue by attempting to communicate with the reviewer, since that was the actual cause of this issue! This was why I was hoping that I could rely on Yelp to assist!

I asked for an explanation of how this was acceptable but was ignored after 4 separate attempts to get a response.

It's unfair for a business to be an open target for someone with personal issues who is attempting to hurt the livelihood of a business, where they've only had a positive experience with no problems involving the service that has been provided.

I have attached a copy of the review. It's actually stated that of the 2 ratings given to my business, neither are what she really believes and that the only reason for lowering the rating is due to her dislike to my response to her review (having nothing to do with the business and services). This shows that she's not a reliable source and that the updated review/rating is not legitimate, based on her own words.

This isn't helpful for the Yelp community who is searching for a potential business or helping for them to make an informed decision. They're not going to get any use out of reading about her being spiteful. Yelp has found this to be acceptable and for this reason I know that Yelp could never be trusted.