Rachel A.

A couple weeks ago I did a review of a store I had gone to on Yelp. It was a 1 star review with a factual review. Within 24 hours my review was removed and I received an email saying that it was taken down due to a conflict of interest. When I tried contacting support about the issue asking how it was a conflict of interest I received a response saying that it was a final decision. No one would tell me HOW it qualified as a conflict of interest. I tried reposting the review with a couple changes. I did not mention any other companies in any of my attempts to post my review. Then out of nowhere my account was deactivated. They never gave me any reason why.
After doing some research and talking to a few people that go to that store on occasion I found out a couple interesting things. The first being that this store had every bad review of their store removed. Second bit of info was that they knew people who had been able to have such things done by paying someone working at Yelp. The third revelation was that a family member of the owner of the store works in the support section of Yelp.
It is wrong. No one should be able to pay or ask family to remove a review just because they don't like it. It is dishonest to customers and bad business.
The store owner had even responded to my review in an insulting way. Everyone I know have all agreed they do not trust Yelp.