Every time I mention my not-entirely-positive feelings about Yelp on The Range, a parade of the site’s rabid supporters hit our comment section proclaiming that I’m jealous or stupid or whatever, but if Yelp is such a spectacular outlet for the voice of the everyday consumer, why are advertisers complaining the results are fixed?
But while Yelp is growing, Mattress City’s Patey said his business is suffering. “We are being sabotaged because we are not interested in paying $350 a month,” he said.Patey said he had several months of positive reviews last summer, but a couple days after he rejected a Yelp salesperson’s pitch about advertising on the site, he saw his positive reviews disappear, leaving one negative review at the top of his company’s Yelp page.
He was also threatened by a Yelp employee, he said. On the last of several phone calls in which Patey asked why he needed the advertising if he already had positive reviews, the salesperson told him,”You are about to find out,” and hung up on him, Patey said. After that, Mattress City didn’t have a positive review on its page for five months, he said.
Today his Yelp page displays two negative reviews and one positive — even though there are 35 additional filtered reviews, 32 of which carry five stars. But readers can only access those other reviews by clicking on a nearly invisible link at the bottom of the page called “35 Filtered” and passing the distorted-text security measure….
Besides these recent cases, 15 complaints have been filed against Yelp at the Washington Attorney General’s Office since January 2009. Half of them raised similar issues.
This article appears in Aug 2-8, 2012.
The exact same thing has happened to 8 of my business colleagues in different parts of the country. The pitch is the same, the amount for the advertising is always different. I’m guessing they base it on either the size of the market they’re in or the size of the company. I used to be a heavy user of Yelp – not any more. They are extortionists.
Now, I’ll sit back and wait for the rabid Yelpers to come over and tell me I’m wrong…jealous..etc.
I am a small business owner and find Yelp to be a site that does not promote fair and equal treatment to the businesses that are on the site. My company has 19 reviews, the total star average would be 4.75 stars, which is not perfect, but really who is. The issue I have is that only 2 reviews are showing and 17 are “filtered” giving me a 2.5 star rating. They are displaying less than 12% of the reviews posted, which to me is not an accurate depiction of my actual company reputation.
By showing this inaccurate view of our company I believe they are committing fraud, defamation and libel. The excuse they hide behind is their filter algorithm. Well I am not buying it any further. I started a Facebook Page to try and get a clearer picture of whether this problem is Nationwide and to what extent it runs. I would like to see if other companies are having the same issue I am having and to see examples of this. Visit the Facebook page and post your thoughts, they won’t be filtered.
Yelp Defamation Facebook Page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Yelp-Defamat…
Isn’t that called extortion? Protection racketeering? The site is obviously NOT for consumer benefit, just another place all about making money from advertising. No wonder I rarely see much more than whining when I bother to read reviews on their site… likely from other local stores in competition for the same business…
I am A small bussiness owner as well. I just started my company this year, and already I have 5 great comments! Too bad they are all filtered. I even lost the comment that was on my yelp page for three months after I never retured yelps phone calls about advertising. I actually have a phone meeting with them tomorrow about advertising for $350 a month, but now that I see how they operate I will look else where.
Yelp blows. Who has the time and patience to sit through a six-paragraph, blow-by-blow retelling of one individual’s visit to Baja Fresh? If I want to try a place, I try it. If it sucks, I don’t go back. I don’t need Yelp to tell me where to go.
Why did you do an article based on a business in Everett, Washington and not Tucson? In my eye the Yelp fliter works. All of those reviews were in a very short time period, and really is a matress store so interesting that it would populate 34 reviews in a week? All 34 reviews were from people with that being their only review, most had no pictures and two of the reviews were from Stewart himself-which is a violation of the content guidelines.
Nice job plagiarizing!!!!!!!!!!! This article was written by the Seattle Times 8/2/2012! http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2018837016_yelp03.html
“But while Yelp is growing, Mattress City’s Patey said his business is suffering. “We are being sabotaged because we are not interested in paying $350 a month,” he said.
Patey said he had several months of positive reviews last summer, but a couple days after he rejected a Yelp salesperson’s pitch about advertising on the site, he saw his positive reviews disappear, leaving one negative review at the top of his company’s Yelp page.
He was also threatened by a Yelp employee, he said. On the last of several phone calls in which Patey asked why he needed the advertising if he already had positive reviews, the salesperson told him,”You are about to find out,” and hung up on him, Patey said. After that, Mattress City didn’t have a positive review on its page for five months, he said.
Today his Yelp page displays two negative reviews and one positive — even though there are 35 additional filtered reviews, 32 of which carry five stars. But readers can only access those other reviews by clicking on a nearly invisible link at the bottom of the page called “35 Filtered” and passing the distorted-text security measure.” By Johanna Somers
Truth: You perhaps haven’t read a blog before, but we’re quoting that article, hence the indent and the link to the Seattle Times article in the introductory paragraph.
when I read about mattress city being subjected to the spam filter, I was not surprised to find out that most of the reviews were written on the same day by brand new users (unestablished), and one of them was a blatant “self-review” by Stewart P, the owner of the store also goes by the name Stewart.
The spam filter is overreaching and at times makes mistakes. However, I am very glad the spam filter is doing its job and putting off these people that try to manipulate their own ratings in such a way blatantly against the yelp rules.