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Yelp Angers Its Merchants By Deleting Their User Accounts
from the yelp-me-rhonda dept
Review site Yelp caused quite a ruckus this week when they deleted a bunch of user accounts that they deemed to be gaming the system. Many of the users whose accounts were deleted were business owners -- Yelp accused them of trading positive reviews with other business owners, quid pro quo. Yelp has had a tumultuous relationship with its merchants in the past because of negative reviews from Yelpers; some merchants had even tried to ban Yelpers from even visiting their establishments. This tension is unfortunate, since Yelp makes its money from selling these very merchants their services. That said, hopefully Yelp has not overlooked the larger problem that still exists on their site: an overwhelming number of reviews per establishment without any good tools for filtering or determining trust. Furthermore, Yelp has become quite a target for "Foodies," who complain that the reviews from users are pedestrian and inconsistent; Eater has an entire column devoted to the "shortcomings and nuances of the Yelp empire." Despite all of the negative attention that Yelp has been getting, the most important factor is whether or not it continues to grow as a useful resource for users. Yelp just recently surpassed Citysearch in number of users in March of this year, so perhaps they are on the right path.
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
If there is too much 'spam' of review type sites - like other things, their value will drop to nil, because they are no longer unbiased - not that they are unbiased now...
But some seem credible.
Seems like things are cool on the web until the mass of 'dumb users'/spammers manage to find it, heh
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I was told by a coffee shop owner that I should be shot in the face and that if he sees me in his store he'd break my nose.
My review wasn't as bad as the coffee that I had there that I reviewed. After his whining and threatening, I went back. Apparently I went there on a bad day and the coffee the first time was completely undrinkable. Much better the 2nd time and I know that he's venting on me for his failing shop. But still. Maybe I should post his yelp mails to me as a new review.
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Re: coffee shop owner
Yeah, post his messages, and maybe file a police report for assault. He can tell you to leave his store, but he cannot threaten you, especially because you said something that he did not like.
Any honorable merchant, especially in food service, would ask you what he could do to improve.
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Yelp
Interesting information about Yelp. I do not use the Web site very often but have been reading about it quite a bit recently.
I wrote a blog posting about Yelp and their supposed "strong arming" of businesses earlier this week.
http://kreuzer33.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/yelp-in-trouble/
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Yelp Executives: Confused , Panicked & Immature
Here's another blog with quotes from Nish Nadaraja and Stephanie Ichinose , both executives of Yelp. Makes you wonder what the hell is going over at Yelp. Is anyone in charge over there?
http://phillips.blogs.com/goc/2008/07/the-yelp-mess.html
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Yelp Elite Party ...Total IQ of all in building = 97
Here's a site with pictures from a recent Yelp Elite party.
This is an event where Yelp wastes $100,000 of their investors money rewarding those unemployed and uneducated Yelpers who have enough time to write 500 or more reviews.
Check out the obscene picture on the bottom right . Two slobbering Yelp Elite ( one is breastfeeding another , and stupid enough to allow a picture to be taken).
Yes indeed, these ARE the Yelp Elite.
Nish Nadaraja and Stephanie Ichinose are also in attendance.
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Yelp Elite Party ...Total IQ of all in building = 97
Here's a site with pictures from a recent Yelp Elite party.
This is an event where Yelp wastes $100,000 of their investors money rewarding those unemployed and uneducated Yelpers who have enough time to write 500 or more reviews.
Check out the obscene picture on the bottom right . Two slobbering Yelp Elite ( one is breastfeeding another , and stupid enough to allow a picture to be taken).
Yes indeed, these ARE the Yelp Elite.
Nish Nadaraja and Stephanie Ichinose are also in attendance.
http://valleywag.com/photogallery/yelpeliteatmighty/
(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Yelp Elite Party ...Total IQ of all in building = 97
Here's a site with pictures from a recent Yelp Elite party.
This is an event where Yelp wastes $100,000 of their investors money rewarding those unemployed and uneducated Yelpers who have enough time to write 500 or more reviews.
Check out the obscene picture on the bottom right . Two slobbering Yelp Elite ( one is breastfeeding another , and stupid enough to allow a picture to be taken).
Yes indeed, these ARE the Yelp Elite.
Nish Nadaraja and Stephanie Ichinose are also in attendance.
http://valleywag.com/photogallery/yelpeliteatmighty/
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yelp is pissing a lot of people off
As you can see, yelp is pissing off a lot of people. Hate breeds hate. The hateful reviews on yelp are propagating more hate against yelp. Yelp is finally getting a dose of it's medicine.
If I were running yelp, I would do the following:
1. Restore all positive reviews.
2. Reinstate banned members.
3. Issue a public appology.
4. Remove reviews that are inflammatory, personal in nature, or legal disputes. Yelp should focus on reviews and not as a means for people to attack legitimate businesses. Also, they should remove disputed accounts.
Perhaps by following these steps yelp can gain a little credibility.
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yelp is pissing a lot of people off
As you can see, yelp is pissing off a lot of people. Hate breeds hate. The hateful reviews on yelp are propagating more hate against yelp. Yelp is finally getting a dose of it's medicine.
If I were running yelp, I would do the following:
1. Restore all positive reviews.
2. Reinstate banned members.
3. Issue a public appology.
4. Remove reviews that are inflammatory, personal in nature, or legal disputes. Yelp should focus on reviews and not as a means for people to attack legitimate businesses. Also, they should remove disputed accounts.
Perhaps by following these steps yelp can gain a little credibility.
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Yelp is going down hill
Yelp actualy just closed my account because I wrote a negative review of yelp. I had over 100 fun reviews and like that they killed my account. What a horrible site. Its all people hanging out on message boards loooking to fight and the reviews are as fake as fake can be.
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Yelp is going down hill
Yelp actualy just closed my account because I wrote a negative review of yelp. I had over 100 fun reviews and like that they killed my account. What a horrible site. Its all people hanging out on message boards loooking to fight and the reviews are as fake as fake can be.
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Re: Yelp is going down hill
Your rihjt on the money...yelp sucks
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Yelp Employee Confesses
Below's a thread about someone giving a company a bad review, and then a Yelp employee going out of their way to contact and eventually harass the reviewer. When the reviewer blocks the employee's communications to avoid further harassment, the employee then opens a public thread, and divulges private emails.
The employee at first vehemently denies being paid by Yelp, but later gets caught confessing to the whole thing: "yelps pays me a lot of money to protect its sponsors. its a good racket. dont blow it for me." The fact that this same employee who began the harassment has also given the other company a glowing review, is completely unethical to say the least.
See for yourself, and quickly, before Yelp pulls the thread down to cover up their tracks:
http://www.yelp.com/topic/san-francisco-calling-you-out-atlas-plumbing-review
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Yelp Removed My Negative Review of a Paid Sponsor
Check out my blog posting on the subject- my negative (2 star) review of a restaurant was removed after less than 7 days, and after I know that the restaurant owner saw it (because a mutual friend told me so). I'm done supporting Yelp. Back to Citysearch I go.
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Re: Yelp Removed My Negative Review of a Paid Sponsor
Same happened to me. Once realizing that negative reviews could be removed by the business reviewed, how could anyone take them seriously as a review site?
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my reviews don't even show up sometimes...especially on the sponsored results. i'm done too... Citysearch, here I come...but I will check this out...might as well help the anti-yelp movement: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090225162712AAoCqYF
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Yelp People are just stupid people...
Its a website were people have nothing to do and are trying to be a food critic. I was a yelper and I didnt like it. I left and cancelled my account.
I also went to meet some of these yelpers and they are all just weird looking people "geeks" is the word. Stupid people bcs they spend hours trying to write a review for free, like its very important....
At the end you get nothing out of it. To all those yelpers keep on working for free and put your pics and your personal info like stupid is and stupid will always be....
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KudosWorks is much more merchant-friendly
I was looking into the Yelp phenomenon, and the math is discouraging for merchants... A happy customer tells an average of 5 people, while an unhappy customer will tell an average of 10. Seems like a losing scenario for merchants, and in this economic climate, we need all the positive energy we can find.
I use KudosWorks.com with my business, and I find it very handy. Other sites can be customer forums for reviews (good, bad, & very bad), but for posting testimonials on my site from real customers, being able to control how many and which ones are displayed, and provide ways for happy customers to spread the word with their friends, KudosWorks is excellent.
Costs next to nothing too.
Just a merchant-centric comment, hope all you honest reviewers out there won't mind.
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yelp.com
I agree that yelp.com sucks. Their internal search is also hard to use and you can't find anything with it! Yelp is just too aggressive in pushing their business model.
I think it's better just to stick to established sites like citysearch, and a lot of newer review sites are cropping up like fairplayreviews.com
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yelp in hell
We pray YELP goes bankrupt and sinks to the bottom of hell, and takes its MAFIA YELPERS with them. We pray that GOD shows no mercy for all the personal damage and EXTORTION they have inflicted upon small business owners and the children they support. YELP is a den of snakes and deserve to BURN for the lies and slander they spread on the world wide web.
Say 10 times..."We pray to Archangel Michael to swiftly destroy YELP!"
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