Yelp

1/2/2014

You either love or hate Yelp.  (Personally I love it!)

I discovered Yelp back in 2009.  I was planning a trip to NY and I wanted to find some good restaurants and bars near our hotel.  While searching for reviews of a pizza place I came across reviews on Yelp.  I had never heard of Yelp before and had only used Trip Advisor in the past.  The main difference I found with Yelp and other travel websites is that you'll find more reviews from the locals on Yelp.  I really liked the vibe I got from the Yelp website.  The reviews were funny and entertaining and were written by such an eclectic group of people.  Not only was I able to find reviews and pictures for restaurants in New York, but I was able to narrow down my results by prices, cuisine, and distance.  If I really like someone's writing style or taste in food I could also see other reviews they had written.

At this point I had not written a single review on Yelp.  It probably took me about a year or two of using Yelp before I started posting my own reviews.  I felt that Yelp had been so helpful to me and I wanted to give back and help others discover amazing spots (and prevent them from visiting not so amazing spots).  In 2011 we got our first community manager in Tampa and I got on the Elite squad.  I didn't attend any of the events in 2011, but I did continue to review spots.  It wasn't until Brett took over as community manager in 2012 that I became more active in the Yelp community.  I attended his first Elite event at Samurai Blue in Ybor and I was blown away by the awesome VIP treatment we received at the event. After that I was hooked and I began posting reviews on Yelp every week.

It always makes me laugh when people ask me why I have wrote so many reviews.  Why do I check my Facebook account daily?  Why do I pin stuff on Pinterest?  Why do I spend hours playing Words with Friends?  I guess I just like to goof off on the internet a lot!  

Every day Yelp improves a little bit more.  As Yelp acquires more countries I'm able to plan my vacations like a rock star.  I am very excited to see what Yelp has in store for us in 2014!

10/22/2014

Yelp.com is a damaging businesses with FAKE reviews and continues to participate in damaging businesses for their own financial benefit with false posting and FAKE reviews.
Do not rely on Yelp.com company, do not trust any of their reviews on any company.  This has been referred to legal to file lawsuit and or class action suit. Being referred to District Attorney office.

1/15/2015

yelp has this program that filters out some reviews making it not as accurate as it should be.  Not everyone's opinion matters.

11/15/2014

This review pertains to Yelp's arbitrary censorship (by deletion) of a post for allegedly violating their Content Guidelines.

Specifically, in reviewing Onyx Steakhouse Restaurant in White Rock, BC, I was expressing my displeasure by writing that I just wanted their "stupid, mouthy waitress to shut up, shut up, shut the f^*k up!"

Apparently, Yelp finds that language offensive. I submit that the offensive language, if any, existed only in their minuscule minds. I was merely accepting their invitation to use colourful language. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I suspect saps at Yelp will censor this review as well. That's why they get a "one."    

John

1/11/2015

Harrassing.

11/4/2014

At the beginning - as a former engineer myself , was excited about Yelp's business model and went to bat as a Beta Tester.  That was a looooong time ago.

I have been a PAYING ADVERTISER... and I am not here to complain about some review or their "algorithm". That's just the beginning...  

Yelp has been an incompetent company for some time now... but I have kept quiet. about it.... until now. For well over 2 years now, they typically ignore customer service and support  requests.. but now they have moved closer to the FRAUD category.  Again, I'm not talking about the reviews. I'm talking about how they treat their ADVERTISERS. For the record - I have clearly recieved no special treatment one way or the other (so far as I can tell... but who know what will happen once I post this). I have my suspicions about others though - but again, that is not what this review is about.

This is about a company fraudulently charging my credit card twice the amount I agreed to (nearly $600.00 hundred dollars!!). Even if they had charged me the "normal" $360 monthy charge - I was without the ability to see these advertising dollars doing anything because they claimed "the ability to see advertising results was down".  

I am not one of those companies that asks for a bad review to be taken down. If and when a customer of mine has a problem - I talk to the customer! The IRONY! I deal with them in the manner any decent company should Now I am writing a deservedly horrible review FOR this "review" site.Yelp has nothing but contempt for its advertisers like myself. Is there a wy to reach Yelp other than email? Nope. Will they write back as they say they will? Nope! I am however, an advertiser who has been spending approx $300-$400 a month for over 4 years now for what I thought was a reliable stream of advertising.  Are you a small business thinking about paying them their mafia money? Think twice.

THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU OR YOUR BUSINESS. They will ignore your support requests or just keep auto responding that  "____ was down" or that "we will get back to you"  (and won't)

Recently I noticed that I had "zero" clicks but was still being charged at the normal rate ($360 per month). I send them an email asking them "why can I not see the results of the advertising dollars I spent? They claimed the system was down and that they would follow up with me in a few days. Well that was over a week ago, Now - not only have I not heard back - I checked my bank account this morning and they actually charged my card $541.78. The max they were allowed to charge my card was $360 per month. This is called Fraud.   and you can bet your ass I will be contacting outside agencies. Should this review be filtered out (anyone's guess what these guys actually do behind the scenes) don't be surprised. Should they actually address these fraudulent charges - I will follow up with my review.

The moment I find a worthy adversary of Yelp, I will be the first to get off this SINKING, ROTTEN SHIP .

10/26/2014

What gives, my posts have vanished!!!! Good and bad, they were there for a bit, but are not showing up now. Whats the point of writing a review if its just removed later.
Nor is there any help chat or contact info here!!
So here I've come to complain about yelp and give them a review. If I have a problem with the site, who do I contact to fix??????????????
Hello

8/12/2014

As a social app,  yelp is great.  They still have some work to do in regards to the Android version  (some things like starting talk conversations don't work),  but it's convenient to look up reviews for local businesses and decide whether you'll go there based on other people's experiences.  Also,  the new monocle feature is really cool and offers a snapshot of what's around you and how they compare to neighboring businesses.

11/20/2014

Yelp advertising is a con game. Don't let them waste your time!

5/14/2014

I've had to deal with Yelp at my day job for the last few years. We get slammed by people whose reviews lack any kind of fact, or have nothing to do with us. The minute we claimed our business listing we got a call from Yelp's sales team, telling us it would cost so many dollars a month to have a presence on Yelp, which we declined. Suddenly all of the four and five star reviews, from REAL customers, vanished, and we were left with a one star rating. Yelp called me again, suggesting we pay for their monthly service so our negative reviews could be hidden. Same old extortion, different thug. We have reviews on other sites, and even good old fashioned letters that echo the positive remarks Yelp deleted, and we don't pay a single dime for those remarks.

Yelp sent me an email today, telling me they were deleting some of my reviews, because they were not first hand experiences. I completely disagree with them, but they didn't seemed too concerned when I told them their assumption was incorrect. I have email messages and Amazon.com forum posts to prove my dealings with the various locations, but I'm fighting a losing battle. In the grand scheme of things my reviews weren't doing a thing to improve that company's service, so I will just chock it up to experience.

As a business man I despise Yelp, but I admit they can be quite helpful when selecting a place to eat, or when dealing with contractors. I had been on the fence about my overall opinion of them, until I got their message today. Manipulating data to suit their needs is flat wrong.

Yelp could be a great service if they would stop threatening and destroying businesses in the name of profit. That's the government's job.

10/31/2014 Updated review

Jeremy Stoppelman, are you reading the stacks of negative reviews?   Has anyone at your place heard of customer service?   You know, where nice people try to make things better when your broken system hurts someone.  Would it be so bad to actually spend some money on real people to answer the phone and talk to us?   To discuss and understand what can't be done is one liner emails. Do yelp moderators only edit one request a week?  How about your corporate policies that so many online complain about?  Contact me, I dare you.  Contact everyone who rates your company a pathetic 1 becasue this is the data that will maybe help you salvage your company.  If that is what you actually want.  More likely you are satisfied to sell off your stock as fast as possible as you know the company will soon fade into obscurity.

5/29/2014

HOW YELP NO LONGER WORKS!!!

I have had great reviews deleted for no reason and no I was not related in any way. For HAIR salons this have been the worst source of information. I once went to a 5 star review hair salon and there were 55 reviews. I was so excited to find one, when I get there you can over hear hair dresses talking about there friends reviews are helping.  The salon messed up my hair so no it was not a 5 star for me...

I also came across nasty reviews that I would not want my child reading and I actually flagged it because it violated the policy. There response:
Hi there,

We're writing to let know that we previously evaluated **** that you recently flagged. We decided at that time to leave it up after carefully assessing it against our Content Guidelines.

-The Yelp Support Team

Really!!! When someone violates there terms in needs to be removed.

SO QUICK TO delete a innocent very truthful review while refusing to delete ones who speak in such hateful words and attack owners....

I use to yelp because I truly thought this can benefit the great restaurants and places I go to, but I am starting to realize how YELP DOES NOT WORK!!!

Pretty soon more and more people are going to get burned from yelp and hate it.

1/16/2015

This site sucks when it comes to accurate reviews. My business gets a 1 star because some fake profile reviewed it 5 years ago as a 1, even though real people have reviewed it at 4 and 5 stars consistently. Yelp is a total fraud!

8/22/2014

Yelp is free.

I now kan rite alot.

I righte good now..

5/29/2014

yelp is a nightmare for the business owners,
out of 67 reviews almost 12 , 5 stars reviews are removed
My business hours have been ultered to say that I am closed on sundays.
My actual business hours are Sunday to Thursday- 11:00 am to 10:00 pm
Friday and Saturday - 11:00 am to 10:30 pm

I have been trying to get a hold of yelp to ensure my hours are shown correctly on yelp, but can't get a hold of anyone by phone, i tried online and no way of expressing my concern, hence this review to see if ayone from yelp would notice.

I am starting to think, this might be because I refused to pay money to yelp for advertising. This error needs to be fixed as soon as possible, and I request a representative from yelp get a hold of me.

my phone number:
858.472.6330 -858 459 3764
Froglanders La Jolla

10/22/2014

Terrible advertising program.  The customer service was awful.  There is no way for me to know if they delivered on their plan!  Tremendously overpriced.  Then, when I went to cancel they billed me $1400 for a cancellation fee.  I feel robbed.  Then, they call me back to ask me to start advertising again!  Horrible.  NEVER AGAIN.

11/19/2013

For my 500th review, I picked to review Yelp. Ninja what?

I've had my Yelp app on my phone before I even decided to write reviews and post pictures. I was looking for places to do my month-long birthday celebration in 2012. The reviews and pictures I've seen on Yelp inspired me to join Yelp and plus my Facebook friends were complaining about my food photos and how I talk about food all the time. "Your pictures make me hungry" - it was time to join Yelp.

Yelp has been very helpful especially because I love to travel and find places that are worth trying like hotels and restaurants. Although there are some reviews I don't agree with, most of the time, I find great places through Yelp. I've used it to find places in New York, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Florence, Rome, Venice, etc. Now, I'm using it to find great places in Australia. My opinions about a place may be different from others and that's fine. The nice thing about Yelp is that there are different styles of reviews: some are geared towards the entire experience regardless of the price, some care about service more than the food or vice versa and some are bang-for-your-buck conscious. If I want to try a restaurant but I see that they only have 2-3 stars on Yelp, would that deter me from trying the restaurant? No, I do what I want.

I can see why professional food critics would hate Yelp - reviewing restaurants is their livelihood and here's a group of amateurs ruining everything for them. Where were these food critics when I was looking for places in Spain, Italy or France? Here you have reviews from several people in one website.

Then there is Vegas Yelp Talk. Just like any public online forum, you shouldn't take it so seriously. I'm not sure why we have keyboard warriors that make personal attacks against others over the simplest of things. Really? REALLY? I keep hearing about a "clique"...who's part of this group? What have they done? Where do they meet? Why is there such hatred towards them? I'm pretty sure it's just a bunch of people who got bullied in school back in the day that formed a secret alliance that nobody wants to be a part of anyway...if said clique even exists. Obviously, I'm not one who takes online whining seriously. Yelp Talk has given me a reason to laugh everyday. Didn't we sign up on Yelp to write reviews and post photos? Oh, somebody didn't get the memo? I can't compare Yelp Talk from other cities since I don't have time for that and Vegas is entertaining enough.

While some people are busy posting personal attacks, being gossipy and having imaginary issues online - I think I might have been busy with real life, eating, drinking, spending time with real people, taking pictures and writing reviews. I'm not sure why there's such bitterness towards Elites - apparently, there's "history" and I don't care about that. But I think it's only common sense that if you hate Yelp, you hate Yelpers, you hate Elites then, you should stay away from Yelp? Ninja puh-leez! There will always be drama but I will never give a rat's behind...but it sure will make me laugh so go ahead!

Without Yelp, I would have never met such a group of amazing people who love to eat as much as I do and have turned into real awesome friends.  Without Yelp, I would have been stuck in my bubble and not have tried the taco truck that serves yummy food for cheap. Without Yelp, people on Facebook would un-friend me for posting food pictures all the time. For me, these are the biggest perks for being on Yelp.

Sure, I've had my fair share of getting flagged for posting an event but that was when I was new and didn't have a clue what I was doing...no biggie!  I'm still kicking myself for not buying Yelp stocks a few months ago. Ugh!

11/14/2014 Updated review

Update:  Nothing's really changed.  Just saw my review from 2yrs ago and it still rings true for me. Total sham, blackmailing hardworking companies and a vehicle for passive aggressive assholes to bend us over. Die yelp.

5/12/2014

YELP  destroys small business by deleting 5 star reviews and leaving the very bad ones, in order to help big companies.
Yelps claim that companies cannot pay to delete bad comments but just a month ago there were a bunch of bad reviews for ebay.com a new one was added by a friend, I was surprise that the first review did not go online within 24 hrs so we waited up until a month after and NOPE no first bad review for ebay.com and now the other ebay bad reviews about ebay stores are gone!!!! WHAT IS GOING ON!!???? Not a reliable source of information for businesses.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WRITING REVIEWS, THEY ARE PROBABLY NOT EVEN VISIBLE TO MANY PEOPLE!

10/26/2014 Updated review

FUCK YOU YELP!  YOU SUCK BALLS! YOUR COMPANY POLICY FOR RECOMMENDING REVIEWS SUCKS ASS!  You are absolutely the worst company on the planet. I love how you say you can't remove   Fraudulent reviews and when we talked to you about it this is what you said. You took off our good reviews and said they where not recommended but left the bad one for people to see   we chose to drop you as advertisers for your poor business ethics. I hope one day soon you will go out of business as I am sure you will with a 2 star customer rating. I hope all of you become unemployed.

7/16/2014

I'm pretty sure that Yelp hates small businesses. Try to get a hold of anyone for technical support -- it's worse than trying to get help at a government agency!
Anyone who has had to suffer through all the sales calls also knows what I'm talking about. Why Yelp decides to use shady sales tactics that I thought went out of vogue with the advent of the internet and social reviewing is beyond perplexing. I can only hope that a silicon-valleyer will quickly see the need for a review site that doesn't just support the ranters, ravers and big business. It should only be a matter of time.
I'm also pretty sure that this review will get filtered, go figure.

10/28/2014

When it comes to this company's algorithm, its not very good at detecting real people with real reviews. There are more satisfied customers out there that want to voice their opinion about a business and when their reviews get filtered its like Yelp putting duct tape over their mouths. They need a new algorithm update or something.

1/31/2014

I'm shocked that there are so many negative reviews. I personally LOVE Yelp and have been "Yelping" for years now. Do I believe every review? Nope but for ever "fake" review there are 3x's as many completely valid ones. Although I don't totally understand the whole "Not Recommended Reviews" and how Yelp decided those, I do understand that there has got to be a reason. I've seen way to many 1 star reviews by people who only post 1 stars and have zero friends. I generally ignore these. If all you can be is a sour puss then I really don't trust your review.  

I find Yelp informative. I love the pictures, reviews, and general banter. Because of Yelp, I've explored and enjoyed so many places I wouldn't have without reading other Yelpers reviews. So boo to the nay Sayers!

5/13/2014

Yelp could be a great service except for 2 things they do.

1. They hide a lot of reviews even though those reviews are LEGITIMATE! They rely on a filter to weed out fake reviews but it is back firing on them because real and honest reviews are getting tossed into the trash. This is very upsetting and there's nothing you can do about it.

2. They call you to try to get you to pay for advertisement and when you so no, guess what happens, more of your reviews mysteriously get tossed in to the Yelp Trash can. Bad form Yelp.

3. If a competitor wants to make you look bad, all they have to do is write you a crappy review on Yelp and it will stick. You have just been stained by a malicious, false, and defamatory statement and you can't do anything about it.

Change these problems, Yelp, and you will be a great service.

2/18/2014 Updated review

You folks keep trying to improve, and it's working.

What's become amazing is the vituperative tone that some Yelpers use, it says too much about them and less about the business/whatever reviewed.

Have you thought about creating a note that says Zero Stars? This could be used for businesses as well as reviewers.

Keep up the good work, and remember, we're people just like you.

7/2/2014

Yelp is a largely unregulated review site, which means it's a free-for-all where any troll, rival, or kook with an axe to grind can post whatever malicious slander they want without fear of having it deleted.   Many useless reviews which have little or nothing to do with reality.

My dentist was "reviewed" negatively by someone who actually said in the review he had never been a patient and who had never set foot inside the clinic, and was just mad his insurance network (from a different state a thousand miles away) didn't include my dentist.  

In spite of that fact, Yelp refused to remove the mean-spirited one-star "review".  Try Tripadvisor, it's much better and has far more followers.

5/15/2014

Dear Lord Yelp.  WHAT the H E double hockey sticks is going on?  

I just got a notice that a SIX MONTH old review of Amtak was pulled

"because it lacks a firsthand customer experience at this business location."

I did not have a firsthand customer experience at the business location because I could not buy a ticket on their defective website yet was charged three times on my credit and had lengthy calls with their customer service.

TO be clear.  I reviewed a business whose job is to transport people because I was unable to buy a ticket to be transported.

How in the world is this not relevant as a review and how fast is Yelp going to become actually not relevant if you can't even make fundamental distinctions like that?

Just. Wow.

I am starting to feel more sympathy for businesses that want to boycott yelp.

I think I am done using you.  It's been fun.

Peace out.

2/5/2015

We never had any problem with Yelp, although we couldn't understand why they filtered our good reviews from yelpers that had written about many business. In addition, I appreciate the right to answer bad reviews & understand if that is a customers perception, they are entitled to write.  Having said that, I recently received a disgusting & blatantly false review from my sister-in-law whom I haven't spoken to in 16 years.  She came into my store specifically to cause this trouble.  I have written to Yelp & it has fallen on deaf ears. Anyone reading this yelp rating from me, Please click on NANNIES VINTAGE, Coral Springs Fl. & read what I call "RANDI's RANT"! As a matter of fact,  any customer that mentions "RANDI's RANT, will receive an extra 20% off any purchase!!  You will all be pleased to learn we are taking legal action--Her entire Rant is a LIE and in writing a review, according to yelp, you must be able to back it up--Let's see her do that, since I wasn't even in the room at the time of her visit. My Mom handled the entire $15. sale!  Our 4,000 sq ft store is filled with treasures & while you cannot please everyone, we try very hard as I am sure you do. Previous to this incident, we actually thought of advertising with yelp.  Eek! Me thinks not!!

6/9/2014

Honestly, Yelp is Awful! Straight up...
It keeps telling me that Eggroll King is the best Chinese food in my area and it's not! I've been there a few times now and it's never satisfying.

11/26/2014

I don't recommend yelp to anyone that double check reviews before look it up on yelp. yelp removes reviews  that speaks the truth about places . they are people experiences there . yelp should not do such thing , if it uses us for free they should consult at least with the person who writ the reviews before removing it.

5/6/2014

I am a small business owner and signed up with Yelp about 2 years ago.
Right away we had clients posting positive reviews about our services. Most were deleted by Yelp, only the first one survived.
Then about 1 year ago we had a dispute with a bridezilla that did not like the color of the linen we use on the bar we set up for her reception. Not only did her payment check bounced but she went nuts on yelp. After that incident we tried to contact Yelp to explain and ask to take it down. Not only did they ignore us but looked us out of our own account and deleted EVERY SINGLE positive reviews we've had since. We even started to take snap shoots of these reviews before the had time to take them down.
We have raving reviews everywhere else (like Thumbtack for example) but unfortunately these sites are not as popular.
Yelp has hurt my small business.

5/30/2014

The last of my friends to continue using Yelp, I was reading through my old reviews and noticed they had been relegated to the "not counted toward this business' star rating" category. If my reviews aren't visible and my rating not taken into account, whyever would I waste time participating on this site?

I'm done with Yelp. I'm going to go over to Trip Advisor like everyone else.

6/13/2014

Needs a better system in place to explain subjective decisions of removal or reviews for alleged violations of Content Guidelines. Obviously, subjective material is subjective, but they can do better than "Our Support team has determined that they fall outside our Content Guidelines (yelp.com/guidelines) because they do not contain a new firsthand experience with the business. ", when obviously they do contain a new firsthand experience. What's up with that?

Where's the transparency?

Where's the transparency?

10/23/2014

Why does YELP refuse to delete reviews like this that degrade women and communities in general.  90% of this post is some sort of personal vengeance.

This wretched dump gets two stars because it's nice to see that the lowlife trash of Hudson have some place to hang out and chug their beer, other than the 7-11 parking lot. The servers are nasty trampy illiterates and they are more interested in blabbing with drunken vagrants than attending to their customers. My waitress smelled bad, like she really needed a bath. The oysters are nothing special, served too warm. The dressed oysters are really a waste of money, if you got dragged there as I did, you may as well drink their draft beer and bring your own bottle of salad dressing to drink. The tables and chairs are dirty and the sanitary conditions sketchy. The "music" is too loud and destroys any pleasantness from it's proximity to the water. Too bad there isn't a good noise ordinance in this beach area location, and a dirty drunken dirtbag ordinance too.

yelp.com/biz/the-cove-hu…

10/22/2014

I signed up my business on Yelp. Since that point, I get almost daily phone calls from them trying to sell me services. I think saying NO once should constitute a NO. I think it is important to have a presence on YELP, but if it comes at the price of incessant phone calls, it may not be worth it.

5/10/2014 Updated review

Yelp, where are my reviews going?!

I used to have around 500 reviews. A few months ago, it appears that count dropped to around 460. Now, I only have 450 something! WTH?!

Also, I am still mad at you for de-Elite-ing those of us who used aliases on this site. Using an alias does not make one less real, if anything, it makes one more honest! You could have had people register their real names, while allowing the option of displaying only an alias. Meh. Whatever.

3/15/2014

Pool table is fun when it is available. Coffee is good and the lobby is super fancy style.

12/8/2014

I have used YELP to post my comment/reaction to extra good or poor service from a company but tonight, I just wanted to find out something about YELP, itself and their webpage offered no means for asking it questions or "contact us" or other welcome to interaction with it's public and I found that very disappointing. The concept of having a public forum for customer opinions is a great idea and I have used YELP for that purpose but I cannot give YELP full credit for their good idea when they are seemingly hiding from the public they serve.
So, go ahead and get your anger or adulation out of your system and use YELP but consider that your heartfelt comments may not be received by others when your forum is not open to query, question or verification.

7/29/2014

I want to know why reviews that clearly matter (aka...my reviews) don't show up. As someone who has reviewed a bunch of businesses, I would want someone to see my experiences just as I want to see others' experiences....without getting filtered reviews.

Why is it that some people who have only reviewed 1 or 2 businesses get to have their reviews seen (even if they just signed up to leave a bad review) and some people who have posted dozens of reviews are "filtered" by your review fairies.

I have to say, Yelp, you should get a better system of weeding out the jokers cuz your current one is kinda for the birds. Peace.

1/7/2015

Extremely poor customer service. Have been trying to set up my business with an account so people can review it.... Every time I try it says someone will be in contact within a few days, it's been 2 months and NO COMMUNICATION! And when I do email them with my issue they send me a response saying that they cannot find my business account.... NO KIDDING!?!?!?! That's because I cannot create an account! So over it.