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Yelp Extortion, will anybody take their reviews seriously now?

March 3, 2010 | Author

Yelp Extortion

Yelp, the hub for disgruntled clients to put in scathing reviews is now facing class-action lawsuit. The allegations against Yelp is that it asks advertisement money from business houses to manipulate or remove reviews. Strange, but no advertisers on Yelp has a perfect reputation.

Yelp the popular user-generated reviews website, was more popular than Google; users would search for a particular company or local business house before they wanted to deal with it. And anything that appeared negative or positive will be the final impression. So if it is on Yelp, it’s heard.

The company on the other hand denies the allegations, contained in the class-action lawsuit, but the whole affair has put a huge question mark about the reliability of Yelp.

If Yelp’s revenue was solely based on advertising, it was easy to understand why they wanted to tamper with reviews on its website, but it was not to be. Yelp will have some hard time explaining the ethics it follows. It will be interesting to see what the company has to say in its self-defense.

The situation would have been different if Yelp had a big brother with corporate backing like MSN or Google, then meddling with reviews wouldn’t be a cause for worry.

As reputation management goes Yelp needs new principles, new moral code of conduct to bring back credibility before they are totally deserted.

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Posted in Bad Press, Reputation Management, Reputation News, Reputation Online, Reviews & Quality | Tags: , , , , ,
  • Chantelle

    Hi Jayan –

    Wanted to make sure you and your readers saw our response to these claims both here: http://officialblog.yelp.com/2010/02/lady-justice-needs-a-lawsuit-filter.html and here: http://officialblog.yelp.com/2010/03/additional-thoughts-on-last-weeks-lawsuit-or-how-a-conspiracy-theory-is-born-.html

    Most notably: “Yelp does not remove or hide negative reviews in exchange for money and Yelp salespeople do not offer to do so. Additionally, Yelp treats review content equally for advertisers and non-advertisers alike: advertisers pay for advertising and enhanced listings, nothing more; and businesses are not penalized for declining to advertise.

    Thanks!

    Chantelle
    Yelp

  • Chantelle

    Hi Jayan –

    Wanted to make sure you and your readers saw our response to these claims both here: http://officialblog.yelp.com/2010/02/lady-justice-needs-a-lawsuit-filter.html and here: http://officialblog.yelp.com/2010/03/additional-thoughts-on-last-weeks-lawsuit-or-how-a-conspiracy-theory-is-born-.html

    Most notably: “Yelp does not remove or hide negative reviews in exchange for money and Yelp salespeople do not offer to do so. Additionally, Yelp treats review content equally for advertisers and non-advertisers alike: advertisers pay for advertising and enhanced listings, nothing more; and businesses are not penalized for declining to advertise.

    Thanks!

    Chantelle
    Yelp

  • http://yelp2poop.com Yelp Pooper

    Yelp is simply bad for small business.
    Unfortunately the Yelp business model is essentially a legal blackmail scheme.
    Although it has been an excellent vehicle for extorting money from defenseless small business owners, the yelp poop is starting to foul the air of the net.

    People are now going to know the ugly truth about Mr. Simmons and more so of Mr. Stoppelman and his abuse of the freedom of speech laws and worse his having openly admitted to paying writers to post false content on perspective clients yelp pages. Shame on you Jeremy Stoppelman.

    Yelp.com’s despicable technique of manipulating, and fabricating content for the sole purpose of intimidating small business to pay Yelp a monthly protection extortion payment may be considered a successful business model by the “bottom feeder financial analysts” but it is bad business for small business and for the USA, Yelp is anti-American!

    This Stephen Colbert style yelp parody business story popped up on the net a few days ago, although it is disgusting, it surely speaks to the disgust that people are now feeling about yelp.com

    http://docs.google.com/File?id=dxc7x93_542cqhvqv5_b

  • http://yelp2poop.com Yelp Pooper

    Yelp is simply bad for small business.
    Unfortunately the Yelp business model is essentially a legal blackmail scheme.
    Although it has been an excellent vehicle for extorting money from defenseless small business owners, the yelp poop is starting to foul the air of the net.

    People are now going to know the ugly truth about Mr. Simmons and more so of Mr. Stoppelman and his abuse of the freedom of speech laws and worse his having openly admitted to paying writers to post false content on perspective clients yelp pages. Shame on you Jeremy Stoppelman.

    Yelp.com’s despicable technique of manipulating, and fabricating content for the sole purpose of intimidating small business to pay Yelp a monthly protection extortion payment may be considered a successful business model by the “bottom feeder financial analysts” but it is bad business for small business and for the USA, Yelp is anti-American!

    This Stephen Colbert style yelp parody business story popped up on the net a few days ago, although it is disgusting, it surely speaks to the disgust that people are now feeling about yelp.com

    http://docs.google.com/File?id=dxc7x93_542cqhvqv5_b

  • Tkrandmom

    yep, we had great reviews until they were told NO we can’t afford the advertising and since we have nothing but bad reviews.

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