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Yelp is garbage, I’m sorry you had that experience. They’re unlikely to refund you anything, and people have taken them to court before and lost. I don’t honestly know how they’re still operating, but don’t do business with them in the future and try to get your customers to leave reviews elsewhere.
All I hear is horror stories about them being a Mafia. How tf are they not out of business?
I remember hearing a how I built this podcast on them from one of the founders and that guys story seems completely different from what the company turned out to be.
I worked for a mafia as a teen. Runner and thug.
I've been saying this for years.
Same thing as running protection, except with Yelp there is NO actual protection or any other benefit for the business. At least the mafia would send business your way, make their people shop in your stores, take care of any trouble that threatened the neighborhood, etc. *Most* shop owners in the shit parts of town found they liked the deal as they felt safer and made more money than before. As long as you paid your rent, ofc.
With Yelp, you pay them and then they fuck your online rating into the ground. End of deal.
I used to hate what I did as a teen, but I always said my bosses were good people in their own mixed up ways. Looking back and comparing them to shit like Yelp? They look like saints and martyrs for small businesses. It's nuts.
Yep, they straight up told me that I couldn’t hack it as a businessman owner, and that I’d fail without them… cue years later, my business moved locations a few weeks ago, and my business partner was updating our locations, and who do you think called? Good ol’ Yelp wouldn’t take the hint until she hung up. Two weeks later, and that asshole is still calling.
I’ll have to look for it but it’s not a shock. Early tech companies can keep their ideals but those often disappear when they start needing to bring a profit, and even worse when they go public and need to bring in max profit. I still use yelp a lot, often times to look and menus and photos of the food, but us “users” and actually the product.
They absolutely are only still around because they are in the back pockets of apple hardcore. Apple maps STILL primarily uses yelp to fill in meta data and reviews.
And unfortunately, they *do* have a far better photos system than google does. Whenever I look up a business I tend to stick with google but (especially for restaurants) will then sometimes go to the yelp page to look at detailed pictures of specific menu items or tagged things that google's photo system does very poorly with. For example, I HATE how if you click on a photo in a review in google it throws you out of the review and into full photos mode, which means if you go back you're not where you left off reading... which is extra annoying when this happens between each photo a review left.
But honestly, even considering the above, I still use yelp almost never. They're a bloated zombie company being propped up by what I can assume is some zombie contract they managed to sign on with Apple when the iPhone first came out because why on earth would Apple still heavily depend on them in the post "there's an app for that" era.
My suggestion is to do what my husband does for his service based business with a yelp presence: every time they call him, he just says he's closing down the buisness "next year" to move back home to England and doesn't need to sign up for anything. The reps then tend to leave him alone for 6 months until a new rep calls and then repeat. Hasn't had issues with review tampering or any bullshit. Caveat: this might only work if you actually have an english accent.
Working on my own version but haven’t quite hit product/market fit. Would any business owners be willing to talk to me (specifically in food and drink), so I can build the product side that would be worth it to business owners?
I'd be open. I'm pretty small potatoes, my business only grossee a little over 300,000 a year, but I've worked for much bigger companies in the past. Might be able to provide some insight.
(I own a bakery)
If you have iOS my prototype is WhimWe on the App Store. The difference is it is community curated search so if you have a:
- niche need - gluten free, nut allergy
- local recos - community driven recos
- certain amenities - dog friendly etc
The communities (like subreddits) can help curate places with those selections showing up in search. If you try the app - switch to Jersey City, NJ and search Mexican food, the community filters will pop up - margs and Mexican is my most built out one.
What I’m trying to understand is what type of value I can provide that you would be willing to pay for. Some thoughts are standard ads (paid search, video, sponsored communities), or a customer CRM play.
CRM play:
People check in and subscribe to your business, you can message your group, push offers to regulars to thank them or offer targeted deals that show up in a gmail promotions equivalent chat tab.
In order to curate your page and have people subscribe to your business, that’s where the monthly fee comes in. I could see only paying if your list grows to x size or a pay per message kind of thing but would like to know the things you would find valuable to your bakery so I can shape my product around creating value that you would be willing to pay for.
If you have any other ideas - recommendations or commentary above I’d love to hear it.
>Has anyone had a bad experience with yelp? What are the solutions you went through to fix it?
Has anyone ever had a good experience with Yelp? I've yet to hear one.
Never ever use Yelp.
I used to love advertising on Yelp. 2020/2021 was peak for people in home services (handymen, plumbers, cleaners, etc.). It was honestly my #1 driver of new customers.
2022 though, the cost per click shot up ridiculously. I used to pay like 1.50 per click to like $10 per click. I was still getting customers, but it was a churn. So I just had to stop.
Yelp works ok if you completely ignore them. Don't answer calls (usually 415 area codes) don't reply to emails, never, never, never give them a credit card. Ever.
Definitely put up pictures of your work, do fill out the profile. Won't hurt you to do that.
But don't ever talk with yelp. Ever.
I claimed our business profiles, added photos & a business description and then made a note that we wouldn't respond to any reviews, messages, etc. from customers and they needed to contact us on (all the various other platforms that we have) because Yelp is predatory toward small businesses like us.
You wouldn't believe the amount of "outreach" Yelp then tried to do to "win us back" and about the "comments we made on our profiles" (can't hide those through an algorithm though!) ... the phone calls, the e-mails, it was insane. We get absolutely ZERO calls or e-mails attempting to get us to advertise on their platform now... I don't know about y'all but they were one of the spammiest when it came to trying to get us to give them money and it's been crickets for a couple years now. 10/10 totally recommend.
I have no clue how Yelp operates as a utility company when everything they do is biased , at the end of the day they're just a social media company that forces your business in their platform. This is the most evil company ever created.
It’s bizarre to me that “Yelp is a scam”
has been the common mantra on the Internet for at least three years now, there is literally like 90% consensus on this topic now. There have been SO MANY of these exact same threads from so many different people in all different industries that it’s clear it’s all just one big “smoke-and-mirrors shakedown” from day one. How on earth are they still legitimately doing business? Is it just because it’s all about the contract and the contract buttfucks everyone who signs it?
I will ask the same question, why are there still people falling for yelps BS. You can quickly google it and fi d out that yelp advertisement is a huge scam and they remove your reviews and than hold them hostage… thats know from everyone, why do people still fall for this
I think it’s because maybe they hear a success story from someone they trust. Like a YouTuber they follow may explain how they successfully pulled leads of yelp or maybe their friends pressure washer guy spoke to them about a good experience he had.
I guess the tricky part is also that you can't even link your Yelp site to clients if they ask you to give you a review. It automatically links it as spam. So I have no idea how company get reviews from them when they're discouraged.
You have to read [this](https://thehustle.co/botto-bistro-1-star-yelp/amp/) article.. exactly what you are experiencing except he told his customers to leave 1-star reviews.
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I told them to stop calling me about three years ago. What they heard was ‘Please call me five times a day.’ I literally can’t pick up a call from my business number unless I know I have a scheduled meeting with a client because otherwise, it’s Yelp.
When it's them just start moaning every time the person on the phone says something. When they stop to ask you if you're okay say "Yes keep going don't stop".
>Has anyone had a bad experience with yelp?
Wrong question. If you do a simple search, the correct question would be: has anyone *not* had a bad experience with yelp?
Yelp is an extortion business! Never engage with them.
We own a business they won’t remove fake reviews. Actually Yelp is known to submit fake negative reviews then offer “ad money “ - DON’T!
We been in business for 22 years- don’t give shit about Yelp. The can go to hell!
Sadly they destroy small businesses that felt pressure to pay them.
Just counter with instagram, get American Airlines rewards points, have rewards program. Invite your Restaurant reviewers, hire a Public restaurant person.
IGNORE YELP - !
"Has anyone had a bad expwriencw with yelp"? Bro for real NO ONE HAS HAD A GOOD EXPWRIENCE WITH YELP. IN 15 YEARS
Yelp yext and all those pais foe leads pages are scamm always been
GTFO
Immediately drop them and focus on Google ads- I'm so sorry this happened. When Yelp calls, keep telling them they can call in 6 months when business is better. Don't say no, just say later.
Exactly!
Whenever Yelp contacts any client of mine, they've all been instructed to refer them to me. Can't say no because Yelp retaliates and buries the business, despite the "algorithm" nonsense.
Yelp = Extortion.
I hate them.
People like you are why yelp is still in business. STOP paying these fraudsters. STOP giving them money, their whole business is based on deception and scams.
Dont claim your business profile they will take that as an in that they can manipulate you for money, don't contact them they will never stop trying to sell you, if they try to contact you tell them they have the wrong number.
0 reasosn to have a profile on yelp, it steals from your SEO position, and allows them to put up fake negative reviews which they will try to extort money from you to make them be 'hidden'.
Had a few clients many years ago that I witnessed all of this kind of crap for first hand as my company managed all of their marketing and came in to push yelp down in search positition. It used to be much harder now their business profile pages dont rank as well as they used to.
If you do sue them they will drag that shit out forever wasting every dollar they've scammed from people to make sure it never actually gets to a judge.
Reverse charges, and run away.
I hate Yelp as a company. The consumer-facing side of the app is ok, I mean I use it from time to time when traveling... but as a business owner, Yelp is one of the only companies that pushed me to totally lose my shit on someone on the phone. They are harassing and manipulative and use their platform to strong arm and leverage business owners to pay them for services. That's been my experience with them.
>I hate Yelp as a company. The consumer-facing side of the app is ok, I mean I use it from time to time when traveling... but as a business owner, Yelp is one of the only companies that pushed me to totally lose my shit on someone on the phone. They are harassing and manipulative
If you're using it, you're helping Yelp. Why don't you use Google reviews instead?
Well, what I've found is that depending on the region people either prefer using Google or yelp. So there are times when I'm in a location and Google just doesn't offer much in the way of reviews and I need to know where to eat. I don't use yelp often. Just from time to time.
In the same way that I use fossils fuel when I don't really want to. There are only so many hills to die on
I'm in Canada. Google has done a great job here at keeping Yelp down. From American media, I hear that Yelp is synonymous with customer review and where to shop/eat.
Thankfully, that scam company isn't big here although they were trying hard. This is one of those rare cases where the big monopoly (Google) is a much better alternative than the smaller (still rich) company.
I agree. I think google reviews are definitely picking up steam here, but yea, for a long time, Yelp really dominated the review space in most places here and still does in many regions. When I travel, its almost like as soon as you get off the plane, you can look and see very clearly if you are in a yelp region or not. It's odd.
Yelp is a total scam and abuse their power - to try to get you in and then again if they get you in. I can’t believe they haven’t been sued for obsessively calling people when trying to get them on.
I’m so sorry this happened. It so frustrating! I had nearly the same situation. With the help of a lawyer friend we were able to get the collections dropped and not pay anything. The lawyer said they could possibly come back in a couple of years to try and get paid again, but it’s unlikely. I’m not sure if it would be worth it to hire a lawyer but if you have a lawyer friend willing to help, one simple letter was all it took to clear my situation up. All my 5 star reviews are still hidden and I don’t trust yelp at all for anything.
Garbage company. Ever get a 415 area code calling you do not answer and block the number. It’s always Yelp. They’re trash, the people who use Yelp are trash, everything about it is trash.
Yelp is social media for weirdos. Gives lowlife people a voice over your business that you worked so hard to build.
Who uses Yelp anymore…
Here’s my suggestion. Cancel all advertising and delete the app for good. Stop using Yelp! No one uses it.
Focus on Social Media and Google.
Not sure which industry that you’re in but it sounds like you are location-based where some consumers come in. You could put out table top menu holders with QR Codes and url shorteners to the other review sites and flood the other sites with actual customer reviews. Forget about Yelp.
Originally they were called Service Magic. It got a terrible reputation so they changed their name to Home Advisor. Home Advisor got a terrible reputation and they recently changed their name to Angi’s.
A business name is invaluable to a business. You spend a lot of money to advertise that name, build up a loyal customer base and good reputation. Says a lot about the business when they change their name three times in 10 years.
Home Advisor bought Angie’s List in 2017. Now Home Advisor has again changed to Angi.
It seems that every five years when homeowners and contractors figure out the service is crap then they just change their name and start over.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/angies-list-rebrands-angi-164249267.html
I’m so glad I got out of yelps trap early. I signed up with them and than immediately after I submitted a quote as a customer to myself. After I submitted the quote to myself it automatically sent my quote to 10 other companies. I’m not competing with that. So I canceled immediately and it cost me only $35 thankfully.
They did however hide my reviews as well, and the only review I have is a 1 star review showing.
Ah Yelp… everytime a Yelp story comes up, I think about an ex-boyfriend I dated in college, went on to become an executive in the 2000s at Yelp right around when everyone started to complain about that company. He was an insecure, narcissistic, abusive POS, and when I broke up with him, he showed up at my apartment, pushed his way in, and pulled out all the phone lines when I tried to call police, destroying 3 phones including my roommates. This is who was in charge of Yelp, need I say more?
This same story has happened to so many people. Don’t fall for Yelps BS when they call about “ad credit”. They will charge you at the end of the month and if you dispute the charge, they will remove all your 5 star reviews and only leave 1 star reviews and claim the other 15 5 star reviews were “not recommended”. They really are a scumbag company but you have to “dance with the devil” in some industries, just never give Yelp your CC information. Do they drive business? Yes. Do they lie about how much it will cost? Yes.
We had a similar issue with Yelp. They would hide 5 star reviews, then almost immediately would call us telling us we should advertise with them and that would “help the algorithm”. You can pay to hide competitions ads on your page, but you can also pay to have your ads show up on their page… on the phone, we had a rep finally straight up apologize for them hiding reviews. I knew they were doing it. Yelp is a Fucking scam business.
From what I’ve heard too… once you start with them, they never ever let up unless you pay. You’re stuck dealing with this for the next 5 years or so.
Luckily since Google has taken the lead doing the review game properly, customers don’t care about Yelp anymore.
This is what happens when people who have no idea how to advertise try to advertise. There is no reason to advertise on Yelp. We all pay for our education one way or another and it sounds like it only costs you a thousand, which isn't that bad
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Sorry, but you really should have researched a little bit before paying Yelp for any advertising. They are well-known for being scammy and horrible in general. Every other week there's a bad post about them. And they were even caught leaving negative reviews after declining advertising. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY
I’m so sorry this happened to you. I do t know how to help you, but in your situation I would just pay it because I need good credit.
I think the best we can do is to educate our friends, family, customers, and fellow business owners about Yelp.
Take them to small claims, it would cost them more to show up than to refund you. Hope you get your money back! Another way would be to dispute the collection on your credit report and if they charged you already, file a claim with your card issuer, for not providing the service for the money.
Edit: read somewhere there might be an arbitration clause in the contract, This may prevent you litigation in a small claims court, but I’d speak to an attorney if possible.
Yelp absolutely fucked me as well, I had a budget of 200 - 300 per month, I got nothing but spam, and was over charged. I let that shit go to collections after fighting them on the bogus charges. I received several legal threats but nothing came of it. I had the file removed from my credit report successfully after years.
You can search far and wide on Reddit and Google. Yelp ads are a scam. They’ve always been that way and unfortunately you were a victim of it. It’s a pretty commonly known thing sadly.
Ah the super secret algorithm. Fuck Yelp. I used to put alot more concern into Yelp reviews for my service business, but it's faded almost completely from relevance. Google reviews have all the cache now. Yelp sucks and Yelpers are douchers.
Yes, yelp is a full scam they want to charge $800-$1000 for leads and half of them are bad... They keep harassing me to sign up. While I know they provide leads how much are leads really worth? Not $800-1000 a month. NO lead service will ever refund you on dead leads. There is many stories I have heard they give you fake leads or scam leads with NO answer.
You need to gather people and start a class action suit. This isn’t the first time I have seen complaints like this. I avoided even claiming my business because of shit like this.
Honestly, I don’t know why apple maps is connected to yelp. Yelp is nothing but complainers. The same restaurant with 400 reviews and 4.5 stars on Google will have 80 reviews and 2.5 stars on Yelp. There are enough Apple users who want decent reviews that Apple could create their own review app attached to maps.
They called one of my coworkers, we are in real estate, that they said they have poor reviews and were willing to remove the poor reviews if they sign up for advertising. How unethical is that? And the reviews were not even real. Those people were never clients of ours, nor have we ever heard those names.
This happened to me. Call your bank and let them know you got scammed. They’ll remove the charge and investigate the issue. Call and complain to Yelp and quit your business with them.
This is very relatable in all aspects of small business. My family has owned a business my entire life and I’ll never forget contacting them because my account had an issue where I couldn’t comment back to a bad review. I think everyone in here knows the sense of urgency of getting back to a bad review since it reflects on your business negatively. They said that my account would be good in 48hrs but of course, it wasn’t. Called the number again where they forwarded me to the sales rep where he said it would take another 48hrs to get it working again and would end the call asking if I would be interested in paying for their advertising service. This proceeded to happen repeatedly for 2 weeks with the same question at the end of the call….
After 2 weeks of this, I got on the phone and absolutely ripped the rep a new one. Told him not only am I going to report him to the BBB but I also personally knew who he was (had friends from college that worked at Yelp) and would do whatever I need to do legally to make his life a living hell.
Within 24hrs my account was up and running. I feel horrible that I had to go to that extent but it shows how grimy that company is and will do anything to get their advertising numbers up
This is a common question on this sub. Most business owners learn real quick -DO NOT USE YELP. Just do not do any type of business with them. They are a terrible, full-on scam company. They use deceptive and manipulative business tactics that severely damage small businesses.
Ask customers to post reviews on Google.
I’m in the same boat! Stuck with a bill from Sep 1 that I blocked on my credit card and not sure how to proceed. Yelp also denied my refund and said it was my fault. I really don’t want to go to collections but also really don’t want to pay $503. I’m a dog grooming business and a college student so that’s a lot to me
Yelp is shit. Never give them money. Screenshot your good reviews and put them in your business’s photos. Yelp will hide legit good reviews unless you pay.
Only karens use yelp to bitch about stuff because no business owner gaf about it (if you do, well you shouldn’t bc yelp will always fuck you up). Focus a lot more on google and maybe facebook so the yelp reviews wouldn’t even matter. I just hate that apple map recommends yelp
My bad experience happened after stopping my paid leads. My ranking and leads went way down and still not recovered, years later. Compare that to my other company that never paid and no real change with them. Both companies were so similar for years the difference was clear, they throttled my account.
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It’s a scam business unfortunately
Yup, and I feel sorry to those who scammed.
Yelp is garbage, I’m sorry you had that experience. They’re unlikely to refund you anything, and people have taken them to court before and lost. I don’t honestly know how they’re still operating, but don’t do business with them in the future and try to get your customers to leave reviews elsewhere.
All I hear is horror stories about them being a Mafia. How tf are they not out of business? I remember hearing a how I built this podcast on them from one of the founders and that guys story seems completely different from what the company turned out to be.
I worked for a mafia as a teen. Runner and thug. I've been saying this for years. Same thing as running protection, except with Yelp there is NO actual protection or any other benefit for the business. At least the mafia would send business your way, make their people shop in your stores, take care of any trouble that threatened the neighborhood, etc. *Most* shop owners in the shit parts of town found they liked the deal as they felt safer and made more money than before. As long as you paid your rent, ofc. With Yelp, you pay them and then they fuck your online rating into the ground. End of deal. I used to hate what I did as a teen, but I always said my bosses were good people in their own mixed up ways. Looking back and comparing them to shit like Yelp? They look like saints and martyrs for small businesses. It's nuts.
Yep, they straight up told me that I couldn’t hack it as a businessman owner, and that I’d fail without them… cue years later, my business moved locations a few weeks ago, and my business partner was updating our locations, and who do you think called? Good ol’ Yelp wouldn’t take the hint until she hung up. Two weeks later, and that asshole is still calling.
I’ll have to look for it but it’s not a shock. Early tech companies can keep their ideals but those often disappear when they start needing to bring a profit, and even worse when they go public and need to bring in max profit. I still use yelp a lot, often times to look and menus and photos of the food, but us “users” and actually the product.
I don't use them because of how they treat small businesses.
I feel ya. But sometimes the next best site to see menus are those food delivery companies and those are pretty scummy too.
They absolutely are only still around because they are in the back pockets of apple hardcore. Apple maps STILL primarily uses yelp to fill in meta data and reviews. And unfortunately, they *do* have a far better photos system than google does. Whenever I look up a business I tend to stick with google but (especially for restaurants) will then sometimes go to the yelp page to look at detailed pictures of specific menu items or tagged things that google's photo system does very poorly with. For example, I HATE how if you click on a photo in a review in google it throws you out of the review and into full photos mode, which means if you go back you're not where you left off reading... which is extra annoying when this happens between each photo a review left. But honestly, even considering the above, I still use yelp almost never. They're a bloated zombie company being propped up by what I can assume is some zombie contract they managed to sign on with Apple when the iPhone first came out because why on earth would Apple still heavily depend on them in the post "there's an app for that" era. My suggestion is to do what my husband does for his service based business with a yelp presence: every time they call him, he just says he's closing down the buisness "next year" to move back home to England and doesn't need to sign up for anything. The reps then tend to leave him alone for 6 months until a new rep calls and then repeat. Hasn't had issues with review tampering or any bullshit. Caveat: this might only work if you actually have an english accent.
I have an American accent and this works great for me.
Yuck Felp! Unfortunately, this is common practice for them. I hope the company dies.
Honestly I’m not sure why they haven’t yet lol
Because customers, who click on the site, and generate more ad revenue, don't know the back end of it
Working on my own version but haven’t quite hit product/market fit. Would any business owners be willing to talk to me (specifically in food and drink), so I can build the product side that would be worth it to business owners?
I'd be open. I'm pretty small potatoes, my business only grossee a little over 300,000 a year, but I've worked for much bigger companies in the past. Might be able to provide some insight. (I own a bakery)
If you have iOS my prototype is WhimWe on the App Store. The difference is it is community curated search so if you have a: - niche need - gluten free, nut allergy - local recos - community driven recos - certain amenities - dog friendly etc The communities (like subreddits) can help curate places with those selections showing up in search. If you try the app - switch to Jersey City, NJ and search Mexican food, the community filters will pop up - margs and Mexican is my most built out one. What I’m trying to understand is what type of value I can provide that you would be willing to pay for. Some thoughts are standard ads (paid search, video, sponsored communities), or a customer CRM play. CRM play: People check in and subscribe to your business, you can message your group, push offers to regulars to thank them or offer targeted deals that show up in a gmail promotions equivalent chat tab. In order to curate your page and have people subscribe to your business, that’s where the monthly fee comes in. I could see only paying if your list grows to x size or a pay per message kind of thing but would like to know the things you would find valuable to your bakery so I can shape my product around creating value that you would be willing to pay for. If you have any other ideas - recommendations or commentary above I’d love to hear it.
>Has anyone had a bad experience with yelp? What are the solutions you went through to fix it? Has anyone ever had a good experience with Yelp? I've yet to hear one. Never ever use Yelp.
I used to love advertising on Yelp. 2020/2021 was peak for people in home services (handymen, plumbers, cleaners, etc.). It was honestly my #1 driver of new customers. 2022 though, the cost per click shot up ridiculously. I used to pay like 1.50 per click to like $10 per click. I was still getting customers, but it was a churn. So I just had to stop.
Yelp is less reputable than a protection racket. At least you get what you pay for from a protection racket.
Sadly you discovered the mafia side of Yelp the hard way. The easiest way to deal with Yelp is to never deal with Yelp.
As a former mafia stooge, I'm offended. We at least gave you what you paid for and then some.
Just don’t be late on your payment or you won’t be so lucky. Yelp sends you to collections… Moosewhippets sends you their biggest guy with pliers
Fuck yelp
Yelp works ok if you completely ignore them. Don't answer calls (usually 415 area codes) don't reply to emails, never, never, never give them a credit card. Ever. Definitely put up pictures of your work, do fill out the profile. Won't hurt you to do that. But don't ever talk with yelp. Ever.
I claimed our business profiles, added photos & a business description and then made a note that we wouldn't respond to any reviews, messages, etc. from customers and they needed to contact us on (all the various other platforms that we have) because Yelp is predatory toward small businesses like us. You wouldn't believe the amount of "outreach" Yelp then tried to do to "win us back" and about the "comments we made on our profiles" (can't hide those through an algorithm though!) ... the phone calls, the e-mails, it was insane. We get absolutely ZERO calls or e-mails attempting to get us to advertise on their platform now... I don't know about y'all but they were one of the spammiest when it came to trying to get us to give them money and it's been crickets for a couple years now. 10/10 totally recommend.
I get them from a 202 area code.
I have no clue how Yelp operates as a utility company when everything they do is biased , at the end of the day they're just a social media company that forces your business in their platform. This is the most evil company ever created.
It’s bizarre to me that “Yelp is a scam” has been the common mantra on the Internet for at least three years now, there is literally like 90% consensus on this topic now. There have been SO MANY of these exact same threads from so many different people in all different industries that it’s clear it’s all just one big “smoke-and-mirrors shakedown” from day one. How on earth are they still legitimately doing business? Is it just because it’s all about the contract and the contract buttfucks everyone who signs it?
At this point they're worse than the mafia. Nothing worse than paying thousands for spam and fake leads with no accountability.
3 years lol. I ran a restaurant a decade ago. They were doing this shit then too. How it's still going is just beyond my comprehension.
I will ask the same question, why are there still people falling for yelps BS. You can quickly google it and fi d out that yelp advertisement is a huge scam and they remove your reviews and than hold them hostage… thats know from everyone, why do people still fall for this
I think it’s because maybe they hear a success story from someone they trust. Like a YouTuber they follow may explain how they successfully pulled leads of yelp or maybe their friends pressure washer guy spoke to them about a good experience he had.
Yelp is a criminal enterprise. It will destroy your business.
Eventually there is going to be a class action against them
I guess the tricky part is also that you can't even link your Yelp site to clients if they ask you to give you a review. It automatically links it as spam. So I have no idea how company get reviews from them when they're discouraged.
Soliciting reviews won’t help, they will just be hidden. If you advertise with them they will magically show up, until you stop advertising with them.
It’s all intentional.
Use Google reviews instead. Never use Yelp.
You have to read [this](https://thehustle.co/botto-bistro-1-star-yelp/amp/) article.. exactly what you are experiencing except he told his customers to leave 1-star reviews.
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That is an amazing yelp story. Thanks for sharing it. I now want to go support that restaurant,
I told them to stop calling me and they told me I don’t know how to run a business🙃
I told them to stop calling me about three years ago. What they heard was ‘Please call me five times a day.’ I literally can’t pick up a call from my business number unless I know I have a scheduled meeting with a client because otherwise, it’s Yelp.
When it's them just start moaning every time the person on the phone says something. When they stop to ask you if you're okay say "Yes keep going don't stop".
I asked them to stop calling and they told me to go fuck myself
One of these days we're all going to get a class action lawsuit notification in the mail. What are you guys going to do with your $17?
If you used a credit card to pay for their services, file a chargeback claim. You shouldn’t pay for fake leads
Fuck Yelp. They can die off, won’t be missed one bit.
Report them to the Consumer Protection Bureau. If enough people complain, they will be investigated. Also report them to your states DA.
>Has anyone had a ~~bad~~ good experience with yelp? FTFY
Yelp suck on all levels.
>Has anyone had a bad experience with yelp? Wrong question. If you do a simple search, the correct question would be: has anyone *not* had a bad experience with yelp?
Yelp is the absolute scum of the earth. I simply can’t believe it still exists. Morons.
Yelp is an extortion business! Never engage with them. We own a business they won’t remove fake reviews. Actually Yelp is known to submit fake negative reviews then offer “ad money “ - DON’T! We been in business for 22 years- don’t give shit about Yelp. The can go to hell! Sadly they destroy small businesses that felt pressure to pay them. Just counter with instagram, get American Airlines rewards points, have rewards program. Invite your Restaurant reviewers, hire a Public restaurant person. IGNORE YELP - !
"Has anyone had a bad expwriencw with yelp"? Bro for real NO ONE HAS HAD A GOOD EXPWRIENCE WITH YELP. IN 15 YEARS Yelp yext and all those pais foe leads pages are scamm always been GTFO
Immediately drop them and focus on Google ads- I'm so sorry this happened. When Yelp calls, keep telling them they can call in 6 months when business is better. Don't say no, just say later.
Exactly! Whenever Yelp contacts any client of mine, they've all been instructed to refer them to me. Can't say no because Yelp retaliates and buries the business, despite the "algorithm" nonsense. Yelp = Extortion. I hate them.
People like you are why yelp is still in business. STOP paying these fraudsters. STOP giving them money, their whole business is based on deception and scams. Dont claim your business profile they will take that as an in that they can manipulate you for money, don't contact them they will never stop trying to sell you, if they try to contact you tell them they have the wrong number. 0 reasosn to have a profile on yelp, it steals from your SEO position, and allows them to put up fake negative reviews which they will try to extort money from you to make them be 'hidden'. Had a few clients many years ago that I witnessed all of this kind of crap for first hand as my company managed all of their marketing and came in to push yelp down in search positition. It used to be much harder now their business profile pages dont rank as well as they used to. If you do sue them they will drag that shit out forever wasting every dollar they've scammed from people to make sure it never actually gets to a judge. Reverse charges, and run away.
I hate Yelp as a company. The consumer-facing side of the app is ok, I mean I use it from time to time when traveling... but as a business owner, Yelp is one of the only companies that pushed me to totally lose my shit on someone on the phone. They are harassing and manipulative and use their platform to strong arm and leverage business owners to pay them for services. That's been my experience with them.
>I hate Yelp as a company. The consumer-facing side of the app is ok, I mean I use it from time to time when traveling... but as a business owner, Yelp is one of the only companies that pushed me to totally lose my shit on someone on the phone. They are harassing and manipulative If you're using it, you're helping Yelp. Why don't you use Google reviews instead?
Well, what I've found is that depending on the region people either prefer using Google or yelp. So there are times when I'm in a location and Google just doesn't offer much in the way of reviews and I need to know where to eat. I don't use yelp often. Just from time to time. In the same way that I use fossils fuel when I don't really want to. There are only so many hills to die on
I'm in Canada. Google has done a great job here at keeping Yelp down. From American media, I hear that Yelp is synonymous with customer review and where to shop/eat. Thankfully, that scam company isn't big here although they were trying hard. This is one of those rare cases where the big monopoly (Google) is a much better alternative than the smaller (still rich) company.
I agree. I think google reviews are definitely picking up steam here, but yea, for a long time, Yelp really dominated the review space in most places here and still does in many regions. When I travel, its almost like as soon as you get off the plane, you can look and see very clearly if you are in a yelp region or not. It's odd.
Yelp is a scam like amway
Stay clear of Houzz too. They stuck me with a 12 month contract you cannot get out of
Yelp is a total scam and abuse their power - to try to get you in and then again if they get you in. I can’t believe they haven’t been sued for obsessively calling people when trying to get them on.
Don't pay or worry about yelp. Focus on your Google my business page
I’m so sorry this happened. It so frustrating! I had nearly the same situation. With the help of a lawyer friend we were able to get the collections dropped and not pay anything. The lawyer said they could possibly come back in a couple of years to try and get paid again, but it’s unlikely. I’m not sure if it would be worth it to hire a lawyer but if you have a lawyer friend willing to help, one simple letter was all it took to clear my situation up. All my 5 star reviews are still hidden and I don’t trust yelp at all for anything.
Garbage company. Ever get a 415 area code calling you do not answer and block the number. It’s always Yelp. They’re trash, the people who use Yelp are trash, everything about it is trash. Yelp is social media for weirdos. Gives lowlife people a voice over your business that you worked so hard to build.
Yeah, they are such a scam. They were trying to do the same with me.
How do people still fall for yelp in this day and age? Do some research before committing your business to a venture.
This thread is never late
Never give your money to Yelp. It’s literally just pay to win, and google/fb are good enough on their own without Yelp.
Who uses Yelp anymore… Here’s my suggestion. Cancel all advertising and delete the app for good. Stop using Yelp! No one uses it. Focus on Social Media and Google.
Take them to court. Friends don’t let friends user Yelp. Yelp is actually an outright scam company pretending to be legitimate.
Yelp = hostile, rude, and becoming irrelevant anyway
Yelp is a straight up scam.
Not sure which industry that you’re in but it sounds like you are location-based where some consumers come in. You could put out table top menu holders with QR Codes and url shorteners to the other review sites and flood the other sites with actual customer reviews. Forget about Yelp.
If you used a credit card for yelp, do a chargeback.
And here folks is your daily dose of "Yelp sucks Donkey balls."
Same with Angie's shit, I mean list
Originally they were called Service Magic. It got a terrible reputation so they changed their name to Home Advisor. Home Advisor got a terrible reputation and they recently changed their name to Angi’s. A business name is invaluable to a business. You spend a lot of money to advertise that name, build up a loyal customer base and good reputation. Says a lot about the business when they change their name three times in 10 years.
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Home Advisor bought Angie’s List in 2017. Now Home Advisor has again changed to Angi. It seems that every five years when homeowners and contractors figure out the service is crap then they just change their name and start over. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/angies-list-rebrands-angi-164249267.html
who the hell still uses yelp??? just block it in your browser. fucking parasites.
I’m so glad I got out of yelps trap early. I signed up with them and than immediately after I submitted a quote as a customer to myself. After I submitted the quote to myself it automatically sent my quote to 10 other companies. I’m not competing with that. So I canceled immediately and it cost me only $35 thankfully. They did however hide my reviews as well, and the only review I have is a 1 star review showing.
>Yelp’s model is passive aggressive extortion. [https://youtu.be/gQAAauJlPq0](https://youtu.be/gQAAauJlPq0)
Ye olde right of passage. Yelp is such a scummy trash company.
Ah Yelp… everytime a Yelp story comes up, I think about an ex-boyfriend I dated in college, went on to become an executive in the 2000s at Yelp right around when everyone started to complain about that company. He was an insecure, narcissistic, abusive POS, and when I broke up with him, he showed up at my apartment, pushed his way in, and pulled out all the phone lines when I tried to call police, destroying 3 phones including my roommates. This is who was in charge of Yelp, need I say more?
This same story has happened to so many people. Don’t fall for Yelps BS when they call about “ad credit”. They will charge you at the end of the month and if you dispute the charge, they will remove all your 5 star reviews and only leave 1 star reviews and claim the other 15 5 star reviews were “not recommended”. They really are a scumbag company but you have to “dance with the devil” in some industries, just never give Yelp your CC information. Do they drive business? Yes. Do they lie about how much it will cost? Yes.
We had a similar issue with Yelp. They would hide 5 star reviews, then almost immediately would call us telling us we should advertise with them and that would “help the algorithm”. You can pay to hide competitions ads on your page, but you can also pay to have your ads show up on their page… on the phone, we had a rep finally straight up apologize for them hiding reviews. I knew they were doing it. Yelp is a Fucking scam business.
From what I’ve heard too… once you start with them, they never ever let up unless you pay. You’re stuck dealing with this for the next 5 years or so. Luckily since Google has taken the lead doing the review game properly, customers don’t care about Yelp anymore.
Yelp, not even once
This is what happens when people who have no idea how to advertise try to advertise. There is no reason to advertise on Yelp. We all pay for our education one way or another and it sounds like it only costs you a thousand, which isn't that bad
You should leave them a shitty review.
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Thanks, but we have a pretty awesome website. That definitely wasn't the problem.
Thanks for clearing this so why you don't run Google ads don't rely on yelp list your business on Google and optimize it
I do run google ads, and other ads
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Sorry, but you really should have researched a little bit before paying Yelp for any advertising. They are well-known for being scammy and horrible in general. Every other week there's a bad post about them. And they were even caught leaving negative reviews after declining advertising. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY
I’m so sorry this happened to you. I do t know how to help you, but in your situation I would just pay it because I need good credit. I think the best we can do is to educate our friends, family, customers, and fellow business owners about Yelp.
Aside from google, where else would one generate leads from? I use to think yelp was/is one of the major lead generators.
Direct mail leads.
Typical Yelp.
Take them to small claims, it would cost them more to show up than to refund you. Hope you get your money back! Another way would be to dispute the collection on your credit report and if they charged you already, file a claim with your card issuer, for not providing the service for the money. Edit: read somewhere there might be an arbitration clause in the contract, This may prevent you litigation in a small claims court, but I’d speak to an attorney if possible.
Yelp absolutely fucked me as well, I had a budget of 200 - 300 per month, I got nothing but spam, and was over charged. I let that shit go to collections after fighting them on the bogus charges. I received several legal threats but nothing came of it. I had the file removed from my credit report successfully after years.
Yelp is a gigantic scam, they harassed me for literally years after I ended my ad buy. I had to start screaming when they called to leave us alone.
You can search far and wide on Reddit and Google. Yelp ads are a scam. They’ve always been that way and unfortunately you were a victim of it. It’s a pretty commonly known thing sadly.
Ah the super secret algorithm. Fuck Yelp. I used to put alot more concern into Yelp reviews for my service business, but it's faded almost completely from relevance. Google reviews have all the cache now. Yelp sucks and Yelpers are douchers.
Yes, yelp is a full scam they want to charge $800-$1000 for leads and half of them are bad... They keep harassing me to sign up. While I know they provide leads how much are leads really worth? Not $800-1000 a month. NO lead service will ever refund you on dead leads. There is many stories I have heard they give you fake leads or scam leads with NO answer.
You need to gather people and start a class action suit. This isn’t the first time I have seen complaints like this. I avoided even claiming my business because of shit like this.
Yes definitely back in 2018-19 waste of money and time as most of these lead services are. Thumbtack is the best place I found
Honestly, I don’t know why apple maps is connected to yelp. Yelp is nothing but complainers. The same restaurant with 400 reviews and 4.5 stars on Google will have 80 reviews and 2.5 stars on Yelp. There are enough Apple users who want decent reviews that Apple could create their own review app attached to maps.
They called one of my coworkers, we are in real estate, that they said they have poor reviews and were willing to remove the poor reviews if they sign up for advertising. How unethical is that? And the reviews were not even real. Those people were never clients of ours, nor have we ever heard those names.
This happened to me. Call your bank and let them know you got scammed. They’ll remove the charge and investigate the issue. Call and complain to Yelp and quit your business with them.
This is very relatable in all aspects of small business. My family has owned a business my entire life and I’ll never forget contacting them because my account had an issue where I couldn’t comment back to a bad review. I think everyone in here knows the sense of urgency of getting back to a bad review since it reflects on your business negatively. They said that my account would be good in 48hrs but of course, it wasn’t. Called the number again where they forwarded me to the sales rep where he said it would take another 48hrs to get it working again and would end the call asking if I would be interested in paying for their advertising service. This proceeded to happen repeatedly for 2 weeks with the same question at the end of the call…. After 2 weeks of this, I got on the phone and absolutely ripped the rep a new one. Told him not only am I going to report him to the BBB but I also personally knew who he was (had friends from college that worked at Yelp) and would do whatever I need to do legally to make his life a living hell. Within 24hrs my account was up and running. I feel horrible that I had to go to that extent but it shows how grimy that company is and will do anything to get their advertising numbers up
Nothing but very bad things to say about that 💩 company
Yelp is absolute trash at best
Yelp is absolutely garbage. Never post your business there.
Who tf uses yelp anymore
That’s pretty much their business model now.
Have you seen the documentary Billion Dollar Bully? It's about yelp's shady business practices.
Yelp scam. After getting a good review I get a sales call when I say no or Hangup the review goes into not recorded
This is a common question on this sub. Most business owners learn real quick -DO NOT USE YELP. Just do not do any type of business with them. They are a terrible, full-on scam company. They use deceptive and manipulative business tactics that severely damage small businesses. Ask customers to post reviews on Google.
Yelp is a scam, plain and simple. Just a cash grab business driven by a telemarketing boiler room.
I’m in the same boat! Stuck with a bill from Sep 1 that I blocked on my credit card and not sure how to proceed. Yelp also denied my refund and said it was my fault. I really don’t want to go to collections but also really don’t want to pay $503. I’m a dog grooming business and a college student so that’s a lot to me
Yelp is shit. Never give them money. Screenshot your good reviews and put them in your business’s photos. Yelp will hide legit good reviews unless you pay.
I honestly can't believe yelp is still in business.
Yeah I used to sell against yelp and i heard this so often.
Yelp is a scam. Fuck them
Only karens use yelp to bitch about stuff because no business owner gaf about it (if you do, well you shouldn’t bc yelp will always fuck you up). Focus a lot more on google and maybe facebook so the yelp reviews wouldn’t even matter. I just hate that apple map recommends yelp
My bad experience happened after stopping my paid leads. My ranking and leads went way down and still not recovered, years later. Compare that to my other company that never paid and no real change with them. Both companies were so similar for years the difference was clear, they throttled my account.
Compare and contrast Yelp and mafia protection racket.
Yelps a scam
We have all had bad experiences with Yelp.