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Why Yelp should Seriously Eat S*^&% and Die

Stumbled on this beast of a thread when searching before creating a new post. Wild that this is still a thing. Came hoping for a solution, but it appears this is a long unsolved problem. Bunch of criminals...

Yup - very little has changed on the Yelp front. I don't hear much about Yelp in general anymore. There was a time a few years ago a Yelp sales rep was calling dealerships (at least this one) on a weekly basis. Many stores shared on the shady tactics being used - negative reviews being held for collateral, removed admin access unless you pay for their over priced services and advertising.

I admit, I'll still use the Yelp app from time to time if I'm in an area I'm not familiar with. A few weeks ago I was in Kentucky and noticed my friend was STILL using foursquare/swarm app, which IMO was a superior app that should have won the location-review-check-in app wars due to it's gamification alone but instead broke the company up between 2 different services with most of the focus going into geo data sharing.
 
Pretty much a blackmail play from their side. They would essentially say unless you paid their astronomical monthly fee, they would 'massage' the reviews to where all the worst ones were on top. Pretty crazy there are so many of these stories out there and nothing has happened.

That said I rarely touch the site and avoid it even more after my experiences with them, but it still gets pretty significant traffic especially for businesses with low SEO or organic touch points.

I'd argue that spending the money on improving your individual site's visibility above the default Yelp results would have a much better ROI.
 
I've never agreed more with any singular thread here. Can we add Yext into the mix? One of our stores got an awesome organic review on Yelp and that same week got a very obvious spam review.

When I requested they look at the spam review for removal they: kept that shitty spammy, and removed the good one.

recently did some side work for a massage therapist, when she claimed her Yelp profile they contacted her and said she owed them money for all of the clicks she had gotten prior to her claiming the profile. Not knowing any better and being freaked out by it she paid them to the tune of 458 smackers. unsure how this is even legal, but this IS the business model.
 
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Yelp will only be shut down when enough business owners including Dealers file mass complaints with the FTC and launch an intensive investigation exposing all their underhanded, anti-competitive, and monopolistic business practices that are borderline criminal extortion. I routinely take calls from their sales reps to go thru their pitch just to be able to tell them to jck off @ the end of the call...;)
 
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I've never agreed more with any singular thread here. Can we add Yext into the mix? One of our stores got an awesome organic review on Yelp and that same week got a very obvious spam review.

When I requested they look at the spam review for removal they: kept that shitty spammy, and removed the good one.

recently did some side work for a massage therapist, when she claimed her Yelp profile they contacted her and said she owed them money for all of the clicks she had gotten prior to her claiming the profile. Not knowing any better and being freaked out by it she paid them to the tune of 458 smackers. unsure how this is even legal, but this IS the business model.

OUCH. They pulled a quick one over on her. Not cool at all.
 
Everything about Yelp is essentially blackmail. "I'll add your store, like it or not, correct or not", "I'll ensure I make you aware of any 'bad' reviews so you can join and pay us, or we will go out of our way to keep those bad reviews, real or not real, at the top". Glad they are essentially disregarded in our areas. Disgusting how if you can't bring value, you blackmail instead.
 
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