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Yelp Website Accused of Extortion -- More Examples of Corrupt Review Sites

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cranioscopical:
oh to be so young and full of hope..

allow me to present you with some alternative remedies:-mouser
--- End quote ---

And you so young to be so cynical  :o

rxantos:
If you are on the USA. Extortion is one of the pillars of our society. Just look at the IRS, one might think they invented it :)

The best thing you can do, legally, is to just don't do business with this kind of people nor use their services.

And, if you are really lucky, and got proof that will stand in court. Sue them and hope they don't bribe your lawyer or the judge. Good luck with that, justice may be blind, but sure likes money.

Yelp employees and only agreed to be interviewed if granted anonymity, said several sales reps have told him they promised to move reviews to get businesses to advertise. "It's not illegal or unethical," he said they told him. "We're just helping the little guy. It doesn't hurt them, it benefits them."

--- End quote ---

I do not know if its legal or not. But is certainly unethical.  As always people that do wrong are delusional, thinking they are doing good. Just like Al Capone, John Dilinger, Dick Chenney  :)

J-Mac:
Similar accusations were rampant only a few months after Yelp appeared on the web. I have seen this several times IRL; no reason to think it wouldn’t be the same in cyberspace. Philadelphia Magazine did this to a friend who had opened a small eatery in a section of Philadelphia called Olde City - a run-down area that had been "reborn" and had several new establishments opening. They contacted her and asked her to purchase a standing quarter-page ad. She couldn't yet afford that - it was very expensive. The next month's issue had a "secret reviewer" type review that said the food was terrible. Then they contacted her again and she managed to negotiate a smaller ad purchase. A month later she got a follow-up review which said the previous one must have been an off-day and it praised everything about her shop - greatest shop ever!

This is common in most large cities. Online too, I guess.

Thanks!

Jim

PS - I was going to post a link to an early article about this but it turns out that mouser's first link above is the one - Feb 2009, less than a year after Yelp launched their east coast ops and suddenly jumped out ahead of CitySearch.

the3seashells:
Both of the reviews that I posted on yelp have been deleted. In once case, I was even the first reviewer of the place, added the business, and my review was still remove. They were both somewhat negative (a one start and a two star), but I dispassionately stated why I was not happy with the service I received.

Yelp tries to be sneaky about it; if you are logged in, they display your deleted reviews, even though it is not factored into the average score. When logged in with another account, or not logged in at all, the deleted reviews are not displayed.

I try to tell everyone that I know to not trust Yelp at all. I use Google's reviews. They have much more of a reputation at stake and I am not as worried they they will delete reviews to please / extort companies.

mouser:
Official reply from Yelp:


* http://officialblog.yelp.com/2010/03/additional-thoughts-on-last-weeks-lawsuit-or-how-a-conspiracy-theory-is-born-.html
Definitely worth reading, and puts forward a reasonable case that they are not doing what they are accused of doing.

Given how many spammers and scammers are out there writing fake reviews, I do have some sympathy for their claim that they need to remove reviews aggressively if they suspect the reviews are planted.

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