If we know Yelp is a scam

Why do people keep checking it? They extort businesses in paying to control their reviews, filter perfectly good legit reviews to make them pay and therefore cannot be trusted. Boycott Yelp.

• It would be good to create a class action against them. I keep hearing how they manipulate and attempt to extort the companies that are reviewed.

• They should be sued. Or just torn to shreds in the court of public opinion.

  Rip%20and%20Tear

• Crappy restaurant owner, huh OP?

• Back when it first started, there was this moving company in town that no one liked so everyone logged in and bashed the hell out of it, so the owner made a fuss in the press (and maybe sued).

• I am a 'yelp elite reviewer' so all of my reviews are posted, good or bad. I also own a small business, and once offered a discount to people who left me yelp reviews. I have nine positive reviews from customers, but they are all filtered because they only have a few reviews each. As a customer, I like that they filter reviews. As a business owner, it sucks. On the other hand, Google reviews are mostly fake, and made up by the business owner....which makes the entire review process pointless.

• .

• I went reading a lot of links...best are the reviews of Yelp out in California...people can review yelp on yelp and all the reviews are bad save those from 'superusers'

• ...and another one. Business owners are really riled up.

  http://saveusfromyelp.com/

• Yelp always felt like I was being played. Avoid it, myself.

• I had a small restaurant once and you would have thought that Yelp's entire business depended on me, the way they called over and over to demand we pay them money to get reviews either features or axed. Yelp is basically the old protection racket in a Yuppie Internet form. Can't wait for someone to close them down.

• I posted positive reviews and they are up, I've posted negative and they are up. How's this a scam?

• R11 if you post a positive review for a business that refuses to pay yelp the review is often 'filtered'. If you are posting positive to businesses that pay they stay up. If you post negative to a business that won't pay it stays up.

• Here you go...why yelp is a scam. They run a protection racket for business.

  http://saveusfromyelp.com/%3Fwpcrp%3D2

• Yelp **CAN** be useful, if you take the extreme reviews with a grain of salt. I've found reviews to be helpful. That being said, I deleted my Yelp profile when I found them deleting my reviews or hiding them. They swear up and down they don't offer to promote good reviews, but they do. I'm not sure how they've eluded some sort of prosecution for lying about it.

• R14 There is a class action suit and more than 400,000 complaints about them at the Better Business Bureau. They now advise business to record the calls and call the police filing criminal charges.

• I wrote one negative review (other reviews were positive) about a salon. I waited 30 min for my scheduled appointment before leaving. Other than when I first came in, no one from the salon ("high end" in a hotel) said anything to me. They removed my review and I later found out that salon and another hotel salon were removing negative reviews from Yelp. I appreciate this sort of website. Customer perspective and more detail about noise, service, etc. But I suppose it's tough -- like Amazon -- to stop the PR fakes.

• It is also tough to stop the Anti P.R. Say you have a nice hair salon, good reviews. Another one opens a block away, bad reviews. The other place pays yelp and suddenly they have good reviews. Bad reviews appear on your site from folks who have never been to your salon before. You complain Yelp asks you for money, you refuse. Your good reviews go away leaving only bad.

• I did a review just a couple of days ago, don't review often and it was a good review of a small business. Today it was removed. 3 good reviews are filtered one okay one is standing and I am sure that will be filtered by tomorrow.

• The reviews that seem to stay on there are the cutesy little I love-this-place-and-wish-I-could-live-here, flowery reviews by little baby fraus... ...which seems to be the target audience: image conscious Zooey Deschanel wannabes who need to document everything they do.

• they let you read the filtered review now. Not sure if that is a feature for everyone or only when you make a profile, but I can open them.

• I have a small business and one of their salespeople WILL NOT LEAVE ME ALONE. I've been very nice but they want something like $1500 a month for "Premium Service" which includes a video for your page (another exorbidant fee). It basically amounts to blackmail. I just try to be sweet and sort of pathetic and say no way can we afford that but this bitch will not stop calling. I've said "No" 20 different ways, 100 different times.

• I've never had any of my reviews removed. Maybe it's because you use words like scat and piss that cause that to be removed?