Yelp uses suspicious tactics to punish cancelled ad accounts
Yelp Sucks the Life out of Small Business
As business owners, we hesitate to post anything negative about someone else’s organization. However, after diligently trying to make Yelp work for us, we feel obligated to share our negative experience, in the hopes that others may learn from our mistakes and refuse to play the Yelp ad game.
In 2012, we were curious about Yelp. So we contacted a sales rep to inquire about advertising. Although the rep was extremely reluctant to share prices (which is odd, considering the fact we needed to know how much Yelp advertising would cost), we finally received a hefty quote of $450 per month with a six-month minimum contract. We negotiated that rate down to $350 per month and were eager to see how the Yelp program would provide leads for My Cleaning Lady Referral Agency.
Even at the start, we were disappointed with the results of the campaign and contacted our sales rep numerous times to ask for suggestions about maximizing the ad buy. The agent assigned to our account after we signed the contract was extremely difficult to reach…far more so than the one whose job it had been to sell us the program in the first place.
Numerous emails and phone calls finally led us to the original sales gal, who suggested we ask clients to write honest reviews. So, when clients praised the efforts of our domestic referral agency and associated housekeeping services, we encouraged them to click on Yelp and write reviews. Finding people who were eager to review was not difficult, as we have a 99% customer satisfaction rating.
After paying $2,150 over our six-month contract and realizing only a slight bump in Yelp profile views, new website traffic and very few new customers booked, we decided not to renew the contract. It just didn’t make good business sense to continue to pay $150 per lead for advertising with Yelp when other methods produced far better results.
After fulfilling the contract, we canceled and, at the time, had a Yelp profile with nine visible, positive reviews. So it struck us as odd when shortly after cancelling our ad-buy, six out of our nine reviews mysteriously disappeared into the Yelp Filter. Our efforts to contact a Yelp sales rep about the filter were frustrating because no one would return our calls or emails except to say “we do not provide customer service for free accounts.”
Finally, we reached someone who told us to write to Feedback@***.com. The auto-reply was a description of the filter, along with a note explaining that they “cannot do anything to retrieve reviews out of the Yelp Filter.”
Anyone who owns a business understands that it is virtually impossible to provide 100% customer satisfaction. But when we drop the ball, we do our best to make things right. And we have a very high approval rating as a result of this commitment to superior customer service. So it is extremely frustrating that our reviews on Yelp do not reflect this philosophy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to ascertain that something is fishy about the correlation between Yelp ad campaign cancellations and disappearing positive reviews.
But don’t just take our word for it. Here is a small sampling of links posted by other business owners who are dissatisfied with Yelp business practices:
Huffington Post Top 9 Reasons You Can’t Always Trust Yelp
Yelp Sucks Twitter Profile
Yelp Sucks.com
Yelp Filters Reviews
Yelp Sucks on Facebook
Yelp Sucks on Yelp
Yelp Sucks Survival Guide
Why Yelp Sucks
Please feel free to share your own Yelp experience with us. We don’t pretend to do everything right 100% of the time. If we drop the ball, we will do our best to make the situation right. So if you could use some help cleaning your home, give My Cleaning Lady Referral Agency a call. We would love to help get realize your housecleaning-related resolutions. The house cleaners we refer offer complete home cleaning services including thorough dusting at reasonable prices.
My Cleaning Lady Referral Agency proudly serves Arcadia, Chino, Chino Hills, Duarte, Ontario, Pomona, LaVerne, Covina, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Montclair, Claremont, Phillips Ranch, Upland, West Covina, Glendora, San Dimas, and Sierra Madre. Visit http://www.mycleaninglady.com/or call (909) 593-**** for information or to arrange a free estimate.
Monetary Loss: $2150.
Location: Los Angeles, California
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Please avoid publishing any personal information and promotional content
Can you retrieve charges if on an AMEX card ? SMFH !!!
Same absolutely things just happened with me. Cancelled advertising with Yelp and mysteriously a few 5 stars reviews(many are old) went to "Non-trusted" section.
When they did filtered real customers reviews before I did complained to their sales team but just got answers that they can't do anything.
So I had a lot of 5 star "non-recommended" reviews. After reading all about these practices is it a coincident that this last major "filtering" happened exactly when I cancelled advertising?
I definitely agree on this review. I have a similar experience.
Since we are the most rated company in my area, I was being pushed to pay for advertisement. I refused to buy any advertisement program since it did not help me in the past. The sales rep from Yelp called me and asked me to be more aggressive so that I can start yelp ad. She told me that "You have a lot of reviews.
For god sake, I don't want you to lose your reviews. So you better start Yelp ad. Otherwise, you never know what will happen. You should be more aggressive" I am scared to give my business name since Yelp punishes businesses.
She was threatening me indirectly. This is unethical and wrong.
I signed up, was told the advertising would easily pay for my $400 per month fee and then some. After 3 months I decided not to throw good money after bad, now they're threatening me.
I HATE Yelp! I own a very reputable moving business that has been slammed by my competitors in reviews that Yelp refuses to address.
I have had two false (defamatory) reviews show cased on my business page. Yelp is only one advertising marketplace I use, but is by far the worst. Yelp hides 17 five star reviews, and displays false ones causing my company's overall star rating to drop across the boars.
Yelp is hurting my buisness and expect a payment at the end of every month. Worst choice I ever made!
Looking at cancelling my yelp contract after noticing they were allowing click charges of $16.75 per click... I had contacted them previously complaining about other $6 and $9 per click charges.
I tried to find controls for my max bid per click but could not find that. In other ad programs like Google adsearch you can set your max per click bid price... this one is ridiculous and without user control over max bid they can just artificially inflate click rate prices.
Ridiculous. www.djemir.com
Yelp sucks. No business generated out of them.
Canceled account in every way and they still go after your credit card for more. My credit company used will not pay them because I cut them off.
They still try and come again in other ways. This is the biggest fraud company and from the top they deserve prison time for fraud.
I negotiated a 3 month contract for $575 a month, and it was horrible. Only got 4 calls, and I called to cancel the next day my 3 month contract ended and they would not refund the charge for the extra month, and the BS continued, because they need 30 days to Cancel the contract, meaning that they Will charge for yet another month.
Which they did. Capital One sided with Yelp on my dispute, knowing I called to cancel and they still charged me 2 extra months. I wish I could find a way to get my money back...
They advertised my business as Party Rentals, instead of Bounce Houses. I don’t offer any other party rentals other than bounce houses, so I got 4 calls in 3 months, and people wanted things I didn’t provide for services...
I called and complained, they claimed no wrongdoing, yet fixed the issue immediately. I have screenshots of search results and capital one didn’t think it was enough
What happened after that?
Has anyone successfully got out of contract without penalty?
Do not ever deal or look on Yelp referrals, that company ridicules, at BBB had 1800 complaints
say no to them a few times and ask them to explain stuff. Soon enough they'll get impatient because they weren't trained to explain stuff and they'll get flustered and give you an either/or.
You can take the "or" and they'll quit bothering you. It really sucks that any proactive interest you show in them is rewarded with 2 or 3 weeks of intense badgering with no real information.
I have been trying to cancel Yelp for a month now and I can't get our rep to call or email me back. I finally had to just file a fraudulent charge and stop payment with our bank in order to get their attention and stop the ad services. I guess I will see what reviews gets filtered.
How did this workout for you? What did Yelp do once you stopped payment?
Yes Im very interested in stop payment avenues. What dis yelp do?
Did they sue or what happen when u stop the payment
Something told me that Yelp was a trap. Don't ask me what.
I tried to cancel my account and of course this is impossible. I read Yelp's propaganda about what to do about a bogus review, and realized they are poison to hard-working businesspeople.
(I never got a bogus review, but did not want to be a sitting duck for one, either)If you are hot-boxed by these bizarre people, simply redo your profile using the examples given for "Mel's Diner." A few thousand bogus Mel's Diner sites may give people pause when they look at Yelp sites.
Since you advertised with Yelp maybe you can answer a question many of us are dying to know. Can a business pay Yelp to filter negative reviews?
I generally leave good reviews but recently left a very well deserved poor review. It immediately went to filtered, so my wife left a review for the same company, same thing.
On Pissed Consumer they have plenty of negative but Yelp is sparkling clean. Thanks for your input and have a great day!
I have a friend who owns a small restaurant and he says yelp has contacted him many times, trying to get him to give them money to help "protect his reputation". He told them to F off.
The filter works like this: If the only time you went on yelp was to bash one company one time and you never came back, you get filtered. The filter works as a way to defend against that rogue bash-review by somebody with an axe to grind, but no real interest in participating on the site.
Ultimately, yelp is a quasi-social-network that's based around bragging about your social life and where you go....just in case you didn't know. Once your profile accumulates a number of reviews, most of your reviews get unfiltered at that point. I've had one where it really mentioned specifics about a rental car company and it got filtered, however this was at the beginning of my yelp profile. If you go to yelp's yelp page, you can probably find my review because it really lets them have it.
That particular review is not filtered anymore. I've contributed scores of photos and reviews though at this point. As a marketing manager that has talked to them about niche law and home improvement, I'm still on the fence about paying for ads because it's just impressions, not clicks. Also, there is no IP-Redundancy protection, meaning if I were to go up from my same IP and see the same ad 10 times in a row all from my IP, it STILL counts as 10 impressions, which I'm not a fan of.
Also, something to take into account when yelp tells you your page stats: 1. Potential employees need directions to their interview. 2. You check your yelp page to see how it looks.
3. Your competitors check your yelp page to see how it looks. If you can quantify these views, and then subtract them out, that gives you a better idea of how much the general population is on yelp looking at you.
As a FREE LISTING though, it's worth every penny...womp womp...but seriously, these are high quality reviews that consumers put a lot of stock in...that's kind of why yelp is so psycho and borderline unprofessional when they try to sell you ad space. Their product allows them to really be like 2pac and his thoughts on the world.