Yelp Is Accused of Deceptive Business Practices

[catcul]

Yelp is facing a class action lawsuit for deceptive business practices. Their shareholders are accusing Yelp of inflating share prices by extorting small businesses. Allegedly, Yelp would call small business and ask for US$400 per month to remove the negative reviews. When the businesses refused, Yelp would remove the positive reviews instead, allegedly.

Yelp hit with shareholder lawsuit over online reviews - Reuters
Attention Yelp Inc. Investors: Yelp Requires Payment to Suppress Negative Reviews According to a Recently Filed Class Action - Market Watch

[Greenday]

Somehow, I'm not the least bit shocked. A review site that inflates a company's rating or lower their rating on whether they pay money to the review site? No way!

[TheHuckster]

Even among the legit reviews, you have to be careful. You'll have the SC who gave a restaurant one star because they had to wait 15 minutes to be seated on a Saturday night without a reservation, or you'll have the completely naive customer who'd say something like "the only problem was the movers completely smashed my TV after tying it to the roof because they didn't bring the larger truck, but it was covered by warranty so 5-stars for me!"

So, when sites like Yelp do things like this, it only increases the already diciness you have to worry about even among the reviews of people who actually believe what they're writing.

[kaycivine]

At the sucky restaurant job I had, yelp wouldn't stop calling...now I know why.

[Amadaes]

I can confirm that Yelp has done something like this to the business that I work for. I don't know the prices, but my bos was rather annoyed that they wanted him to sign up for a subscription just to be able to dispute bad reviews and be able to get a 5 star rating.

[Sleepwalker]

Yeah, I always read the comments. My local movie theater had a horrible rating, and it turns out it was all from guys mad they couldn't take their rifles inside, and people bitching about popcorn prices.

[Rageaholic]

Not surprising to me either. Also wouldn't surprise me if yelp hired good lawyers to find loopholes.

[Gravekeeper]

Yeah, I always read the comments. My local movie theater had a horrible rating, and it turns out it was all from guys mad they couldn't take their rifles inside, and people bitching about popcorn prices.

Wait. What. ><

[Rageaholic]

Not surprising. I remember this show 'airline' on A&E that features dealings with airport customers. One nutcase was angry because he couldn't bring his gun aboard a plane and threw a huge fit.

[EricKei]

I knew about Yelp charging for positive reviews -- they've been doing that forever, and at least one case brought against them for the practice failed miserably (because they're "just a website" -- essentially, the same class of sites as the BBB. Meaning, they're effectively meaningless and powerless, though Yelp reviews CAN influence a places' business, to some extent, among those who are among Yelp's diehard supporters).

Additional reading on the general topic, take these as you will:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/yelp-lawsuit/

http://www.ibtimes.com/yelp-extortio...bully-appealed

Hopefully, the fact that it's their *shareholders* who are pissed off may hold more weight than one individual business did.