The Yelp Protection Racket Redux

I've never had as many hits as I got on last night's post about Yelp's business practices. I've heard from dozens of businesses who've had the exact same problem, although most of them are reluctant to go public with their businesses names for fear of further retaliation on Yelp's part. 

In the slightly more than 24 hours since my first post, several customers of Dr. No's have attempted to post positive reviews of the store; five of the seven reviews posted since last night have already been moved to the not recommended section, where they're rarely seen and do not count towards the store's overall rating. I fully expect that same thing to happen to the other two positive reviews in the next 24 hours; keep checking our Yelp reviews to see if reviews by Carrie B and Cynthia A remain on the main page.

 

And here's one more bit of proof that this policy of deleting positive reviews of out store is deliberate and retaliatory on Yelp's part: a 5-star review of Dr. No's written by Sam W of Woodstock in January of this year was moved into the not recommended section. However, Sam W's 5-star review of Raven's Nest, another gaming store in the Marietta area, remains the first review you see on their Yelp page, where it has appeared since it was posted in January of this year. Sam has the exact same rating/number of reviews, so Yelp can't possibly claim that this is based on the number of reviews the writer has produced thus far, or the ratings he gave. One 5-star review for another store counts, but a 5-star review from the same customer for our store gets buried and negated in our totals.

 

Unless there are major changes in Yelp's business practices, I won't write about this regularly. Should anything of significance occur, I'll mention it here, of course, but I think I've made the scurrilous nature of Yelp's policies pretty clear by now..