Yelp

Complaints & Reviews on USAComplaints

USAComplaints currently maintains 65 historical complaints about Yelp, published between 2008 and 2013. No approved complaints have been published on this site during the last three years. For a current reputation snapshot, see the independent sources below.

• Consumer ReportPublished Jun 2, 2013 · Historical consumer allegation
• Consumer ReportPublished May 17, 2013 · Historical consumer allegation
• Consumer ReportPublished Mar 22, 2013 · Historical consumer allegation
• Completely honest review hidden by filtersPublished Jan 18, 2013 · Historical consumer allegation
• YELP uses broken filtering systems to remove legitimate reviews and refuses to address the problemPublished Oct 30, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Unauthorized cencorship from personal reviewPublished Oct 29, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Yelp, raymondfong.net/misc/a-candid-yelp-advertising-review-is-yelp-ripping-people-offPublished Sep 29, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Yelp, Scam, Ripoff, Extortion, misrepresentation with negligencePublished Sep 16, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• They called our company to advertise with them. When we declined, they removed all 5 stars and created a fake bad reiview to hurt our business. I filed with the BBB and also the FTC. FTC is less thPublished Sep 7, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Yelp.com! Promoting extortion schemes against business for advertisement in exchange for good reviewsPublished Aug 28, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Yelp Yelp Fraud - Yelp Extortion - No Way to Fight BackPublished Jul 7, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• I don't care for YelpPublished Jul 5, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Is yelp being paid off by the list on "best of yelp"? The only ones whose good reviews arent deleted!Published Jul 2, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• YELP SCAM ARTISTS becuareful if yelp contact you they will remove good reviews and keep bad ones to twist your armPublished Jun 29, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Yelp.com The remove all good reviews and keep the bad ones once you tell them you wont advertisePublished Jun 16, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Yelp.com Yelp is a ripoff to small business owners InternetPublished Jun 8, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Yelp adds are a scam do not trust themPublished May 5, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Reviews are Unfairly FilteredPublished May 1, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• I have 7 positive review all hidden from the past 18 months, but only negitive reviews are posted for all to judge my businessPublished Apr 24, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation
• Yelp delivers wimper... Filters negativer reviewsPublished Apr 16, 2012 · Historical consumer allegation

Complaint Themes

Each tag reflects a complaint's single primary theme (not every angle it raised), and complaints outside any problem theme — a positive report, or one later retracted by its author — aren't tagged. Counts may total less than the full complaint count above.

Independent Sources

Shown for context — not merged with USAComplaints' own numbers.

Contacts

• Official website: https://www.yelp.com/
• Yelp for Business support (Business Help Center: Mon-Fri 5am-6pm PST, Sat-Sun 7am-4pm PST): (877) 767-9357
• Business Help Center (billing, Yelp Ads, reviews, reporting): https://biz.yelp.com/support-center
• Support Center for consumers and legal questions: https://www.yelp-support.com/
• Customer Success team: cancel Yelp Ads or other paid products: (855) 380-9357
• Corporate headquarters (principal executive offices, from SEC filing; not a customer-service line): (415) 908-3801 13 complaints mention this number
• Help article: how to cancel Yelp Ads and other paid products: https://biz.yelp.com/support-center/Advertising_on_Yelp/Yelp_Ads/How-to-cancel-your-Yelp-Ads-and-other-paid-products/en-US

Locations

Yelp reviews that are hidden, Yelp Ads cancellation and billing, and where to complain: what Yelp's own pages say (checked October 5, 2026)

This section sets out what Yelp's own pages said when opened on October 5, 2026. The 65 posts about Yelp on this site are dated 2008 to 2013, and many were written by business owners, so Yelp's tools and terms today may differ from those years.

Reviews that do not show ("not recommended"). Yelp's help article "What is Yelp's recommendation software?" says the software "looks at hundreds of factors" and "applies the same uniform rules to every business and treats reviews of advertisers and non-advertisers exactly the same." Yelp's article "Why would a review not be recommended?" adds that because the software is completely automated, "no Yelp employee can manually override the software to recommend or not recommend a review"; this is separate from reporting a review for violating the Content Guidelines (below). Another article says reviews in the 'not currently recommended' section do not factor into the business's overall star rating, that about three quarters of all reviews across Yelp are recommended, and that the remaining reviews can still be viewed through a link below the recommended reviews and on the reviewer's profile. Yelp says "No employee at Yelp has the ability to recommend or not recommend a business's reviews" and that a review's status can change over time. It also tells businesses that asking customers for reviews is not permitted and that "Asking for reviews is likely to cause our software to not recommend them." Yelp's Business Terms (part of the Terms of Service, last updated October 1, 2025) say the software "may sometimes suppress legitimate reviews or fail to detect illegitimate reviews."

Reporting or disputing a review. Yelp's article on reporting content says you must be logged in to your Yelp account to report a review, photo or video, Talk post, profile, direct message or business owner comment, and that moderators review reported content against the Content Guidelines. Its article "Will Yelp remove a false or defamatory review?" says "Yelp doesn't take sides in factual disputes," that Yelp emails the result to the person who reported the content, and that a business owner can reply publicly or message the reviewer from a Yelp for Business account. For a review you say is defamatory, the article says that if you have obtained a final order from a court of competent jurisdiction explaining why the review is defamatory you can contact Yelp's Support team.

Cancelling Yelp Ads and other paid products. Yelp's help article "How to cancel your Yelp Ads and other paid products" gives these steps: open the Billing page of Yelp for Business on the desktop site (or tap More, then Billing, in the Yelp for Business app); under Your Products click or tap Manage; click or tap the Pause or Cancel icon next to each paid product; follow the prompts. It says advertising packages and page upgrades are purchased individually, so the steps must be repeated for each product, and: "If you don't see the steps to cancel or have any other questions about canceling, please call our Customer Success team at (855) 380-9357." After cancelling, per the same article, cost-per-click advertising programs "will end immediately," paid page upgrades and other products end at midnight on the date of cancellation, and the "final bill will be delivered on the first of the following month." It adds that cancelling Yelp Ads does not remove your business from Yelp. Yelp's account-closure article says that if you are a current advertiser you need to contact its Customer Success team before cancelling ads or closing your Yelp for Business account, and its cancellation guidance says terms for cancelling advertising can vary by program, so the steps above may not match your own agreement. Yelp's Yelp Ads page (business.yelp.com) says of self-serve advertising that "You are free to cancel at any time" and that "There are no term contracts with self-serve advertisers" The Business Terms add that if you purchased advertising or other paid services, "the terms of that purchase apply in the event of any conflict with these Business Terms," so read your own order or agreement.

Billing and refunds. Yelp's article "How does billing work?" says that depending on your program you are billed on the first of the month or every 30 days from the date your Ads go live, and that a billing threshold (an amount of ad spend that triggers a charge to your card) may also cause a charge, with any excess rolling over to the next bill. Yelp's article "What is a Rollover Balance?" says that if you have a billing threshold you are charged each time you exceed it, and that these threshold charges, along with end-of-month billing, "will appear as separate transactions on your card statement." A separate refund-policy article was not found in the Business Help Center pages checked on October 5, 2026. If you dispute a charge, keep your invoices and ad dashboard screenshots, write to Yelp through the Business Help Center (phone (877) 767-9357; the Business Help Center and the help articles opened on October 5, 2026 display "Mon-Fri 5am-6pm PST, Sat-Sun, 7am-4pm PST", and hours can differ on other Yelp pages, so confirm them before calling), and ask your card issuer about its dispute process.

Removing a business page. Yelp's article says Yelp publishes business information because it is typically a matter of public record and that "we don't remove such information from the site"; you can edit details in Yelp for Business and report a business as closed.

Messages claiming to be Yelp. Yelp's article "Recognizing Scams Impersonating Yelp" says Yelp will never ask you for money to alter reviews or ratings, that legitimate Yelp links begin with yelp.com, biz.yelp.com or business.yelp.com (or a country domain), and that Yelp does not use WhatsApp or Telegram to communicate with users. If you lost money or gave out sensitive information, the article points to your bank, local authorities, and state or federal law enforcement.

Where to complain about Yelp itself. Routes include the BBB complaint form, the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov, the California Attorney General's online consumer-complaint form (Yelp's headquarters is in California) and your own state attorney general. Each is an intake channel; none guarantees a result. Yelp's Terms of Service contain a mutual arbitration agreement under which, in Yelp's words, claims "shall be brought individually and not on a class wide basis, and shall be subject to binding arbitration," with listed exceptions such as small claims court; the Business Terms send business claims to arbitration administered by National Arbitration and Mediation (NAM) in San Francisco, with the parties bringing claims in individual capacities. Read the live Terms before relying on this summary.

Government actions: Texas attorney general suit, the 2014 FTC children's-privacy order, and Yelp's statement on an FTC inquiry

State of Texas v. Yelp Inc. (pending, no merits ruling). According to the Texas Fifteenth Court of Appeals' opinion of October 16, 2025 (No. 15-24-00040-CV), the State of Texas sued Yelp on September 28, 2023 in Bastrop County (335th District Court, cause 2519-335), asserting that Yelp violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by misleading Texas consumers about the availability of medical services at crisis pregnancy centers. The opinion says Yelp posted a consumer notice on crisis pregnancy center business pages in August 2022 ("This is a Crisis Pregnancy Center. Crisis Pregnancy Centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite") and revised it in February 2023 to say that such centers "do not offer abortions or referrals to abortion providers." The trial court granted Yelp's special appearance (a jurisdiction challenge) and dismissed the case; the appeals court held the State had not pleaded facts for general jurisdiction but had established specific jurisdiction, reversed, and remanded "for adjudication on the merits." The Texas Supreme Court's orders pronounced September 9, 2026 list No. 25-1071, Yelp, Inc. v. State of Texas (from Bastrop County, 15th Court of Appeals District, 15-24-00040-CV), under "The following petitions for review are denied." MediaPost reported on September 10, 2026 that a Yelp spokesperson said the notice was truthful, accurate and meant to help people make informed decisions. The Texas Attorney General's February 2, 2024 press release says Yelp had filed its own suit against the Attorney General in the Northern District of California and that the court denied Yelp's motion and dismissed it; that release is the State's description, and the later procedural history of that federal case was not checked. These are allegations about a consumer notice, not about reviews or advertising, and no ruling on whether the notice was deceptive was found.

FTC and Department of Justice: children's privacy (COPPA), 2014. The FTC announced on September 16, 2014 that Yelp agreed to pay a $450,000 civil penalty to settle charges that it collected personal information from children under 13 through its mobile app without parental notice and consent. The FTC's complaint alleged that from 2009 to 2013 several thousand registrants gave birth dates showing they were under 13 and that Yelp collected their names, e-mail addresses, locations and posted content. The stipulated order (United States v. Yelp Inc., No. 3:14-cv-04163, N.D. Cal.) states: "Defendant neither admits nor denies any of the allegations in the Complaint, except as specifically stated in this Order." It also required Yelp to delete data from registrants who said they were 13 or younger (unless it can prove they were older) and to file a compliance report with the FTC after one year. The court docket shows the order signed by Judge Richard Seeborg on September 22, 2014.

Yelp's statement about an FTC inquiry on reviews and advertising. In a blog post dated January 6, 2015, Yelp wrote that "the FTC recently concluded a deep inquiry into our business practices and informed us that it will not be taking any action against Yelp," covering its recommendation software and what its salespeople tell businesses. That is Yelp's own account; an FTC document confirming it was not found in the sources checked on October 5, 2026.

No other FTC, state attorney general or other regulator enforcement action against Yelp concerning business advertising, review filtering or billing was identified in the sources checked on October 5, 2026 (Yelp's SEC filings, court dockets and opinions, and agency press pages opened). That does not exclude actions not indexed there.

Company background

Yelp Inc. is a Delaware corporation with principal executive offices at 350 Mission Street, 10th Floor, San Francisco, California 94105. Its Form 10-K for 2025 (filed February 27, 2026) says it was incorporated in Delaware on September 3, 2004, and its stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange as YELP. The company says it connects consumers with local businesses and that more than 300 million ratings and reviews are available on its platform.

How Yelp makes money. The 10-K describes advertising sold to businesses, mainly cost-per-click "Yelp Ads" shown in sponsored search results and on other businesses' pages, plus page upgrades and subscription services; it also describes a satisfaction program called Yelp Guaranteed for some services categories and the RepairPal auto-repair network. Reviews are written by users, not by Yelp. The 10-K says the recommendation software "applies the same objective standards to each review, regardless of whether the business being reviewed advertises on Yelp," and that less reliable content appears on secondary pages and does not count toward a business's overall star rating. Yelp says it also runs a Consumer Alerts program that places warnings on business pages in cases such as suspected paid reviews or a business's questionable legal threats against reviewers.

Recent corporate events. According to Yelp's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (filed August 7, 2026), Yelp acquired Hatchify Inc. ("Hatch"), an artificial-intelligence lead-management platform, on February 2, 2026 for approximately $271.2 million in cash, subject to customary adjustments. Yelp's newsroom lists no other acquisition or settlement announcements in the last 90 days of the pages opened on October 5, 2026.

Company statements on trust and safety. Yelp's 2025 Trust & Safety Report page says its systems filtered out nearly 500,000 suspected AI-generated reviews, that it removed 46,200+ reviews containing inappropriate content, and that it rejected 50,700+ potential new business pages in 2025. These are the company's figures and were not independently checked.

Complaint record: USAComplaints posts, BBB, Trustpilot and ComplaintsBoard (as displayed October 5, 2026)

Posts on this site. 65 approved posts in this site's archive name Yelp as the subject, dated 2008 (2 posts), 2009 (5), 2010 (6), 2011 (17), 2012 (31) and 2013 (4). They are unverified accounts by their authors, many of them business owners. A keyword count of these 65 posts (a post can match several) finds wording about reviews being filtered, hidden or removed in 56, about advertising, sales representatives, payment or extortion in 36, about fake, false or unfair negative reviews staying up in 27, about dollar amounts, monthly fees or contracts in 17, and about difficulty reaching Yelp or customer support in 11. Posts about other businesses that only mention Yelp, posts naming a Yelp executive personally, reprinted articles with unverified personal allegations, and machine-rewritten duplicates were not linked. Yelp's position, stated on its Support Center, is that "there has never been any amount of money a business can pay Yelp to alter reviews or ratings."

BBB. BBB profile for Yelp Inc., San Francisco, CA, as displayed on October 5, 2026: rating A+; the page says Yelp Inc. is not a BBB Accredited Business; 1,616 total complaints in the last 3 years and 459 complaints closed in the last 12 months; 1.02 out of 5 from an average of 498 customer reviews. BBB states that Yelp came to its attention in July 2007 and, in a note on the profile, links Yelp's pages on how to cancel Yelp Ads and other paid products.

Trustpilot. As displayed on October 5, 2026: claimed profile; 1.4 out of 5 from 6,252 reviews, 475 of them in the last 12 months (5-star 11 percent, 1-star 85 percent as shown by Trustpilot). Trustpilot notes that Yelp has no recent history of asking for reviews, so reviews may not be representative, and that it has not replied to negative reviews.

ComplaintsBoard. As displayed on October 5, 2026 (page updated October 3, 2026): ComplaintsBoard's own rating of 1.4 based on 12 reviews and 189 complaints.

These figures come from different sources with different methods and are not added together or compared with the posts above.

Lawsuits: business-owner challenges, a call-recording class action, appeals and Yelp's antitrust suit

Cases are listed with the status shown in the court documents opened on October 5, 2026. Allegations are not findings, and several cases ended in Yelp's favor.

• Levitt v. Yelp! Inc. (9th Cir. No. 11-17676, decided September 2, 2014). Small-business owners filed a putative class action alleging that Yelp extorted or attempted to extort advertising payments by manipulating reviews, under California's Unfair Competition Law and for civil extortion. The district court dismissed for failure to state a claim and the Ninth Circuit affirmed, saying the complaint did not allege facts or a legal theory sufficient to make out the claims while also stating that it was not holding that no cause of action could ever cover such conduct if adequately pleaded.
• Demetriades v. Yelp / Multiversal Enterprises-Mammoth Properties, LLC v. Yelp (Los Angeles Superior Court No. BC484055, filed May 3, 2012). A restaurant operator sued under California's false-advertising and unfair-competition laws to stop Yelp from making claims about the accuracy of its review filter. In July 2014 the Court of Appeal reversed an order that had struck the complaint under California's anti-SLAPP statute, so the case could proceed. After a bench trial, the trial court's statement of decision found that neither the plaintiff's survey nor other evidence established that any challenged Yelp statement was false or misleading, and in a published opinion filed February 4, 2022 (No. B305193) the Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment, rejecting the plaintiff's challenges to rulings excluding its principal from part of the trial and denying access to Yelp's source code.
• Kimzey v. Yelp! Inc. (W.D. Wash. No. 2:13-cv-01734, filed September 23, 2013; 9th Cir. Nos. 14-35487 and 14-35494, opinion filed September 12, 2016). A locksmith who sued over two negative reviews pleaded that Yelp had helped create the reviews' content. The Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
• CIPA Action (Gruber v. Yelp Inc., San Francisco Superior Court No. CGC-16-554784). Filed on October 12, 2016 as a putative class action under the California Invasion of Privacy Act over alleged unlawful recording of Yelp sales calls. After the Court of Appeal revived the case in October 2020, the Superior Court granted class certification on January 18, 2023 (per Yelp's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2025), and Yelp reached a $15.0 million settlement; its Form 10-Q says the Superior Court granted final approval on April 10, 2024, which resolved the claims "without any liability or wrongdoing attributed to it."
• State of Texas v. Yelp and United States v. Yelp (COPPA order) are described in the government-actions section above.
• Yelp Inc. v. Google LLC (N.D. Cal. No. 5:24-cv-06101), filed by Yelp on August 28, 2024. This is a case Yelp brought, not a consumer complaint: Yelp alleges Google abused a monopoly in general search to dominate local search and local search advertising. Yelp's 10-Q says trial is scheduled to begin in September 2028; the docket shows an order on June 30, 2026 granting in part and denying in part a motion for issue preclusion and partial summary judgment.

Yelp's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 says that apart from the Google case it is subject to legal proceedings in the ordinary course of business and does not currently believe their outcome will have a material effect on its business or finances. Individual suits by people or businesses against Yelp that appear in court indexes are not described here unless their claims could be read from the documents.

Is Yelp Legitimate?

Yelp Inc. files annual and quarterly reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Form 10-K for 2025 filed February 27, 2026; Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 filed August 7, 2026), and its common stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange as YELP. Its filings give its address as 350 Mission Street, 10th Floor, San Francisco, California 94105. As displayed on October 5, 2026, BBB shows an A+ rating and says Yelp is not BBB Accredited, with the complaint, review and Trustpilot figures shown in the complaint-record section above. The claims by business owners that Yelp's advertising and review filtering are linked are allegations that Yelp denies; the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of one class action, and in another case about its review filter a California trial court found that the plaintiff's evidence did not establish that Yelp's statements were false or misleading. The Texas attorney general's suit remains pending. Yelp's own pages describe how to cancel ads, report reviews and contact its business support line.

Court & Public Records

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