I am a small business owner in Vancouver, British Columbia. A friend suggested that I create a business profile on Yelp to attract local business. For a while, this seemed to be a good thing and it did generate business. My web designer even put a Yelp logo on my website.
After a few months, positive reviews began to accumulate. A few months later these reviews began to disappear (they were hidden, or "filtered" by Yelp). Finally, someone wrote a negative review. At this point all 16 positive reviews I had were all "filtered" and only the negative one is visible. My business went from 5 stars to one star overnight.
I tried contacting Yelp numerous times, but I never got a response from them. The only contact I had from Yelp was a phone call from someone wanting me buy advertising (or what they call a sponsored listing). Since I could not afford the $300 per month, I declined their offer. Shortly after that, my reviews started disappearing. I made a copy of the filtered reviews for my own record (you can see them if you key a code it, but they don't factor into the rating of the business). Yelp claims (in their video about filtered reviews) that they only filter reviews if they are biased. This makes no sense, fourteen random people just happened to be positively biased towards me? However, the negative person had no bias? Common sense tells you this can't be true.
It doesn't stop there. I tried to delete my business from Yelp. It vanished for about 24 hours and then it was back, they just removed the photographs from it. The negative rating was still there and so were the filtered reviews. I tried to delete the listing again, but this time I got an error message that said "password invalid". I could delete to content, but the name of my business and my website were "locked" by Yelp. This means it is physically impossible to delete it and also that Yelp has seized control of my account by changing my password! I have never heard of anything like this before, this company has more power than God!
There's more. I asked my web designer to remove the Yelp logo from my website. It also vanished for about 24 hours and then it returned. My web designer has tried to delete the link 3 times and it has returned every time. I have no idea how Yelp is able to reestablish a deleted link to my website, but they have done so. I now have their company logo on my website against my will with no way of removing it.
This has caused me to lose 60% of my business revenue. I am now in a bad financial situation and in danger of losing my home. I believe that what Yelp has done is illegal in a variety of ways. What a nefarious, audacious way to try and sell advertising. Reviews remain negative until I pay. I have no option to leave the site. They will not leave my site.
I believe that Yelp is a scam and that their actions are criminal. This impact everyone including the business owners, the people who wrote the reviews and potential customers. I know I'm not alone in this. I've encountered other reports about Yelp. I believe something should be done about this company and the harm they are intentionally doing.
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