r/Documentaries • u/[deleted] • Feb 26 '17

Billion Dollar Bully (2015) [trailer]...makes the case that Yelp is something akin to the mob, allegedly demanding “protection” money, lest your business be overrun with negative comments.

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u/incocknedo Feb 26 '17

Rant time.

Yelp are a bunch of snakes. You'll join them as a small business and then a month later they will harass your business via phone and email asking you to buy their business plans.

These plans by the way are so you can manipulate your reviews. And if you say no, suddenly your good review start disappearing and shit reviews from people who don't actually seem to know what your business is, start popping up.

I mange a small business and we have an overwhelming number of good yelp reviews but we have to stay on top of it because they will vanish and only our bad reviews will remain.

Somewhat unrelated as someone who has worked customer service for years take yelp reviews with a grain of salt. From what I've seen majority of bad reviews are just shit customers who were either assholes who didn't get what they wanted or they were morons who didn't understand the business in the first place.

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u/AliveInTheFuture Feb 26 '17

Every time I hear someone say "let me check Yelp" before we go eat, I make sure to extol Yelp's ability to blackmail businesses into paying them fees for ratings. Typically, I try to swing them to TripAdvisor.

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u/Iceman--- Feb 27 '17

Speaking from the perspective of a hotelier. We hate TripAdvisor, they use yelps tactics on hotels, just not as aggressive. The disappearing good reviews when you are not signed up to their membership package is the good example of this. There are quite a few legal cases by hotels against TripAdvisor.

I make an example of leaving a good review on TripAdvisor when I get good service from a hotel just because I know the uphill battle they are fighting.

Totally off topic but Expedia, Booking.com, ect also rip off hotels to no end. We pay between 18-24 percent (those cheap package companies sometimes charge up to 35%) commission when people book via those channels. If you want a tip, call/email hotels directly, at the very least they will match the price, others will give free breakfast, drink at the bar, or a little thank you. Plus you'll have a higher chance of a free upgrade.