Yelp

I read this article the other day about Yelp... Here's a portion of the article:

Mary Seaton of the Sofa Outlet was also Yelped! "A customer had written a negative review. ... So, about a week after that Yelp contacted us, and said, 'We noticed that you had some negative reviews, and we would like to help you with that. ... If you pay $350 a month'," said Seaton.

So she paid for five months, a total of $1750. Seaton said some of her negative reviews were moved to the bottom. But, Seaton said, "All of a sudden some more negative reviews got posted, but there were no favorable or positive reviews."

So she canceled. "I feel like they are extorting money and preying basically on business owners," said Seaton.

"Yelp will not take a negative review and move it somewhere else," said Stephanie Ichinose of Yelp. She said that the $350 is to enhance a business' presence, a major source of Yelp's revenue.

"We have a majority of advertisers which are locally owned businesses that are purchasing the enhanced profiles," said Ichinose.

Both Seaton and Kellinger said they have customers who posted favorable reviews that were taken down. But Yelp said they have proof that some of those favorable reviews are written by the business owners or their friends. "When we see that kind of suspicious activity taking place, we will move quickly to take action against it," said Ichinose.

First off, I think that is hella sketchy for Yelp to try to make money off of these businesses simply by just moving the bad reviews to the bottom!!! And second of all, why is this Mary Seaton getting HELLA negative reviews??? Obvsiously that means something!! What she needs to do is spend money to find a way to get positive reviews instead of hiding the bad reviews to the bottom of the list!! Hella foul!

I know that people/businesses complain about Yelp having reviews that are made by incompetent people... and how people yelp only based on their first impression without really looking at the big picture, blah blah blah... but YELP is what it is... when you use it, that's what you gotta keep in mind AND you gotta read reviews knowing you may not have the same experiences as the 13 or some others that have reviewed the place.... It's people's opinions... If anything, if I was a business owner, I would try to use Yelp to my advantage instead of complaining about incompetent people reviewing my business... I'd make sure everyone who came in the door was treated as if I knew they were going to Yelp afterwards... Customer Service is always KEY!!! Easy for me to say, hahaha..

Anyway, I've written a few reviews and there have been two... both day spas... that I gave good reviews on and they actually e-mailed me back letting me know that they appreciated my good review and they were glad I had a great experience at their day spa....I was like WOW!! Talk about customer service... from beginning to END!!! I thought THAT was pretty neat... That's what more businesses need to do!!

Kinda makes me wonder what they would've said had I written a negative review.... free massages???? hahahaha...