Public Service Announcement: Yelp!

[Pixel Stick 927]

Honestly not sure if this topic would be better suited for here or the Debate Forum, but I felt strongly enough about it that I wanted to get the word out to people who might be affected by this.

 

I just got ripped off by an appliance sales company in my area that took my order for new "scratch-and-dent" appliances over the phone, took three months to actually get them in stock, never ONCE updated me on the status of the order, and then attempted to deliver an obviously used set of appliances that looked like they had fallen off the truck in transit.  My wife and I rejected the delivery, naturally, and demanded a refund, and the company not only hasn't refunded our money, they've sold the appliances to someone else.  That's just outright fraud (it's illegal to double-sell merchandise like that), and I now have a dispute open with my credit card company to reclaim what we paid for what we didn't receive.

 

So, how does Yelp.com fit into this?  I had gotten a recommendation for this shop from a friend, and I always check for reviews on stores before I buy from them online or over the phone.  This place has a 4-star rating with mostly glowing reviews, and one or two people saying that if you don't mind the appliance being a different color than what you had in mind, it's a good deal.  What Yelp *didn't* tell me was that there were about twice as many 1-star reviews that had been filtered out by their automatic post filter, mostly from people who warned about the owner of the company taking their money and delivering completely different appliances, or never delivering anything at all, or giving them a really hard time when said appliances didn't work.

 

As it turns out, Yelp's "automatic filter" filters out more than 80% of the reviews it receives, with no particular rhyme or reason.  It appears that some companies are able to pay to make sure negative reviews are consistently filtered, so I guess it shouldn't be surprising that my own 1-star review of this appliance shop got filtered as well.

 

Thousands of people have been complaining about this trend for years, apparently, and Yelp's response every time is "Well, we have an automated system that learns over time, and it's not perfect, but we think it's the best way to make sure people are given the most useful reviews."  I called them out on it via a bug report form and, when they gave me the same canned response, told them that their insistence on this model makes them complicit with fraud because they are obviously aware that people are being ripped off due to the lack of visibility of reviews from real people like myself.

 

So my PSA here is: If you decide to go to Yelp! to look up a review of a place, look very carefully for the filtered reviews.  They may be far more revelatory than the ones that their "filter" decides are worthy of public view, and it might save you from having to file a consumer complaint.

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited September 10, 2013 by Pixel Stick

[DiscordAnarchy 770]

Actually there is a reason. This has been an issue in California with some smaller businesses. You see, it seems that YELP will approach some businesses and offer, basically, a plan that if the businesses pay X amount, Yelp will advertise their business and "filter" out the "spam" reviews. However there is a legal case going on that YELP does the reverse as well - that if a company refuses to opt into this advertisement thing, YELP will promote the negative reviews more than anything.

 

http://womeninbusiness.about.com/od/yelp-help/a/Yelp-S-Filter-Reviews-Biased-Towards-Yelp.htm

[Pixel Stick 927]

Actually there is a reason. This has been an issue in California with some smaller businesses. You see, it seems that YELP will approach some businesses and offer, basically, a plan that if the businesses pay X amount, Yelp will advertise their business and "filter" out the "spam" reviews. However there is a legal case going on that YELP does the reverse as well - that if a company refuses to opt into this advertisement thing, YELP will promote the negative reviews more than anything.

 

http://womeninbusiness.about.com/od/yelp-help/a/Yelp-S-Filter-Reviews-Biased-Towards-Yelp.htm

 

Yep, the PR person who responded to that lady in the article said pretty much EXACTLY the same things (word-for-word in some cases) as the person who replied to me.  This paragraph is, in fact, verbatim what the person who wrote to me said: "It is not a perfect system - the filter sometimes affects perfectly legitimate reviews and misses some fake ones, too. After all, legitimate reviews sometimes look questionable, and questionable reviews sometimes look legitimate."  I think their people are instructed to copy/paste a form letter.

 

As I said, this practice of theirs makes them complicit with fraud when fraudulent cases have been brought to their attention and they refuse to do anything about it.

[DiscordAnarchy 770]

Yep, the PR person who responded to that lady in the article said pretty much EXACTLY the same things (word-for-word in some cases) as the person who replied to me.  This paragraph is, in fact, verbatim what the person who wrote to me said: "It is not a perfect system - the filter sometimes affects perfectly legitimate reviews and misses some fake ones, too. After all, legitimate reviews sometimes look questionable, and questionable reviews sometimes look legitimate."  I think their people are instructed to copy/paste a form letter.

 

As I said, this practice of theirs makes them complicit with fraud when fraudulent cases have been brought to their attention and they refuse to do anything about it.

 

If I remember correctly, there is a lawsuit currently going against them for this very thing. I myself am very wary when it comes to a lot of reviews because I feel sometimes people write negative reviews for trivial things while others praise the hell out of a product just as they are a fan of the company >.<

[Pixel Stick 927]

There are certainly plenty of bad (as in, poorly thought-out or unwarranted) reviews out there that don't help anyone.  But frankly, Yelp is the only company I can think of that works on that sort of model.  They're basically saying that they think users are too stupid to figure out sham reviews for themselves, and that this filter software can do a better job judging what's appropriate.  What's more, while they conveniently hide behind "It's imperfect", they refuse to acknowledge that it might actually be malfunctioning.

 

If Amazon.com had a review system that worked like that, I highly doubt they'd remain in business.  Instead, what they do is to allow users to rate reviews on their own, and reviews that get an excessive amount of positive OR negative feedback get the attention of real human beings who can decide whether the reviews actually belong.

 

I would very much like to join that lawsuit if it's class-action.

[Stalliongrad 982]

I went on to yelp to look at the reviews the restaurant I work at was getting. People constantly complain about the food at the place I work at so I decided to look at the reviews and what I saw was not really a surprise to me. Overall we got 2 and a half stars but the owners charge like its a 5 star. What makes it even funnier is that the reviews all complained about the same thing. How bland and tasteless the food is. Not too many complaints about the service just all about how disappointing the food is. I don't think it's fair for Yelp to use their service to extort small businesses. "Automatic" system my foot. I don't deny that some people would use that site to spam (this is the Internet after all) but lets get real that's a valuable resource if you are trying out a new business. And just because you had a bad experience doesn't make you "spam" . Especially if that company's yelp page looked anything like my restaraunts page where an overwhelming 80% of reviews were negative. Not all places are run properly and some give bad service. But not surprising at all that they can "buy" their way out of it.