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Yelp now removing Boston reviews?

By adamg on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 1:30pm

Over at Charlesgate Realty, Michael DiMella complains that Yelp has pulled several reviews of his business. And even though the ones that got yanked were the less-than-perfect ones (he now only has reviews giving him perfect 5s), he's upset:

... I think this is a complete disrespect to me, my business, and my employees, not to mention my customers who WASTED their time writing their thoughtful reviews. We're promoting Yelp to our customers because Yelp provides us a tool to allow customers to comment freely (without our control) and gives us an opportunity to earn new business from the reviews (which I anticipate being mostly positive - hopefully!). And if we happen to get a bad review - even better - it will give us an opportunity to correct things!

But because of this, I have really had my faith in Yelp shaken. I am not sure if I should discontinue linking to Yelp, and mentioning Yelp to customers or not. What's the point? I don't want to waste my time or my customers' time. ...

Neighborhoods: 
Boston
Topics: 
Business
Annoying companies
Free tagging: 
Yelp


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Comments

By ShadyMilkMan on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 1:38pm.

PLUS there is most likely an assumption by the less then perfect reviewers that the business had something to do with the removal... If I were a store owner I would feel the only thing worse then someone not being happy with my store is someone who makes a comment on Yelp only to have it removed, and therefor making me look like Im covering something up.

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By neilv on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 1:52pm.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp_and_th...

"Hi, this is Mike from Yelp," the voice would say. "You've had three hundred visitors to your site this month. You've had a really good response. But you have a few bad ones at the top. I could do something about those."

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By anon on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 2:17pm.

I'm a regular poster here choosing to remain anonymous because I was a longtime Yelper and I did make a few friends through it.

I think Yelp has gone down the tubes. I've been wanting to move my reviews to another site but they don't offer a way to download your reviews. There's been other sleazy practices with Yelp, and I do not think they are a reputable review site, nor have they been for quite some time. The emphasis on the site is less about reviews and more about the social networking aspect. Their events are promoted, and they have their cliquey "elite" status, which I think it's bogus. The regular Yelpers are cliquish and they sometimes treat non-regulars poorly.

If I were a business owner, I would cease to mention and link to Yelp.

It's not a true review site; it's a social networking site. and a business It should not be taken too seriously.

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By Will LaTulippe on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 2:49pm.

...is absolutely true. There are some nice people who have written nice reviews about me, but that site is a legitimate cult. I got deleted once for defending some colleagues who were getting trashed. The cunt who closed my account didn't even respond to my e-mail in response.

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By MC Slim JB on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 2:51pm.

It's time-consuming if you have hundreds of reviews posted, but you can just save each individual review page from your browser: File menu, Save Page As, select as Save As type (complete page or HTML-only or text). Faster than retyping them, at least.

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By Michael DiMella on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 4:48pm.

What is so hard to understand is why they just remove the reviews with absolutely no warning. No "this review was flagged" or "this review seems fake" or whatever. Nothing at all to let me know and as far as I can tell nothing to the people who wrote the reviews. It's amazing how this "web 2.0 company" (a buzzword I hate anyway) can operate with a complete lack of transparency. At least give me something other than it was "the algorithm" that removed the reviews.

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By Eighthman on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 11:01pm.

I've removed the Yelp app from my iPod in protest.

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By readerNbreeder on Wed, 04/29/2009 - 2:51pm.

http://www.weeklydig.com/%5Bcatpath%5D/200903/they...

There you go. All you Dig-hating douches that have come out of the woodwork can suck it.

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By Kaz on Wed, 04/29/2009 - 4:28pm.

I don't see a single quote from Michael DiMella in that entire Dig article.

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By Ron Newman on Wed, 04/29/2009 - 4:35pm.

though it didn't get much response or attention at the time:

http://www.universalhub.com/node/23381

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By Vic McHitaryan on Sun, 09/26/2010 - 11:42pm.

Let me start by saying that I am a business owner and whose business is obviously listed on http://Yelp.com. My business is called Kis Kiss Mediterranean Cafe & Hookah Lounge, http://kiskisshookahlounge.com. We had good & bad reviews as any other place, but more good ones, total of 47 reviews sine we've been in the business for over 6 years.
Couple of months ago I got a phone call from a http://Yelp.com sales representative (whose name was Mathew) offering me to advertise on http://Yelp.com for about $300 per week, which I of course declined. A couple of days later http://yelp.com removed 42 of my companies' reviews!!! Leaving us with only bad reviews...this type of activity is clearly fraudulent so please sway away from http://yelp.com!!!

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