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Every business has good and bad interactions with customers. For most businesses the bad ones are unfortunate but isolated cases. For those where it's a pattern
by nfnaaron 16y ago
Every business has good and bad interactions with customers. For most businesses the bad ones are unfortunate but isolated cases. For those where it's a pattern, they'll eventually lose enough business that they'll change or die.
What yelp has done is to artificially magnify the effect of an individual complaint. Most people don't bother to write publicly one way or the other, and (I think) people with a negative experience are more likely to complain publicly.
The effect of yelp is "world changing" in some sense; they make it easier for perfectly good businesses to go out of business. Not really what I'd want my life's work to be, but to each his own, I guess.
- bkbleikamp 16y agoYelp's data would seem to indicate that users with a positive experience are more likely to write a review: http://www.yelp.com/press http://www.yelp.com/press
- AlexBlom 16y agoI wonder if those figures are massaged, considering everything else going on!
- bkbleikamp 16y agoThat graph has been on the page since before any class action lawsuits were filed.
- AlexBlom 16y agoBut that does not necessarily mean it is legit. Until the class action did we not think Yelp was totally legit?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- moultano 16y agoAmazon has observed exactly the same behavior. The average review for something on the internet is 4.5 stars.
- mahmud 16y agoWhat about astroturfing by product vendors?
- diego_moita 16y agoI am not sure what you mean by that. To me it seems something like: "well, most of the time, lynch mobs do catch the bad guys."
- emmett 16y agoYelp can also put bad businesses out of business, and does. And it can make an already good business a success, which it also does. What evidence is there that they change the world net negative, rather than net positive? My experience with Yelp has been great: it has encouraged me to explore much more widely which restaurants I attend.
- potatolicious 16y agoEven if Yelp is still a net positive on the world at large, it in no way justifies extortionist behavior like the ones alleged. Your argument sounds like "but he's such a great guy, so what if he murders a few people now and again?"
- nfnaaron 16y agoThe point of the complaints, and the lawsuit, is that you as a consumer are not receiving a fair picture of reviews. The allegation is that businesses that don't pay lose positive reviews and gain negatives, by yelp's manipulation. If the allegations are true, then what yelp may have helped you do is frequent businesses that knuckled under and paid the extortion.
- invisible 16y agoIt's difficult to justify that perfectly good businesses can go out of business over Yelp (at least outside of huge cities). I haven't ever typed "yelp" into my browser (or found it through google search) and yet I'm a technology-oriented guy. Maybe it's where I live? Whatever it is, I think word-of-mouth is not a case for suing unless it is artificially created. I don't know how many salespeople at Yelp carried the "extortion" sales pitch, but if it was more than a few individuals I think they do have grounds to sue. Comparing this to "mafia" is ridiculous though and truly shouldn't be publicized by any news outlet.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]