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I worked there for years. Your "friend" is wrong. The way they make money is rather transparently described in their quarterly filings with the SEC. Since they'
by timr 10y ago
I worked there for years. Your "friend" is wrong. The way they make money is rather transparently described in their quarterly filings with the SEC. Since they're a public company.
Actually, I'm not sure what your "friend" is accusing them of doing, so it's a hard claim to rebut. It's embarrassing that a vague hearsay accusation (of...what, exactly?) is considered worthy of attention here.
- mustacheemperor 10y agoCan you comment on the link in the OP? I thought at this point it's almost assumed yelp removes negative reviews from advertising customers and posts fake negative reviews when customers have cancelled. There's plenty of similar experiences just in these comments.
- timr 10y agoIt is "assumed", but these assumptions are false. See my other comment on this subthread for the actual reason why you see these stories.
- Someone1234 10y agoAs someone who worked there, what is your take on these fake review stories? I've read the same or highly similar accounts from other small businesses over years. Did you do this when you worked there? Did your colleagues?
- timr 10y agoTo be blunt, they're total bullshit. Which is why you never see any evidence, outside of vague hearsay from someone's uncle. Yelp has a small army of people cold-calling every business in the country to sell ads. Simultaneously and independently, they have a system that filters out bad reviews, all day, every day. Just by chance, someone is going to get called soon after reviews have been filtered. This leads, inevitably, to third-hand stories of someone's Uncle Walter who got called right before/after some reviews were removed.
- smt88 10y agoHave you ever worked at Yelp?
- chinathrow 10y ago"Yelp has a small army of people" Like how big is that small army? Your terms imply like, I dunno, maybe more than 1000?
- tulop 10y agoThey do have more than 1000 sales people. Their data sheet shows 2,400
- Rexxar 10y agoIt could be a small part of those people who are doing this in order to have a bigger bonus. Bad incentive structures that cause bad behaviours is not an unknown phenomenon.
- timr 10y agoI don't doubt that in an organization of thousands of salespeople, some say bad things. But they don't have the ability to act on their threats. That's the point. Salespeople have no ability to influence reviews. Also, again...nobody offers evidence of these conversations. It's all hearsay. Lots of accusations, but not so much as a link to a profile page to back them up.
- strictnein 10y ago> "Since they're a public company" A public company has never, ever engaged in shady behavior. It is simply unheard of.