7 ms·

Your standard of proof is very high. Who records all of their phone calls (presumably without consent which is illegal in my jurisdiction) and makes an archive

by cerved 9y ago

Your standard of proof is very high. Who records all of their phone calls (presumably without consent which is illegal in my jurisdiction) and makes an archive of their yelp page periodically? This is not the only company to face such allegations and afaik it's not the first time yelp has been accused either. I think you'll have to base this one on anecdotal stories.

swalsh 9y ago
Especially when most of the calls are cold calls, and you haven't had the opportunity to record them.
x1798DE 9y ago
I think they were not saying that everyone has to record their conversations as a matter of course, but that no one making these allegations has any hard proof. They even mentioned that in many of these stories, Yelp is calling them multiple times - it would be nice if next time this happens to someone in a 1-party consent state, they would record the second call from Yelp. In my experience, almost all stories get bigger in the retelling, especially when you have a grievance, having some hard proof at least helps to give you a baseline assessment of how much of an exaggeration the claims are.
- openmosix 9y ago
  If they are calling from California, they are covered by the 2-party consent state law. It's very easy to get accused of wiretapping under these laws, so watch out. Last, even if you get such a recording, it'd be an unnamed guy saying stuff on behalf of Yelp. You'd still have to proof it's a legitimate recording, from a legitimate phone call with Yelp.
obmelvin 9y ago
What people accuse Yelp of doing is pretty close to racketeering (or is? IANAL) and thus there is a high burden of proof. As a sibling comment points out, not every accusation needs detailed proof but some do and despite the years of accusations there isn't any definitive proof. Also, look at the information you've seen about bad practices at Uber recently. I'm aware my next statement is pretty weak reasoning, but if Uber with all its money and talent has these problems out in the open what makes you think Yelp would be that much better at keeping this a secret?
- syshum 9y ago
  Uber's problems are internal or started with disgruntled internal employees, Yelp's problems are External, Completely different. >>What people accuse Yelp of doing is pretty close to racketeering (or is? IANAL) and thus there is a high burden of proof. Where there is smoke there is likely fire. I am probably not willing to believe it is corporate mandate with the evidence shown, however I can see a Wells Fargo style situation where perverse sales incentives combined with lacking internal controls allows for Sales people and Middle Managers to cause some of these issues that have been reported.
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    Exactly. When I heard the first accusations against Bill Cosby, I was skeptical. I thought "innocent until proven guilty". But then after accuser number 50 came around, I find the accusations very likely true. Even though there is no hard proof. Without proof you may still be innocent in the eyes of the law, but if I was a young lady, I sure wouldn't be anywhere around him alone.
- openmosix 9y ago
  In Italy, where racketeering is very common in the South, we have special laws and protections to fight it - because proving it, it is not easy at all. You get threats that are implied and not explicit. If "something happens" you cannot automatically ascribe it to the former threat. It should be the role of an investigative agency to look into that and discover the high burden of proof, not of private citizens.
  - exclusiv 9y ago
    I would think a class-action would be effective. He said/she said is tough, but everyone said/Yelp said becomes a different story.
dsp1234 9y ago
their phone calls (presumably without consent which is illegal in my jurisdiction) IANAL, but if the call starts out with the standard, "Please note that this call is being recorded for training and quality assurance purposes", or similar, then you are free to record that conversation and it would not be illegal. All parties to the call have been informed that the call is being recorded, and thus no wire tapping laws have been broken. This works for both 1 party and 2 party states as far as I'm aware.
- cxseven 9y ago
  Yes, I believe the "consent" is judged to have been given if a party continues the call after being informed that it is not a private, unrecorded call. So if one party announces that it's recording the call, all parties who continue the call (including the recording party) have supposedly consented to that breach of privacy. It's probably also not that unusual for Yelp to call a business that plays this announcements to its incoming callers, and actually records them. I can only guess that we haven't seen this evidence because the offended business might have preferred to settle things in private.

by cerved 9y ago

swalsh 9y ago

Especially when most of the calls are cold calls, and you haven't had the opportunity to record them.

x1798DE 9y ago

I think they were not saying that everyone has to record their conversations as a matter of course, but that no one making these allegations has any hard proof. They even mentioned that in many of these stories, Yelp is calling them multiple times - it would be nice if next time this happens to someone in a 1-party consent state, they would record the second call from Yelp. In my experience, almost all stories get bigger in the retelling, especially when you have a grievance, having some hard proof at least helps to give you a baseline assessment of how much of an exaggeration the claims are.

openmosix 9y ago
If they are calling from California, they are covered by the 2-party consent state law. It's very easy to get accused of wiretapping under these laws, so watch out. Last, even if you get such a recording, it'd be an unnamed guy saying stuff on behalf of Yelp. You'd still have to proof it's a legitimate recording, from a legitimate phone call with Yelp.

obmelvin 9y ago

What people accuse Yelp of doing is pretty close to racketeering (or is? IANAL) and thus there is a high burden of proof. As a sibling comment points out, not every accusation needs detailed proof but some do and despite the years of accusations there isn't any definitive proof. Also, look at the information you've seen about bad practices at Uber recently. I'm aware my next statement is pretty weak reasoning, but if Uber with all its money and talent has these problems out in the open what makes you think Yelp would be that much better at keeping this a secret?

syshum 9y ago
Uber's problems are internal or started with disgruntled internal employees, Yelp's problems are External, Completely different. >>What people accuse Yelp of doing is pretty close to racketeering (or is? IANAL) and thus there is a high burden of proof. Where there is smoke there is likely fire. I am probably not willing to believe it is corporate mandate with the evidence shown, however I can see a Wells Fargo style situation where perverse sales incentives combined with lacking internal controls allows for Sales people and Middle Managers to cause some of these issues that have been reported.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  Exactly. When I heard the first accusations against Bill Cosby, I was skeptical. I thought "innocent until proven guilty". But then after accuser number 50 came around, I find the accusations very likely true. Even though there is no hard proof. Without proof you may still be innocent in the eyes of the law, but if I was a young lady, I sure wouldn't be anywhere around him alone.
openmosix 9y ago
In Italy, where racketeering is very common in the South, we have special laws and protections to fight it - because proving it, it is not easy at all. You get threats that are implied and not explicit. If "something happens" you cannot automatically ascribe it to the former threat. It should be the role of an investigative agency to look into that and discover the high burden of proof, not of private citizens.
- exclusiv 9y ago
  I would think a class-action would be effective. He said/she said is tough, but everyone said/Yelp said becomes a different story.

dsp1234 9y ago

their phone calls (presumably without consent which is illegal in my jurisdiction) IANAL, but if the call starts out with the standard, "Please note that this call is being recorded for training and quality assurance purposes", or similar, then you are free to record that conversation and it would not be illegal. All parties to the call have been informed that the call is being recorded, and thus no wire tapping laws have been broken. This works for both 1 party and 2 party states as far as I'm aware.

cxseven 9y ago
Yes, I believe the "consent" is judged to have been given if a party continues the call after being informed that it is not a private, unrecorded call. So if one party announces that it's recording the call, all parties who continue the call (including the recording party) have supposedly consented to that breach of privacy. It's probably also not that unusual for Yelp to call a business that plays this announcements to its incoming callers, and actually records them. I can only guess that we haven't seen this evidence because the offended business might have preferred to settle things in private.