I've definitely seen the same scam from the user side. My friend left a 1 star review for an auto shop after getting ripped off. Several weeks later the review

I've definitely seen the same scam from the user side. My friend left a 1 star review for an auto shop after getting ripped off. Several weeks later the review disappeared. She contacted Yelp who claimed that they "rotate" reviews in and out. This might make sense when you have hundreds of reviews and you want to show a balanced mix on the first page but this shop only had 7 reviews so the rotation strategy didn't make sense here. She left another bad review, again it disappeared. We knew something shady was going on but hearing the story from the other side makes me wonder if the shop just paid Yelp to remove the bad review.