Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 6:02AMHostage Crisis! Yelp Abusers Misuse the Service
Is Yelp the "Restaurant Mafia"?
With the ongoing growth of social media as a way to "get the word out" continues to grow, the seedy side always seems to rear its head. For those not familiar, Yelp is a popular online review site which contains word of mouth reviews, mostly of restaurants. The search results for Yelp tend to rank very high, meaning a post by a guest about your restaurant, whether good or bad, will often show up very readily in Google.
I read about an attempt to hold a restaurant hostage so to speak by very subtly issuing a threat to a restaurant owner. It seems a guest of the restaurant was dissatisfied with their experience in some way and called to complain. No problem so far, any restaurant operator worth their salt would want the opportunity to correct an issue. But here's the disturbing part, once the restaurant manager had apologized and made the reparations that seemed appropriate for the situation, the guest then made an attempt to extort a "ransom" from them by asking for a larger gift card amount in exchange for the hostage-taker not going on Yelp and giving them a bad review.
The negative Yelp review, as well as the positive one, is online forever for all to see. As many brands in the restaurant industry depends heavily on word of mouth advertising, a lot of them seem to fear a negative review on Yelp. And some opportunists have clued in on this and tried to take advantage of this fear.
I would, however, welcome all reviews whether good or bad, and respond online appropriately. A professional and caring response to a poor review can lend more credibility to your operations than can 100% positive reviews.
Don't be held hostage by this type of internet extortion, but use it as an opportunity to show your customer base that you are willing to make things right for your guests.
Reader Comments (8)
DO NOT WORRY ABOUT YELP !!!!!!!! Keep your hot food hot, your cold food cold .BE NICE AND KEEP IT FRESH AND CRISPY
Reference: February 2010 Inc Cover Story on Yelp
I am a boomer, cradle to grave small business and rooted in upholding with tremendous pride and admittedly a bit of over protective, of “whose freedom we believe to be ordained by God,” as written into our constitution. There wasn’t a Mediterranean spoon full of pasta that wasn't twirled and swallowed, that wasn’t somehow accompanied by a kitchen table allocution, of how lucky we were to be born and raised in America, the land of the free. Stories of the old country were always exhumed, to teach us what happens when the bad guys get to much power.
The Yelp concept is dangerously flawed. It is nothing more than techno water-boarding. Its core is rooted in vindictive hatred, thinly veiled by Yelpers utilizing modernized gorilla tactics to terrorize small business owners, who don’t measure up or with whom Yelper expectations are not met. They work on the same premise as Unions, Al-Qaeda, the KKK and powerful untouchable fasicta godfathers. They work from within hidden computer lairs where business owners can’t get a clear shot at who’s ambushing them. How very noble! They muscle people who are barely able to eek out a living and if they meet with resistance, one Yelper can, rebel yell for help from their, Yelper swarming gangs - how gallant. Is there such a thing as Yelping gang rape in the statutes, Yet?
When nameless, faceless, cowards strike, as with anyone from within the shadows; because they didn’t like a messy dusty book store; because their itty-bitty expectations were not met, it is beyond reasoning. It is mean spirited, and cruel that results in dangerous consequences and victimizes. THAT'S NOT THE AMERICAN WAY! This isn't the way WE DO BUSINESS.
Today its a dusty dirty bookstore - so what? Don’t shop there! What if tomorrow I put a big bright yellow neon Star of David, on my flower shop window, and Yelpers don’t like that either? What if I don’t speak good enough English or Yelpers decide they don’t like big fat ugly people, cutting their hair?
Forgive me for not beaming with admiration for the likes of such mange ridden dogs, while their community organizing protégé, round up and recruits more Yelpers who are programmed to swarm. Tomorrow, Gabi Messinger will probably be appointed by OBAMA to preside over ACORN. Wouldn't surprise me in the least.
All Diane Goodman, needs to do is roll up her sleeves and clean her shop. Since when is dust a crime? Why don’t we shut Diane down until she satisfies the Yelpers. Squeeze her until she succumbs, to Yelp peer pressure? We can always stone her in the town square. Lauren Hart is a flake that succumbs easily to intimidation or her real crime is that she lacks the ability to give a good haircut. That’s what she has employees for anyway. I can’t count the number of times, I’ve gotten a bad haircut, paid for it and tipped as well.
Oh wait, the best of the best was Jane Reddin’s, confessional that confirms exactly what I am saying, to be true. When she pauses to admit that she can’t imagine saying anything negative about the Yelp bravos because they could wage war on her with bad reviews. That’s great, let Yelp, release the hounds on Jane.
If, Stoppelmans and Simmons is the very best our universities can churn out. We are truly up sh*&ts creek. These people need hard core Atticus Finch ethics. You either have it or you don’t, and they obviously don’t have and they don’t "get" any of it.
As for the three sombreros ( Musk, Thiel and Levchin) shame on them. They need to get fitted for their white sheets and pointy hats. I don’t care how many millions they make off this grunge, they don't make a strong enough sanitizer, to wash off the stench from the dead bodies they hurt and bury. I hope Google writes them off.
My work, my function is to take customer satisfaction negatives and turn them into positives. There are constructive and legitimate ways to voice negative opinions, without the use of a billy-club. Nothing good ever comes from intimidation. This is why we fought union organizers, but they somehow slithered back again.
Bad businesses self destruct, and hardly need a Yelp to tear out the last remnants of the carcasses heart. It’s the kill factor they salivate over.
Finally, when I speak, I do not yelp!
Signed, El, just blowing off steam, Gosh! I hate stuff like this.
Because I won’t risk these little pisser’s killing my business, that’s why?
This is a real concern. So glad you brought this item to light.
One of my favorite restaurants brought this to my attention a couple of months back when I was teaching at the University. Very sad and unscrupulous business practice which must be stopped!
In her case, her positive comments disappeared. She could handle a negative but when she saw positive comments and they disappeared. Sad - one of the best restaurants has a 2 star rating and doesn't even come up in the search.
I have sent friends there and have received rave reviews from them just in the past 90 days! Yet that restaurant is no where to be found unless you type in the name and it comes up with 10 reviews and 2 stars.
Yelp should show all the restaurants - even the supposedly 2 star restaurants. Google is founded upon disclosure - this is inconsistent with Google's philosophy and the usefulness of the Internet is greatly lessened.
I recognize and understand the issue that many small business owners are having with Yelp. There is no doubt that this is an obstacle. However, I would suggest that there will always continue to be "yelps" and niche review sites that may be temporarily dominated by negative reviews, and from time to time, unethical patrons. I doubt that this will go away, entirely.
One problem is that many small business owners have hitched their word-of-mouth strategy to yelp instead of taking a comprehensive approach and engaging customers across the varying digital communities that they facilitate feedback, thus diminishing a single voice. This might include facebook, get-satisfaction, customer satisfaction surveys and other potential social communities for people to review your service. I believe that to own a successful service business, you must be transparent and invest resources to participate in the conversation about your business and effective tools to listen to what the market is saying about you.
So, your business needs more than a yelp to succeed. I would encourage any business owner to create tools that make referrals and conversations easy, right on their website and have a consistent program for engaging patrons -- starting with the wait staff directing them to your own site or review service, addressing the real concerns of customers and sharing that conversation in as visible a process as possible (especially the positive trends and results).
This is a big commitment because it means being vulnerable and proactive to the opinions about your business. I also believe that this is a real difference maker in influencing opinion.
Good post, Brian. Important to know! I recently posted information about Yelp on my site as well http://franchisessentials.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/yikes-help-or-yelp-for-customer-service-issues/
Once a site such as Yelp gets a reputation as being unreliable, it's ability to impact will diminish fast anyway, people have gotten smart enough to know that both bad and good reviews can be bogus. And as many above pointed out it is word of mouth that make a restaurant not a website.
I built a restaurant chain on quality of food and service, by word of mouth from our thousands of very happy customers. And yes there was the occasional reviews by Real Food critics in newspapers and magazines, but those where no real impact on our business, our sales did not jump 25% because of a great review. So do not worry about some non-professional website effecting your business.
If there is anything I learned in the restaurant business it is bad operators always look from something outside of themselves and their operation to fault for their failure. A good operator stays focused on running his restaurant well, so stay focused on running the best restaurant in town and the people will keep on coming, I know this for a fact, I did it.
P.S: As for myself I have never yet used a website to tell me where to eat and not eat.
Paul, Dennis - I appreciate your input!
I found it goes both ways.restaurants are using friends and colleagues to boost thier reviews or counter bad reviews. If you have been to a restaurant you read between the lines and usually pick out the what i call the infommercial specialists.I have used yelp and have realated true experiences but only after trying the place a couples of times. I have been personally attacked by other reviewers. This begs the question why the emotional buy in. Yelp deos no policing of complaints even if the review is a attack on another reviewer and not a repudiation of the origianl review. A great article on all social critic restaurant sites had on crtical them and recommendation and is my final takeaway for the instant critic. If as a owner or manager you are not googling and checkin urbanspoon and yelp for reviews. You desrve what you get. After reading the article and reviewing my own posts i realized there is a common thread and that other people prior and after picked up on mysame issues. Deep down as owner or manager if you see a commothread and not one off comments you need to investigate and address the issues internally. For the most part yelp is only good for the first 5 recent comments. The majority of shoppers are to busy with other inane data to extrapolate any more. So make sure you only have one offs and take everything with a grain of salt. Respond privatly to the customer and most people will do the right thing