Thanks For Your Comments
Yes! We do own a small business. Yes, we have received bad reviews - Along with lots of good ones. And, yes, like one of you said, Yelp! reviews can be malicious and completely untrue. Over the years since its creation, Yelp! has wreaked havoc on small businesses across this country. And its claim its "to help people find great local businesses" is a total and utter sham! Instead, its sole purpose, as evident by its name which sounds like "help" and is punctuated with an exclamation mark, is to help unsatisfied or unscrupulous people with an axe to grid, destroy small businesses by providing them with an unrestricted public forum to write anything they want without consequence.
I realize the above is a bold claim but let's look at the facts. It is totally free to set up an account on Yelp!, so anyone can do it unlike a legitimate site like Angie's List. One needs no accreditation or expertise to qualify any review posted nor are they required to provide any proof to back what they are writing.
Consequently, this leaves the door wide open for these so-called reviewers (I like to call them cyber assassins) to write whatever their versions of the truth actually are. And, it's all endorsed by Yelp! simply by publishing their reviews. The whole notion of being innocent until proven guilty apparently doesn't apply in the Yelp! universe. Nor do the the concepts of liable or slander. So the truth, as we all know it, isn't a requirement or even a consideration when writing a Yelp! review.
Furthermore, each of these reviews are accompanied by a "star rating" which is completely and totally inaccurate since this "star rating" system is based on a contaminated control group. It's fact that satisfied customers simply don't complain. There's no reason too. Nor do the vast majority of satisfied customers feel the need to seek out a place to voice their satisfaction with a business that did their job properly. They simply move on with their lives and never look back. Angry unsatisfied customers, on the other hand, make it their mission in life to complain at the top of their lungs about the goods and/or services that weren't up to "their" standards and will climb to the highest mountain top, in this case Yelp!, to scream at the world about their dissatisfaction.
The result of all this screaming is two-fold: 1) The business in question receives a verbal berating the likes of which can only be described as abusive, insulting and malicious. And, these scoldings, usually get personal, singling out employees and/or owners as the key villain. And, 2) The businesses resulting Yelp! "star rating" which falls between 1 (which is the worst) and 5 (being the best) is lowered significantly.
Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, this "star rating" doesn't accurately reflect a business's true performance due to the lack of an equally proportionate ratio of satisfied vs. unsatisfied reviewers who log on to Yelp! to write a review. Under this negatively slanted scenario, a business is lucky if even a very small percentage of it's satisfied customer base goes to the trouble of seeking out Yelp! to write a positive review. Whereas a much larger percentage of a business's dissatisfied customers will take as much time as possible that to find as many places (like Yelp!) to complain about their experience.
Now, regarding the validity and/or truthfulness of the reviews posted on Yelp!... Yelp! claims to have created a truth detecting algorithm that "filters" out the untruthful reviews whether they are good or bad. This raises only one question in my mind... Really?! An honest to goodness truth detector?! C'mon!!! At this point, we all know that "truth detectors" simply do not exist. Sure, polygraph machines are out there, but their results are far less then 100% accurate and have even been purposely beaten by certain individuals. Because of that, it is my understanding that polygraph results are not admissible in our court system.
So, if Yelp! had actually created an algorithm that could accurately predict the truth, they would be the most famous, most desired company on the face of the planet today. And instead of being in the website review hosting business making pennies, they would be in the truth detection business making billions upon billions of dollars.
The mere fact that their algorithm is still "their" algorithm and that it's allegedly being used to sniff out bogus restaurant and dog grooming reviews, etc. is proof that the rest of the world knows that their truth detecting algorithm is itself a lie! Otherwise, every law enforcement agency, military organization and government on the planet would be knocking on Yelp's! door begging to use their truth detecting algorithm.
Now that we all know that the real truth, that being that truth has been suspended in the Yelp! universe, it is logical to assume that Yelp! freely and actively sanctions an outright lawless free-for-all for it's cyber assassins to set their sights on their targets. Consequently, anything thing is game including deceitful friends and family of a business's competitors who are free to leave bad reviews solely intent on negatively influencing another business's potential customer base while positively reinforcing their own.
Even worse, customers now use Yelp! (while still in the store) as a threat in an effort to blackmail and/or extort business owners into getting what they want whether it be a discount, no tax or something for free. The following has been heard on many occasions in stores across the country, including ours, "I'm going to write and bad Yelp! review if I don't get (insert demand here)."
Yelp! is a black cloud that just doesn't go away. Ever! Especially, once a bad review appears on Yelp!. Once these reviews are published, there's nothing a business owner can do about them. Yelp! does allow a business owner to rebut a review, but that is a no win situation that draws the business owner into an unwinnable online he said/she argument as the reviewer is also allowed to rebut the rebut.
To further establish that Yelp's! truth detecting algorithm doesn't work, below is a fake review that wasn't and to this day (even though the business owner has flagged it and even spoken to Yelp! about it) hasn't been removed or filtered by Yelp's! algorithm.
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Bill C.
Granada Hills, CA
20 friends

60 reviews
Left a One Star Review
9/21/2012
Went in here with my finance to look at dresses. Found the staff and especially the owner to be ditzing, non-caring, and just plain rude. Couldn't keep their attention for more then a second and the owner was a total beatch. Dress prices were very high. I would avoid this place if I was you, there are much better shops that can take care of you and HELP you though a decision at a more fair price.
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This defamatory review is 100% guaranteed pure fiction written by a disgruntled vendor who provided the store in question with very poor customer service. The reviewer became very angry when the store owner complained about his service and subsequently fired him for failure to fulfill his obligation. The real "truth" is that this man has never shopped in the store in question with his "fiancé" or any else's "fiancé" but is instead using Yelp! (like many others do) in a blatant attempt to damage this store's business and reputation.
This is a perfect example of how Yelp! encourages blatant lies and cannot be a trusted source of "truthful" information written by actual customers. The real "truth" is that people, as we all know, can be cruel and vindictive, and although Yelp! claims to "filter" out fake reviews using their truth detecting algorithm, in fact, there is NO WAY to do this as proven above.
With that said, businesses and their employees are not perfect and mistakes are made resulting in unhappy customers. Hopefully in those instances, the business in question does its very best to turn those unhappy situations into happy ones with satisfactory outcomes for both the customer and the business.
Unfortunately, with the advent of Yelp!, it is now common place for anyone (like Bill C.) to write anything they want should they be telling the truth or not. When that happens, all a business owner has to counter them with is their word, their experience and their reputation. Like another one of you wrote, the rest is left for the reader to decide. But, it stings when your business, a business that in our case has been in operation for over 55 years and has thousands upon thousands of satisfied customers who will never go to Yelp! to write a review about how great we are, gets a bad rap because of people like Bill C.
So, yes, I would LOVE to have the ability to remove my business from the Yelp! website.
