Company Promises Positive Yelp Reviews For a Price; Yelp Sues

jfruh writes Many restaurants and other small businesses live and die by Yelp reviews. Revleap operates a paid service that it says can "create a large constant flow of positive reviews that stay on top of your [Yelp] profile, and remove fake reviews." But Yelp is suing Revleap for what it says are practices that are fraudulent and in violation of Yelp's terms of service; among other things, Revleap promises users gift cards in exchange for good reviews.

Good for the goose, good for the gander

[StandardCell]

The exact same arguments Yelp makes in effectively extorting businesses by deleting positive reviews unless they pay up are the same ones that RevLeap is trying to counterbalance and the same ones that SEO companies use to boost their Google rankings. I see neither a moral nor a legal argument that could favor Yelp in this case given their prior behavior, and I hope they pay RevLeap's costs in the end when they lose.

Re:Yelp is so full of shit sometimes

[im_thatoneguy]

Yeah there was a company here in Seattle that I heard about that was a wedding venue. Apparently their building was scheduled for demolition but the company was at best 'hopeful' that they would have a new space by then but in truth mostly just fraudulent. They accepted $1,000 deposits on rentals well past the scheduled demolition date. Then with a few months to go they started emailing people telling them that there had been a fire and that the space wouldn't be available for their wedding in a couple weeks. A newspaper looked into it and there had been no reported fires so even that was total BS. Understandably everyone who was robbed by these business owners gave very bad yelp reviews but since the company had been around for years it was only a few dozen people who were ripped off vs the hundreds who did legitimately like the space. As a result last I checked its yelp review was like 3.5 stars with a mix of 5 and 1 star reviews.

There really should be a weighting system to trend up and down based on the last couple months.

Re:Yelp is so full of shit sometimes

[pete6677]

If someone rips you off that badly, you don't need a Yelp review. You need a lawsuit.