Yelp.com

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because: No one has forwarded me any information about the clicks you are talking about.  I have nothing showing me the number of clicks or the price per click.  A statement should have been sent if there were clicks involved and I have never received anything about it.  If you prove to me that there were clicks amounting to $275 then I will pay the outstanding balance, but until now I have not received anything.Sincerely,[redacted]

(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)The response from the business is not acceptable. It basically seems like I am receiving repetitive responses and answers.In regards to other businesses outside of Dixon setting up a service area, I previously mentioned that I had called some of those businesses asking if I was in their service area,and they all said no.Furthermore I believe I stated that in my original correspondence,and it was not addressed in the response. I also feel that you are not giving full credit to the technology when it comes to internet and websites.Instead you almost make it sound as if the website does what it wants and is out of your control.While you are claiming you can provide "the most relevant results to users" when it comes to [redacted],you are not doing as you claim. Thus also confirming that you do maintain control of said website.Please explain to me how a service in Petaluma (60 miles away)that does not provide service to Dixon, has more relevance over a business that is not only in Dixon, but services Dixon as well. When searching restaurants in Dixon,it does not show anything from Petaluma, in fact it will show most of what we have here. Indeed you will find stuff in surrounding areas, but not until a few pages later after ALL Dixon results have been displayed.I am amusing its by default that Yelp shows the restaurants in order by distance, as it should be for any search regardless of its category. If you search for a restaurant chain for some lunch, are you going to use the one in your town or drive to the next town?As Ive said before,people want to see what is closest to them first.

Hi [redacted],Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns. We were unable to locate the review in question based on the information you provided. Could you please provide us with a link to the business page and the name of the reviewer?Alternatively, if you...

already have Yelp account and would like to report content that you feel may violate Yelp's Content Guidelines [redacted]), you can do so by finding the content in question, clicking the flag icon on the website or the More Options/Overflow Menu (3 dots) on the app. You'll need to be logged into your account to report content.To learn more, please visit: [redacted]While reporting content doesn't guarantee that it'll be removed, our team looks at every inquiry and carefully evaluates the content against our guidelines. Each case will be reviewed by our team in the order it was received. Typically, you will receive a response to your report of a review within a few business days. If you don't believe you've received our response, please be sure to check all email and spam folders (you may want to add [redacted] to your contact list).Regards,
[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Revdex.com:I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. Sincerely, [redacted]

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/11/04) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your business page for [redacted].
We are sorry to hear you were not satisfied with your advertising campaign. To be clear,...

while the goal of advertising on Yelp is to drive more traffic to the business page, which may ultimately result in more customers, it is important to keep in mind that results are not guaranteed. When advertising with a packaged Cost Per Click program, you are paying a fixed amount for an enhanced profile and you are electing to pay every time a user clicks on your ad impression.
Our records indicate that you signed up for an advertising program with $100 monthly fixed costs plus up to $200 monthly variable costs, for a monthly maximum of $300. As noted in your contract, the monthly fixed costs were for your enhanced profile, which included features such as competitor ad removal and a photo slideshow. Your monthly Cost Per Click budget cap was set at $200, which means you were only charged when someone clicked on your ad and you agreed to pay up to $200 a month for those ad clicks.
With regards to your concern with the variable price per click, as noted in your contract, you signed up for a Cost-Per-Click (CPC) auction-based auto-bidding program, which means that you agreed to allow Yelp to set the bid price per click price to keep you competitive in the market. While your sales representative may have given you an estimated price per click, it's important to keep in mind that the price will fluctuate up or down depending on competition, relevance, and other factors. However, it will always be the lowest price possible to win the click.
As you may recall from the conversation you have with one of our account managers,[redacted], your advertising program has been terminated as of August 11, 2015 and the early termination fee of $600 has been waived. As advertising services were delivered in accordance with your contract, we will not be able to offer you a refund, but we hope will continue to take advantage of the free features available to you on your business account to engage with the Yelp community. For guidance, please visit https://biz.yelp.com/support/using_business_account
Regards,
[redacted]
Yelp Inc.
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 7, 2015/11/16) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
[redacted] ,
I had a verbal contract with[redacted], our verbal contract included promises made by her ,she word for word said to me that I would guaranteed break even at worst if I signed up for advertising with yelp. I asked her multiple times if I was going to break even for sure ..?Her answer was consistently the same....Yes. I let her know that I didn't have a penny to spare at this time. And that if she thought I wouldn't break even at worst I would consider advertising with yelp in the future when I was in a better position to possibly lose some money. Again she assured me that I would not lose any money advertising with yelp. All of this changed when I told her I wasn't getting any action advertising with yelp. Once she knew I wasn't happy advertising with yelp, she sang a different tune. She let me know that there are advertising trends and sometimes it takes time for the advertising to pay off. A total contradiction from what she said in the beginning of our communications. If she was honest with me as you are now,I would not have signed the contract. In regards to what you said in your statement ,the only reason I signed the contract was because of the promises[redacted] made to me.
Clearly yelp felt the right thing to do was to let me out of my contract and not charge me the cancellation fees . I was lied to by a yelp sales person ([redacted]) If they didn't feel they were in the wrong they would not have let me out of my contract without paying a cancellation fee. I am now in debit an extra $470.32 thanks to being lied to by[redacted] if yelp can't afford to refund my money then[redacted] should be held solely responsible to refund me. After all she is the person responsible for giving me false information. If this helps at all a yelp mamager named [redacted] told me the calls were recorded (I had no clue this was happening) maybe you can find the recordings and listen to[redacted]"s song and dance.
This is a direct example of someone not having good morals . Also a direct example of women keeping women down for the sake of their own success. The complete opposite of what most of us feel is important in this day and age.
Sincerely ,
[redacted]
Final Business Response /* (4000, 9, 2015/11/30) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for your response.
We appreciate your feedback regarding your sales representative, and have forwarded your concerns to the appropriate parties. That said, we want to reiterate that results not guaranteed. As noted in the contract you signed, "Yelp specifically disclaims all warranties and guarantees regarding (I) the performance, quality and results of the ad programs."
As advertising services were delivered in accordance with your advertising agreement, we will not be able to offer you a refund. Thanks for understanding.
Regards,
[redacted]
Yelp Inc.

Hi [redacted],Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your advertising program for [redacted].We forwarded your message to the appropriate parties. As you may recall, our Account Management team has been in touch with you to discuss your...

concerns and let you know that your advertising program has been terminated as of November 21, 2016. We are also writing off the balance for advertising services that were delivered in November, so you will only be responsible for the remaining balance of $229.85 for advertising services that were delivered in October. Once that amount is collected, you will not incur further charges.Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because:
Yelp intentionally maxed out my ad campaign ever month to $325, an amount $200 beyond the original amount of $125 I signed up for, by charging exorbitant amounts per click without providing any ROI results. With this set up they were able to charge a higher amount for no increase in traffic to my business or clicks on my call to action offers. It is a deceitful way of claiming to advertise for a small business and it offers no protection to a business owner that sees the unjust rational of every month maxing out someone's campaign budget amount when they are being provided with no results. Yelp repeatedly attempted to reject my request to cancel my campaign by calling my business daily to stagnant and prolong the process while continuing to charge me for advertising  
Sincerely,[redacted]

Hi **,Thank you for writing again.You asked for your business to be removed from Yelp; however, we don't remove business information. While some business owners might prefer to keep a lower profile, this kind of information is publicly available and its use is protected under the law. More importantly, we believe that the public benefits from sharing their experiences with local businesses.Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because:
After you removed my review, I even CHECKED IN which means I was at the restaurant personally and my review was based on a personal experience indeed. But you still kept removing my 1-star review. My review has nothing to do with the news and everything to do with the facts. And you close the account because you realize I will keep posting it? What a JOKE! You are definitely getting paid by businesses to keep them happy. I never got any warning or anything because the[redacted] account, which is my username is a closed account and you know that because your email must have bounced. You as a Yelp is a joke and people need to know what kind of scam you are running. Keep businesses happy, getting paid by the advertisement money, claiming that is not really for the reviews and removing all the 1-star reviews at businesses request. And if someone resists your tactics you shut down their account completely. Shame on you!
 
Sincerely,B K

Hi [redacted],Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your advertising program for [redacted].We are sorry to hear you were not satisfied with your advertising campaign, and we'll be sure to forward your note along to the appropriate...

parties for their consideration.To be clear, while the goal of advertising on Yelp is to drive more traffic to the business page, which may ultimately result in more customers, it is important to keep in mind that results are not guaranteed. When advertising with a Cost Per Click program, you are electing to pay every time a user clicks on your ad impression. You are also paying for call tracking an an enhanced profile.Our records indicate you signed up for an advertising program with $75 monthly fixed costs plus an ad click budget of $475, for a monthly maximum of $550. The monthly fixed costs were for the call tracking feature and your enhanced profile, which included features such as competitor ad removal and a photo slideshow. Your advertising package included a cost per click (CPC) program and your monthly ad click budget was set at $475, which means you were charged when someone clicked on your ad and you agreed to pay up to $475 a month for those ad clicks. If you did not reach your monthly budget cap, you would be charged for the ad clicks you received. However, if you did reach your monthly budget cap, we no longer delivered ads for your business for the remainder of the month so that you wouldn't have to pay more than you agreed to.You can view a breakdown the number of ad clicks you received and the average cost per click by logging in to your Yelp for Business Owners Account at [redacted] and clicking on the "Yelp Ads" tab.With regards to your concern with the variable price per click, as noted in your contract, you signed up for a Cost-Per-Click (CPC) auction-based auto-bidding program, which means that you agreed to allow Yelp to set the bid price per click to keep you competitive in the market. While your sales representative may have given you an estimated price per click, it's important to keep in mind that the price will fluctuate up or down depending on competition, relevance, and other factors. However, it will always be the lowest price possible to win the click.Per the terms of your advertising agreement, we require 30 days written notice to your account management contact if you wish to terminate your advertising program. It looks like you provided your cancellation request on February 21, 2017 and that your advertising program is currently set to cancel on March 28, 2017. While your advertising program could have been terminated 30 days after February 21, 2017, this early termination would've been subject to a fee of $550. By waiting to terminate your program until March 28, 2017, which is after the initial commitment period, no early termination fee will be assessed. Thanks for understanding.Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Hi [redacted],Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your advertising program for [redacted]We are sorry to hear you were not satisfied with your advertising campaign. To be clear, while the goal of advertising on Yelp is to...

drive more traffic to the business page, which may ultimately result in more customers, it is important to keep in mind that results are not guaranteed.Our records indicate you initially signed up for a 12 month advertising program with $25 monthly fixed costs plus a monthly ad click budget of $275, for a monthly maximum of $300. This advertising program began on September 26, 2016. The monthly fixed costs were for your enhanced profile, which included features such as competitor ad removal and a photo slideshow. Your advertising program was a cost per click (CPC) program and your ad click budget was set at $275, which means you were charged when someone clicked on your ad and you agreed to pay up to $275 a month for those ad clicks. If you did not reach your monthly budget cap, you would be charged for the ad clicks you received. However, if you did reach your monthly budget cap, we no longer delivered ads for your business for the remainder of the month so that you wouldn't have to pay more than you agreed to.While we do allow businesses to change to another advertising program, generally speaking, this requires signing a new contract for the remaining months of the advertising term. It looks like you signed a new 10 month advertising agreement on November 28, 2016, with a service start date of December 1, 2016. This program was for an enhanced profile only (again including features such as competitor ad removal and a photo slideshow), at a fixed cost of $70 per month. It looks like your advertising program was terminated on December 21, 2016.We also want to address your comment, "Yelp Never removed the Competitor's Ads from my page." To clarify, the competitor ad removal feature means that competitor ads will not appear on your business page. Competitor ads have a yellow border and the notation "Ad" in next to the business name. If a business has not signed up for the competitor ad removal feature, then competitor ads may appear on the business page between the business information and Recommended Reviews sections.However, the competitor ad removal feature does not remove the "People also viewed" feature from business pages. The "People also viewed" section aims to enhance the user experience by displaying additional businesses that users on the page have also viewed. This feature is located on the right hand side of all business pages on Yelp, regardless of regardless of their advertising status. It’s also important to note that the businesses displayed in this section cannot be manually adjusted.We appreciate your feedback, and forwarded your concerns to the appropriate parties. That said, advertising services were delivered in accordance with the advertising agreements you signed. Thanks for understanding.Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/06/01) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your business page for [redacted]
You expressed concern that "The weekend after refusing YELP's advertising package I found...

that our company had dropped from the search results." Search results are intended to provide the most useful results to consumers. The search algorithm looks at a number of different factors, including the search term itself, ratings, and active reviews. However, a business's advertising status is not factored into the ordering of our search results, though we sometimes show relevant ads above them. The ads that we feature on search results pages are shown above our natural search results and are highlighted with a yellow icon indicating that they are paid ads.
You also expressed concern that "they created a new listing for my business and took down our original listing" and that "We had moved locations once before, 4 years ago, and none of this happened." Please note that from time to time some of our policies change. Currently, to reflect a change in location, we will typically mark the existing business page on Yelp as "moved" and create a page for the new location. The "moved" notation is meant to inform customers of this change and to direct them to your business's current location. Existing reviews will generally stay put, as they describe experiences from before the move and won't necessarily apply to the new location. Customers who visit your new location are welcome to post their reviews on the new page. Customers can also find the old location linked in the banner that appears on the new business page: [redacted]
Regards,
[redacted]
Yelp Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because:
Yelp and their did not give me an answer to my inquiry, they are trying to forward it to other people that they are not even answering my call and are not willing to listen to my complain.
If they really care they can just read my complaint and remove the review asap and since this is taking too long they would need to answer me to court and the longer it takes the more money I will be suing them for because this wrong and injustice review is hurting my business and they would have to have a good answer for the judges. My compliant is simple: she was NOT my customer and I can only refund the money the same way that I received it. if they paid credit card I have to refund the credit card back and I can not write a check instead to some stranger that I never even met or saw. please put yourself in my position and it is very easy to understand , thanks
Sincerely,[redacted]

Hi [redacted],Thank you for the additional feedback. We have forwarded your concerns to the appropriate parties.You wrote, "I am waiting on [redacted] at Yelp to reply to my email since I have asked her to call me so I can pay the $570." It appears you wrote to [redacted] on August 15, asking that she call you back on August 16. As you may recall, another account manager, [redacted], responded to you via email on August 16 to let you know that our Account Management team no longer has access to your account since your advertising program has been cancelled. It also looks like [redacted] let you know that you can clear the balance by calling our Finance team at ([redacted]We also want to address your comment, "I have kept track of my weekly reports from YELP during advertising, and there was no change in leads or exposure, so basically, I have been paying a LOT of money for nothing." While we are sorry to hear you were not satisfied with your advertising campaign, according to our records, it appears your business page saw an increase in user views during the months you were advertising. User Views is a measure of how many times your Yelp page was accessed or viewed on the Yelp website, mobile website, and mobile apps. Your business was not advertising during January through April 2016 and your page saw 25 user views in January, 30 in February, 34 in March, and 30 in April. Your business began advertising in May 2016, and the number of user views increased to 105 during that month. You also had 70 user views in June and 135 in July. You can view this information on the Activity page of your Business Account ([redacted]Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]
I am rejecting this response because:Yelp did not adequately address my concerns directly as Yelp continues to hide behind their "it's just our software" excuse. Yet Yelp continues to hurt our business which places us in an unfair position. Yelp's response is their boilerplate response to all businesses who can't pay for their ads or who protest against their cyber-sabotage. However, if Yelp would remove our restaurant from their review platform altogether, such a gesture would indicate that Yelp really does care about small businesses like ours and it would prove that Yelp is making a good faith effort to do the right thing. In turn, we may be convinced that joining YelpEats would be good for our business and we would accept their response as such. Otherwise we are rejecting their current response.
Sincerely,
[redacted]

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/11/02) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your advertising program for [redacted].
We are sorry to hear you were not satisfied with your advertising campaign. To be clear,...

while the goal of advertising on Yelp is to drive more traffic to the business page, which may ultimately result in more customers, it is important to keep in mind that results are not guaranteed. When advertising with an impressions-based program, you are paying for the delivery of a certain number of targeted ad impressions, in your case 450 ad impressions per month.
That said, we have forwarded your message to our Account Management team, and as it appears your advertising program should have been terminated as of September 30, 2015, we will be refunding you for the charges for October and are waiving the early termination fee.
We hope you will continue to take advantage of the free features available to you on your business account to engage with the Yelp community. For guidance, visit https://biz.yelp.com/support/using_business_account
Regards,
[redacted]
Yelp Inc.
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (2000, 7, 2015/11/12) */
(The consumer indicated he/she ACCEPTED the response from the business.)

Yelp is a bunch of double talking LIARS. I was signed back up because yelp said it wanted to do the right thing. When yelp com called me. I want to be refunded 100% of all money I was scammed out of by Yelp.com.Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because:Sincerely,Brian [redacted]

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/08/06) */
Hi [redacted],
Thanks for writing; we are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns.
In researching your complaint, it appears you've talked to an account manager since filing this complaint, and Yelp has agreed to reduce the early...

termination fee for your advertising program, so it is $300 rather than $600.
We're sorry to see you go, and wish you the best of luck moving forward.
Regards,
[redacted]
Yelp Inc.

Hi [redacted],Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your advertising program for [redacted]We are sorry to hear you were not satisfied with your advertising campaign. To be clear, while the goal of advertising on Yelp is to drive more traffic to...

the business page, which may ultimately result in more customers, it is important to keep in mind that results are not guaranteed.When advertising with a Cost Per Click program, you are electing to pay every time a user clicks on your ad impression. You are also paying for an enhanced profile, which includes features such as competitor ad removal and a photo slideshow. It appears you've been in touch with our account management team, and that you have recently signed a new advertising agreement to switch over to an enhanced profile only beginning May 1, 2017.We will forward your feedback to the appropriate parties for their consideration. It also looks like a manager, [redacted], reached out to you on April 13, 2017. Please feel free to reach out to [redacted] if have further questions or concerns.Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/10/30) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your business page for [redacted].
We first want to make sure you know that a business's decision whether or not to...

advertise on Yelp does not affect how the reviews on its listing are treated. Businesses are not punished if they don't advertise, nor are businesses awarded with preferential treatment with regards to their reviews if they do advertise. We understand there are some misconceptions about this, so we invite you to visit http://www.yelp.com/advertiser_faq and http://officialblog.yelp.com/2013/05/no-yelp-doesnt-extort-small-businesses-see-...⇄ to learn more.
That said, if you no longer wish to receive communication from our Sales team, please let us know.
You also expressed concern with the recommendation software. As you may have read, the goal of Yelp's recommendation software is to showcase more reliable content. The recommendation software establishes an objective standard against which every review can be measured, and looks at dozens of different signals, including various measures of quality, reliability, and activity on Yelp.
It's important to note that the software applies the same analysis to everyone, and that it affects both positive and negative reviews. You wrote, "I want ALL of my reviews published," but please understand that the recommendation software is automated: we cannot manually override the software to recommend or not recommend a review. However, the system is not static reviews may become recommended or not recommended over time as the system continues to make decisions based on a variety of factors.
To learn more about recommended reviews, please visit: http://www.yelp-support.com/Recommended_Reviews?l=en_US
You also expressed concern with some reviews. We assume you are referring to the reviews by [redacted] M and [redacted] M, as you've previously reported these reviews. We wanted to let you know that we have removed the review update by [redacted] M because it falls outside our Content Guidelines. We have also taken a second look at [redacted] M's original review and [redacted] M's review but, after careful consideration, we reached the same conclusion as before and are unable to remove these reviews. If a review appears to reflect the reviewer's personal experiences and opinions, it is our policy to let the user stand behind his or her review.
In some situations, business owners may want to message the reviewer privately, or post a public response to clarify any misunderstandings. You can access these features using our free accounts for business owners (https://biz.yelp.com/), and you can find more information about how to respond to reviews here: http://www.yelp-support.com/Responding_to_Reviews?l=en_US.
These decisions aren't always easy, but please know we looked at these reviews closely before reaching our decision.
Regards,
[redacted]
Yelp Inc.