Yelp.com

Hi [redacted]Thank you for writing again.We appreciate your feedback, and are sorry to hear you were not satisfied with your advertising campaign. Yelp delivered ads for your business in a variety of places, including on search result pages and business pages, and you were charged when someone clicked on your ad. Yelp ads can help drive more traffic to the business page, which may ultimately result in more customers, but we cannot guarantee a certain level of results.Your advertising campaign began on December 8, 2015. Per the terms of your advertising agreement, we require 30 days notice to your account management contact if you wish to terminate your advertising program. According to our records, you provided your cancellation request on January 28, 2016, so your advertising program was terminated on February 27, 2016.With regards to your comment, "I was told I'd have help setting up profile which I never recieved." An enhanced profile (which included features such as competitor ad removal, a photo slideshow, and a Call to Action button) was part of your advertising program, but making the most of these features may have required additional action from you. Our records indicate that an account manager, [redacted], sent you an email on December 8, 2015 with the subject "Make the most of your Yelp advertising" and that another account manager, [redacted] sent you an email on January 19, 2016 with the subject "Yelp Recommendation - Call to Action." In these emails, our account management team outlined next steps for you to take advantage of these features. If you had any questions about using these features, you were welcome to reach out to our account management team for further assistance.As advertising services were delivered in accordance with the advertising agreement you signed, 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 appreciate your feedback, and have forwarded your message to the appropriate parties.It looks like you called and spoke with our...

Account Management team yesterday, August 17, 2017, to confirm that we had received your payment and are continuing in the advertising program. If you have further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact our Account Management team. Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

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 clarify that asking for reviews is not something we encourage. For one thing, most businesses tend to ask their happiest...

customers to write reviews, not the unhappy ones. These self-selected reviews tell only part of the story, and we don’t think that’s fair to consumers. We would much rather hear from members of the Yelp community who are inspired to talk about their experiences without a business owner’s encouragement. More information can be found here: [redacted]It's important to note that Yelp uses automated software to showcase helpful and reliable reviews from the Yelp community. As a result, our software may fail to recommend the reviews that you’ve asked your customers to write. Your best bet to get high quality and unbiased reviews about your business is to provide a memorable and amazing customer experience.As you may have read, 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. Please also 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: [redacted]Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because:
First off, we've hardly taken advantage of any 'good will' provided by the prior owners and I find this response to be dismissive.
Sincerely,[redacted]

Hi [redacted],Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your advertising program for [redacted]As you noted, you redeemed a $300 promotional ad credit. To redeem the $300 credit towards Yelp ads, you were required to sign up for our...

Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising campaign and put a credit card on file. You set your Cost Per Click monthly budget at $300. Once the promotion runs out, advertising continues until you stop your ads through your Yelp for Business Owners Account.Your advertising program was a self-serve program, which means that ads can be turned off by the business at any time through the Yelp for Business Owners Account. If you only wanted to use your $300 promotion, you would have needed to log in and end the program once that credit was used. During your ad setup there were Q&A's on the right side of the page explaining that you could stop your ads any time through the Yelp for Business Owners site.Additionally, after you signed up for your advertising program, we sent you an automated email that recapped your purchase and the details of your campaign.Below is a more detailed description of how the promotion was applied:March 2017- You received ad clicks which cost a total of $297.75- $297.75 of your $300 credit was used and you paid $0April 2017- You received ad clicks which cost a total of $300- You had $2.25 remaining promotional credit for this month because it was partially used in March- The costs did not exceed your selected $300 monthly budget- You paid $297.75 for advertising services delivered in April.May 1, 2017- You received ad clicks which cost a total of $12.60- You had 0 remaining promotional credit for this month because it was used in March and April- You are responsible for $12.60 for advertising services delivered in MayYou can view a breakdown of how many ad clicks you received by logging in to your Yelp for Business Owners Account at [redacted] and then clicking on the Yelp Ads tab.Your advertising program was terminated on May 1, 2017. As advertising services have been delivered in accordance with the Terms you agreed to, at this time we will not be able to waive the remaining balance of $12.60 for advertising services delivered in May. Once this amount is collected, you will not incur further charges.That said, we do want to address your comment, "when discussing this with them, I told them I was not sure about that because I don't want to forget and than get billed for other months, that's when the rep stopped me and said, 'No, once the $300 runs out, we will contact you to see how you liked it and if I would want to keep going.'" We were unable to locate a note of such a conversation in our records, but if you have any additional information, such as the name of the individual whom you spoke with, the phone number you called from, their phone number, and the date and time of your conversation with them, please let us know so that we can look into this further.Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/09/01) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your advertising program for [redacted] & Grill.
You expressed concern with the video hosting feature of your advertising program....

The advertising program you signed up for allowed you to create and upload a video to your business page, and the video hosting fee of $50 per month is for reserving space on the server for your video, even if you haven't yet produced the video.
Our records indicate that you discussed removing the video hosting feature with an account manager in March 2015. As it appears our account management team should have sent you a new advertising agreement back in March in order to remove the video hosting feature, we will be refunding the $50 per month video hosting fee you were charged for the months of April 2015 through August 2015. Our account management team also sent you a new advertising agreement on August 28, 2015 to remove the video hosting feature, but it appears you have not signed this new agreement.
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 appreciate your feedback, and have forwarded your message to the appropriate parties. We're sorry to hear you were not satisfied with your...

advertising program.It looks like you've recently spoken with an account manager, [redacted], regarding your concerns. As you may recall, the price per click will fluctuate up or down depending on competition, relevance, and other factors. However, the price you pay will always be the lowest price possible to win the click.Your advertising program has been terminated as of June 8, 2016. 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, [redacted]Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

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 with a negative review. It looks like you are referring to the review by **. that you previously reported. We...

understand that a negative review about an experience you don’t recognize is very frustrating. We have taken a second look at this review but, after careful consideration, we reached the same conclusion as before and are unable to remove the review. 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.We noticed that you've already used your free business account to post a public comment on this review. Many reviewers respond favorably to business owners willing to engage in constructive conversation, and at the very least, other Yelp users appreciate seeing business owners take a proactive approach to dealing with customer concerns.Additionally, you wrote, "Yelp has purposefully and with malice intent, removed positive five (5) star reviews that were posted by real people who were actual customers and who were Not requested by us to write a review. Yelp unethically manipulates reviews to force businesses to pay to advertise through them to maintain positive reviews." We want to be clear 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 [redacted] to learn more.As you may have read, Yelp uses automated recommendation software with the goal of showcasing 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. Please also 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: [redacted]With regards to your comment, "Yelp intentionally manipulates information about our company by changing, without consent, data we provide for public display. They remove categories of services we provide and change our address," while we enable business owners to submit changes to business pages on Yelp, our moderators evaluate those changes to ensure they meet our standards. In this situation, it looks as though your category suggestions have been rejected because we could not verify the new information, and your address suggestions were rejected because they fell outside our current standards. If information that would help confirm that Traffic Schools may be an appropriate category for your business is available on your website or another public-facing source, please reply to this message with a link so we can verify it.You also wrote, "When we post the county we serve above our address, Yelp continually removes this while allowing other businesses to show the areas they serve in addition to their address." It sounds like you would like to add a service area to your business page. You can do so by logging into your Business Account, clicking on the Business Information tab on the left, and clicking Edit next to Service Area. We allow you to enter up to 6 major cities that your business serves, including your current location. Any cities between the cities you specify will be included in your service area automatically.We also want to address your comment, "We are required to post a photo of ourselves to respond to reviews while other businesses, such as [redacted], can use a corporate logo." We appreciate your feedback, and we do allow businesses with a large number of locations to use a logo rather than a real  photo. However, we ask that business owners who do not have a large number of locations use a real photo to keep interactions between consumers and business owners as personalized as possible. We've also found that reviewers are much more receptive to dialogue when they can attach a face to their interactions.We understand that uploading a real photo may not be for everyone, and we can certainly respect that, however if you would like to use the messaging or public commenting features of your Business Account, you will need to provide us with a real photo. Thanks for understanding.Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because: because this customer was not truthful they just wanted free work and they was trying to blackmail me. Yelp is not a good company the don't protect you as a company from false statements anyone can go on yelp and post bad things that are not true no matter if you work for them or not also yelp is not honest the told me they can't take my company of there site that not true and I will be getting my attorney involved.Sincerely,Paul [redacted]

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 clarify that a business's decision whether or not to advertise on [redacted] 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 [redacted] to learn more.With regards to your 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. This means that solicited reviews may not be recommended by our software, but sometimes a legitimate review may not be as well.It's important to note that the software applies the same analysis to everyone, and that it affects both positive and negative reviews. You asked that we "Restore the 'Not Recommended' reviews to [your] business page," 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: [redacted]Regards,[redacted] Inc.

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 be clear 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 [redacted] to learn more.If you believe, however, that an individual has provided you with different information, we would like to investigate further. To that end, please provide us with the name of the individual whom you spoke with, their phone number, and the date and time of your conversation with them, if known.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. Please also 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: [redacted]Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

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 with [redacted] review. We’ve taken another look at [redacted] review, but have reached the same conclusion as before and...

are leaving the review up. 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.As you noted, you've already used your free business account to post a public comment on this review. Many reviewers respond favorably to business owners willing to engage in constructive conversation, and at the very least, other Yelp users appreciate seeing business owners take a proactive approach to dealing with customer concerns.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. Please also 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: [redacted]You also wrote, "Now I have a customer who wish to post reviews but are unable to because Yelp states, Your review isn't posted yet! Check your inbox (or spam folder) for an email from yelp, and click the confirmation link to post.' However, our customers never receive the emails?" If a user is having trouble confirming their account, they can find troubleshooting tips and a link to contact us for further assistance if necessary at [redacted]We also want to address your comment, "As of today, when I try to login to the business account, Yelp responds, Unknown Email Address 'We couldn't find a Yelp for Business Owners account associated with [redacted]. Yelp for Business Owners requires a different account than your Yelp.com login. To create an account, claim your business.'" It looks like the email address associated with your Business Account was changed from [redacted] to another email address in June. We don't disclose this information, but I've emailed a password reset message to the address associated with the account.Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because:  If it is a requirement to be a "customer" in order to submit and retain a review on your site then you'll need to define customer.  The actual definition is someone who receives goods or services. So if you look at it from this standpoint then Yelp would be obligated to remove any and all reviews where a purchase of some kind did not take place, correct?  And I can tell you from personal experience that you do not do this because my business has asked for a few over the years to be removed from non-customers and Yelp refused to do so because it was their review of an experience, not necessarily a purchase; but now you say otherwise.  Or if you'd like to look at it as me receiving a service since I did experience a very poor customer service situation to which evolved my decision to never contact this company in the future.  I think that my opinion should be allowed to be voiced which is the entire basis of Yelp to begin with.  You do not have to be an actual customer to submit a review. There are thousands still posted where the person didn't purchase anything.  So unless you are removing all of them then you cannot discriminate against mine. Sincerely,[redacted]

Hi [redacted],Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your business page for [redacted] & [redacted].We first want to address your comment, "this company is 'bullying' small businesses and startups if they do not pay up for advertising."...

To be clear, 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 [redacted] and [redacted] to learn more.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. Please also 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_ReviewsYou also expressed concern with a review. It looks like you are referring to the review by [redacted]., which you've previously reported. We've taken another look at this review, but have come to the same conclusion as before and are leaving the review up, as it was not found to be in violation of our guidelines. You claim that this review is "fake"; however, Yelp does not take sides in factual disputes. Rather, if a review appears to reflect the personal experience and opinions of the reviewer, it is our policy to allow the user to stand by his or her review.With regards to your concern that you photo had not been approved, it looks like your photo was approved on August 31, and it appears you've since been able to respond to [redacted].'s review.You also wrote, "They have complete control over your business listing with them and you cannot remove your business without either paying for advertising or closing your business. You also cannot make any edits without their approval." Please note that 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. Additionally, while we enable business owners and users to submit changes to business pages on Yelp, our moderators evaluate those changes to ensure they meet our standards. This is to protect businesses from malicious or erroneous changes.Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Hi Heather,Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your advertising program for Capital Practice Consulting. According to our records, you called and spoke with an account manager, [redacted], on October 18, 2017 and indicated that you wanted...

to cancel your advertising program. It appears that Brandon made some recommendations for your page and updated the categories.It appears you spoke with another account manager, [redacted], on October 26, 2017, and that it was agreed that you would continue advertising with a promotion. After your conversation, Kollin sent you an email with the subject line "Yelp Program Follow Up" on October 26, 2017 which stated that he "applied a credit of $160 in free ad clicks each month for up to 3 months in total." Our records indicate that this promotion was applied to your account and ran from October 27, 2017 - January 26, 2018. You can see the number of ad clicks you received and the dollar amount of cost per click ads you received in the Yelp Ads tab of your account at[redacted]. You can also see that this promotion was applied in the billing statements available on the Billing tab of your account at [redacted]/.With regards to your comment that you "maintained that the cancellation was to happen after those three additional months," please note that per the Master Advertising Terms [redacted]) you agreed to, we require 30 days written notice to your account management team if you wish to terminate your advertising program. However, it does not appear that we received a written cancellation request in October that stated that you wished to cancel at the end of your initial term. If you wished to end your program at the end of your 6-month agreement on January 18, 2018, we would have needed to receive a written cancellation request from you 30 days prior. Your advertising program was terminated on February 19, 2018. While we are sorry to hear you were not satisfied with your advertising program, advertising services were delivered in accordance with the terms and conditions you agreed to, so at this time we will not be able to offer you a refund or waive the outstanding balance of $17.72 for the advertising services you received from February 18, 2018 - February 19, 2018. That said, we have forwarded your message to the appropriate parties for their consideration. Thanks for understanding. Regards,HelenYelp Inc.

Hi [redacted]Thank you for your response.We forwarded your message to our account management team. As you may recall, a manager, [redacted], reached out to you on May 27, 2016 to discuss your experience and to let you know your advertising program has been cancelled. Additionally, the charges for advertising services delivered in May have been waived, so you will not incur further charges. Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Hi [redacted],We appreciate your feedback, and while we recognize that the recommendation software is not a perfect system, the goal of the software is to showcase more reliable content. We also want to be clear that there are a number of reasons why a review might not be recommended. For example, the review may have been posted by a less established user, or we may see reviews originating from the same computer. Other reviews that are not currently recommended may be real reviews from real customers who we just don't know much about and therefore can't recommend.We understand our approach is very different from other sites that tend to feature every single negative rant and positive rave. We do our best to nurture a community of users who actively contribute reliable and useful content.You also wrote, "I would rather not be on your site," but as previously stated, we don't remove business listing information. Yelp is allowed to publish business names and publicly available information about businesses under the well-established fair use doctrine, as well as First Amendment principles. Generally speaking, this means that we can display business names and trademarks "for purposes of comparison, criticism, point of reference, or any other such purpose." See [redacted]Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Hi [redacted],Thank you for your response.It sounds as though you don't accept our explanation of the recommendation software, but we can only stand by our previous statements. Yelp's recommendation software is an automated algorithm that attempts to weed out less reliable reviews while showcasing more reliable ones. This means that when reviews are posted to your listing, not all of them will make the cut. We acknowledge that even some legitimate reviews will not be recommended, but we still believe that the software as a whole makes our site more trustworthy and useful to consumers.As indicated in our prior response, the recommendation software is automated to help avoid the potential for human bias inherent in individual decision-making: we cannot reverse the software’s decisions, either to suppress an active review or to restore one that isn’t recommended. But once again, the system is not static -- reviews may come and go as the recommendation software picks up new information.We do understand the recommendation software can be frustrating at times, and your feedback is appreciated. When it comes down to it, all review sites face the same challenge: how to identify fake reviews among the many millions of legitimate reviews. It's no easy task, and there is always room for improvement. We hope to be able to continually improve on this issue.We also want to clarify that actions taken by our automated recommendation software are separate from the Yelp Support team's evaluation of reviews against our Content Guidelines.Please be assured that we've evaluated the content of [redacted] review and are allowing the user to stand behind their review.While we share your concern about the possibility of a defamatory review on our site, we don't adjudicate disputes between businesses and their reviewers. Congress acknowledged this quandary by passing legislation that provides statutory immunity to online service providers such as Yelp for the content of third-party posts. See 47 U.S.C. §230. The case law is legion and unanimous in support of online service providers because of concerns that they would otherwise be forced to remove third party posts every time someone raised issue with their contents. S[redacted]That said, we will revisit your request if you provide to us a final judicial determination that the contents of a review are defamatory and will, at our discretion, take appropriate action with respect to the review and the user responsible for the review.We encourage you to contact the reviewer directly using the private messaging function on our site in order to constructively address your concerns.  We do not recommend that you engage in anything other than a well-meaning dialog with the reviewer in order to sort out any misunderstandings.Finally, 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:
Your business was not open on Saturday July 1st or Sunday July 2nd.
Sincerely,
[redacted]

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/12/22) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your business pages.
You asked that the name on your business pages be updated to [redacted] Our moderators need...

to be able to independently verify each name change that comes in, and we want Yelp business pages to be simple, accurate, and generally reflective of the way consumers recognize a business. Not all updates are valid or fit our style guidelines, so we have to carefully evaluate each one and look for independent confirmation before we can approve the change. In this case, we have updated the business name on your Yelp pages to "[redacted]" so that the name falls within our current standards.
Regards,
[redacted]
Yelp Inc.