Yelp.com

Hi [redacted]Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your business page for [redacted].We understand that you may be frustrated with our decision to remove some of your previous public comments to [redacted] review of your...

business, but our position remains the same, as it appears you posted the street and partial address where this individual resides. It looks like you have since posted another public comment to this review, and that it has been left up.With regards to your comment, "she told me, 'If you advertise with us, the negative reviews would go away!'", 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 [redacted]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.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 review. It looks like you are referring to the review by [redacted]., as you recently reported this review. To clarify, [redacted].'s...

previous review was removed by our moderators because it violated our Terms of Service, but they weren't prohibited from posting a new review. In these situations, we allow reviewers to post an edited review, and will evaluate that review on its own merits if necessary.With that in mind, we've looked at [redacted].'s new review of [redacted], and have elected to leave it up. If a review appears to reflect a user's personal experience and opinions, it is our policy to let the user stand behind his or her review.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 Halo-TLC. We've gone ahead and updated the category to what appears to be the appropriate category for your business: [redacted]We...

generally don't remove business pages unless the business appears to fall outside our eligibility guidelines, which does not appear to be the case here. From publicly available sources , your business appears to be in operation. For more information about our stance on removing business information, see: [redacted]We encourage you to take advantage of the features available to you on your Business Account. To learn more, check out [redacted]If you think there is additional information that would be helpful to assess this situation, please let us know. Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 6, 2015/11/24) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your business pages for [redacted] and [redacted]
You expressed concern with some reviews. It looks like you may be referring to the...

reviews by [redacted] C and [redacted] G, as you've previously reported these reviews. We have taken a second look at these reviews but, after careful consideration, we reached the same conclusion as before and are unable to remove the reviews. Additionally, we have carefully considered your concerns that one of the reviewers may have a conflict of interest, but we are still unable to confirm the conflict using the information we have in our systems. 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.
You also asked for your businesses to be removed from Yelp, but we actually don't remove business listing 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.
We also want to address your comment, "They participate in unfair and shady practices involving removing 5 star reviews when you do not agree to advertise with them." 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 http://www.yelp.com/advertiser_faq and http://officialblog.yelp.com/2013/05/no-yelp-doesnt-extort-small-businesses-see-...⇄ to learn more.
With regard to your concerns 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: http://www.yelp-support.com/Recommended_Reviews?l=en_US
Regards,
[redacted]
Yelp Inc.
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 8, 2015/12/08) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
It is understood that Yelp as a business cannot distinguish between a false competitor or ex employee review. That is unfortunate and has caused lots of grief for hard working business owners. However, false information being posted on a business yelp page violates TOS and Content Guidelines. We have NEVER been contacted by Yelp regarding the "[redacted] G" review. [redacted] G makes multiple false statements regarding our Ventnor location while she writes her review referring to our Northfield location. A yelp user with an ax to grind has posted information that will ensure that we will lose revenue. Posting that a "Juice Bar" does not produce "Fresh Juice" when we do in fact produce "Fresh Juice" is not within the terms of service and is a violation. We are a Juice Bar. For a person to post that we do not produce fresh juice at our Ventnor store is absurd and is sure to hurt our bottom line. We create jobs and have employees who depend on us to feed their families. Why has this review not been removed or at the very least, moved to the appropriate page? We have a yelp page for our Northfield store which is a "grab and go" location. We are requesting your help in removing this review based on its multiple violations or at the least, moving it to the appropriate store. Our Ventnor store is a FULL SERVICE location an should not be represented as otherwise. We will lose business when people wrongly accuse of not producing the product we advertise. You yourself can see that we advertise "Fresh Juice" and we obviously have produced such based on the other reviews we have. Why can someone now go on and state that our Ventnor store does not produce fresh juice? Why did we even claim the Northfield business if Yelp is going to just allow anyone to post false and inappropriate information on our Ventnor store? I previously had a reviewer write a review for our Northfield store that ended up on our Ventnor Yelp page. Yelp agreed to remove this review because they admitted that the review was for the wrong store. This prompted us to claim the Northfield page. Additionally, per Yelps guidelines, reviews should be based off of a "personal experience". The reviewer herself, "[redacted] G" states that she is not reviewing the business based off of "personal experience". I urge Yelp to please review [redacted] G's review for the wrong store and to please either delete it due to the violations I listed above or to please at least move it to the appropriate store so that our mother store, Ventnor, is not harmed by this review which states false information. We have already received multiple phone calls asking us if we make juice on site due to the false information in this review. Please help us rectify this situation and bring it to a close.
Final Business Response /* (4000, 10, 2015/12/21) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for your response.
We wanted to let you know that [redacted] G's review has been moved to the Northfield location.
Regards,
[redacted]
Yelp Inc.

Hi [redacted], Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding the reservation you made at [redacted] using Yelp SeatMe.We've forwarded your concerns to our Yelp SeatMe team. A manager, [redacted], has let us know that he would reach out to...

you to explain the following, so please forgive any repetition. While Yelp SeatMe provides the software and technology to facilitate making reservations, please note that the charges and refunds for cancellations are at the discretion of the individual restaurant. We suggest you contact the restaurant directly to request a refund. We also wanted to let you know that [redacted] has reached out to the restaurant on your behalf. Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because: Yelp is refusing to honor their own protocol.  I also have a limousine business for the past 14 years.  It is mind boggling that a business as such would not have any reviews by its customers; in fact I had several(~a dozen or so) 5-star reviews.  This CORRUPT RACIST FASCIST ZIONIST company removed and masked ALL my reviews citing that they were mostly single review customers!  Well, then wake up and smell the roses.
 
I WILL launch these complaints against this RACIST corp. until someone with [redacted] would go after them and sue the f... of them!Sincerely,[redacted]

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because:  After the blatant disregard for someone else's life that was shown toward me on that day I can assure you I would never do business with this company, as well as any family or close friends.  I am sure the owner of said business would consider that a detriment to his business.  Instead of allowing the owner to right the wrong which would prompt a deleted review or at least a positive update then we will just have to settle as disgruntled non-potential customers.  I read your content guidelines and a 'consumer firsthand experience' by definition does require an actual PURCHASE of goods or services.  So your example of someone calling for a price is not valid for a review by your own guidelines.  In result, your guidelines in whole are invalid.  Or like previously stated, you can treat each business fairly and remove those from my business that did not involve a purchase. Sincerely,[redacted]

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because:
they deliberately didn't tell me that calls from solicitors would affect my costs so much, getting one or two a day then seeing my balance increase was very stressful. 
I don't think I should have to pay anything, as had I been informed I wouldn't have signed up.
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]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 [redacted]f 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: [redacted]Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Hi [redacted],Thank you for your response. We're sorry to hear there may have been a miscommunication. If you have any additional information about this call, such as the phone number you called from, and the time and date of the call, please let us know so that we can look into this further.We also want to clarify that we don't send out emails to our advertisers when their promotional credit is about to be used up. However, we sometimes provide a notification if a business has yet to redeem a promotional credit and the expiration date is approaching. Additionally, we want to reiterate that your advertising program was a self-serve program, which means that business owners select their monthly budget and can turn off their ads at any time through their Yelp for Business Owners Account. As advertising services were delivered in accordance with the Terms you agreed to, we will not be able to offer you a refund. Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Hi Bryan,Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your advertising program for Just Pondering.We appreciate your feedback and have forwarded your message to the appropriate parties. A manager, Ry, reached out and spoke with you today, March 30,...

2018, and we are writing off the outstanding balance of $373.32.We hope you will continue to take advantage of the free features on your Yelp for Business Owners Account to engage with the Yelp community. With your account, you can post information about your business, upload photos, respond to reviewers, and more. We provide guidance for business owners at[redacted]Regards,HelenYelp Inc.

Hi Alana,Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns. It appears your complaint is regarding the business page for The Shirtery, but if that is not the case, please feel free to send us a link to the business page you are referring to.We first want to address...

your comment, "According to a phone call that I made, were I to spend money in advertising, they would not only remove their competitors from a listing which I did not authorize to have in the first place, and that by spending money on advertising I would get more positive reviews." To clarify, Yelp offers programs that will remove competitor ads from your Yelp business page. However, Yelp treats advertisers and non-advertisers exactly alike with respect to reviews. Advertising only buys ads and never higher ratings, removal of negative reviews or promotion of positive reviews.You'll find plenty of Yelp advertisers with negative reviews, and plenty of non-advertisers with five-star ratings across the board. Furthermore, there is zero relationship between the timing of when a review gets recommended and when a business decides to--or declines to--advertise. Reviews can be recommended or not recommended days, weeks, or even months after they were first posted, and a Yelp sales representative doesn't have any influence over when that might happen.Pease note that our recommendation software recommends both positive and negative reviews in an effort to show the most helpful and reliable reviews to our users. That said, Yelpers write more positive reviews than negative reviews, so it isn’t necessarily surprising that Yelp’s recommendation software might impact more positive reviews. We hope you’ll take the time to watch our video about the Recommendation Software: [redacted] and read more about common misconceptions here: [redacted]You also expressed concern with some negative reviews. If you come across content that you feel may violate Yelp's Content Guidelines [redacted]), please let our moderators know by reporting it. 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).If you have reported a review, received an email from us about our decision to leave it up, and would like us to take a second look, you can submit a new inquiry by providing the case number (this is provided in our previously emailed response to the content you reported) here:[redacted]You also 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.Regards,HelenYelp Inc.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/05/04) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your business page for [redacted] & [redacted]
You expressed concern with the tip posted by [redacted] S. We wanted to let you know...

we've removed this Tip because it falls outside our Content Guidelines.
You also expressed concern that you "left 3 messages with the account manager and emailed the client services requesting information on it's status" but "have not been contacted back from either." Please note that content moderation is handled by the Yelp Support team, and not by our Account Management or Client Services teams. It does not appear that you flagged [redacted] S's profile, but for future reference you can find information about how to flag a user account in our Support Center: http://www.yelp-support.com/article/How-do-I-flag-a-user-account?l=en_US
If you have questions or concerns in the future, we encourage you to visit our Support Center (http://www.yelp-support.com/). We've tried to include detailed answers to the questions we most frequently receive in our Support Center, but there may be situations you encounter where you'll need to contact our Support team for assistance. For these specific situations, there are articles in the Support Center that include submission forms to inquire about the issue.
Regards,
[redacted]
Yelp Inc.

Hi [redacted],Thank you for your response.While we are sorry that you were not satisfied with your advertising program, we want to be clear that results are not guaranteed.When advertising with a Cost Per Click program, you were electing to pay every time a user clicked on your ad impression. You were also paying for an enhanced profile, which included features such as competitor ad removal and a photo slideshow. Yelp delivered these advertising services in accordance with the advertising agreement you signed, therefore we will not be able to offer you a refund. Thank you for understanding.Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because: there is no resolution. I did not authorize these charges! I do not have a business and have not for some time. I was not aware of this bait and switch tactic. I believed when the credit was exhausted the campaign would end. I have no idea how a budget was determined or anything about what your talking about. Explaining how you autobill and supertiously steal money from people need not be detailed to me. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Thishas happened to. If you are ordering a service to customers or just trying to bill? I need a full refund or I will file a lawsuit. Sincerely,Ericka[redacted]

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/07/30) */
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.
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. Even though it inevitably affects legitimate reviews from time to time and misses some fake ones, too, it helps protect the integrity of the site both for consumers (who will be less likely to be led astray by bogus reviews) and business owners (who will spend less time worrying about whether their competitors are writing negative reviews about them).
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_Reviews?l=en_US
Finally, you asked for your business to be removed from Yelp, but we actually don't remove business listing 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.

Hi [redacted],Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your business page for [redacted] on Yelp.You expressed concern that the edits you have been submitting on your business page have not been accepted. Our moderators need to be able to...

independently verify each requested change that comes in. 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've rejected your request to mark the page as temporarily closed and to remove the phone number. Please note that the temporary closure feature is intended for businesses that close seasonally or for a short period of time, rather than for businesses that are open but not accepting new clients. Additionally, 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.That being said, you might consider updating the From The Business section of your page to indicate that you are not currently accepting new clients. You can access your account by visiting [redacted]Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.

Complaint: [redacted]I am rejecting this response because: pictures are not removed from Yelp database. If you google my business name. My photos appear via yelp under google images. Other website webmasters removed my pictures.... Only yelp refuse to remove my photos. Sincerely,[redacted]

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2015/10/07) */
Hi [redacted],
Thank you for writing. We are glad to have this opportunity to address your concerns regarding your business page for [redacted] of [redacted].
We've gone ahead and marked [redacted] of [redacted] as closed,...

and while we don't remove business pages in cases like this, closed businesses eventually stop appearing in search results over time.
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 appreciate your feedback, and have forwarded your message to the appropriate parties. It looks like you spoke with an account manager, [redacted], regarding your...

concerns on June 20, 2016. As you may recall, 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 the new phone number you submitted was rejected because we could not verify the new information. Your advertising program is currently set to cancel at the end of your initial term. If you have further questions or concerns, you can reach out to your account management team directly at the email address and phone number listed under the Billing section of your Business Account [redacted]Regards,[redacted]Yelp Inc.