Yelp Review Vigilante – Don’t Mess With Him!

by Eric

Many of us rely on Yelp reviews to make decisions on where we go for dinner, or what restaurants we should try and check out when we are traveling to a new city. For example, I have used Yelp’s Top 100 list on a number of occasions in order to see what restaurants I may want to travel to dine at.

a man sitting on a bench outside a restaurant

Yelp has been troubled by falsified reviews, and allegations that they allowed businesses to manipulate reviews upon payment.  For many small business owners, this is a real concern.  Mark Nery operates a restaurant in Denver, Colorado called Onefold.  Over the past year, Nery has had extensive experiences with customers who have left some nasty (and possibly inaccurate) reviews of his restaurant.  As you know, Yelp has a business-reply feature. His most recent tirade against a customer got the attention of Eater Denver.

1star

On March 4, 2016, a Yelp reviewer (Michael U.) wrote a 1-star review of Onefold and absolutely ripped into the almond croissant for having a “sopping-wet layer” and the congee for its “oily orange halo.” He even went so far as to say that the meal was “perhaps my most hilariously bad dining experience of all time.”

response

Obviously, Nery did not appreciate the review or think it was accurate.  His response?  It gets intense!

To be fair I would like to review your visit as well, I won’t make it as long and boring as yours. Creepy guy walks in, creeps out workers and customers. Asked for wifi password ducked behind computer, other customer walked up complained that you may be watching PORN confronted you and verified told you to turn off, you tell me how important of a food critic you are and write a bad review after you demolished all of the food I gave you.

What are your thoughts on using Yelp, and when businesses respond?

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3 comments

NB March 9, 2016 - 7:33 am

I run a small business and have found most of the reviews on Yelp have been fine – some not so good ones where we have probably let something slip, but overall very good ones. However, we have had two very bad reviews which obviously have come from a local competitor – reviews which bear no relation to reality. I take the view that it’s not worth responding to these because responses invariably sound defensive.

My other grip is with so many reviewers who don’t know how stars work – they either give five stars or one star – the latter is so often awarded because of one minor thing, whereas in reality their review should be 3 or 4 stars.

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Eric March 9, 2016 - 7:35 am

Have you notified Yelp of these inaccurate reviews?

I very much dislike the use of negative reviews as a way of pulling business from a competitor. It is a sleazy practice. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to catch if I am a consumer looking for a restaurant.

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Captain Obvious March 9, 2016 - 1:11 pm

Yelp is borderline useless. So many reviews on Yelp are written so poorly that it is infuriating. It is my opinion that if a person can’t construct a coherent sentence, then I have no interest in what they have to say, and certainly won’t use their opinion when deciding to use my time and money to visit a restaurant. Also, some reviews on Yelp are so short and offer no details it makes it completely worthless. If you want to know if a place is good, use TripAdvisor. TP gives accurate and coherent reviews of the establishments on its site.

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