This morning, news broke that Yelp – a popular consumer review site based in San Francisco – is the target of a class action lawsuit claiming that the company engaged in unfair business practices that prosecutors have described as “high-tech extortion.”
The suit, filed on behalf of an animal hospital in Long Beach, California, alleges that Yelp salespeople offer businesses the opportunity to remove or hide negative reviews in exchange for paid advertising on the site. You can read more about the suit on Inc.com, TechCrunch, and TechMeme.
Allegations such as these tend to cast a shadow of distrust across the concept of review sites as a whole. People start wondering: Can the ratings published in these sources be trusted? Or can businesses simply pay to game the system?
Regardless of the validity of the claim in the Yelp class action, and the eventual outcome of the case, we at ChoiceVendor would like to reassure members and visitors that we do not charge vendors for listing their business on our site or accept payment for higher placement in our rankings. We exist to provide real-world client reviews of B2B service providers, and our revenue model is based on eventually charging members a subscription fee for certain features.
If you have any questions about ChoiceVendor’s policies, please refer to our terms of service, or send an email directly to me: yanda@choicevendor.com.
Sincerely,
Yan-David Erlich
CEO, ChoiceVendor
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I suggest you go to http://www.yelpscam.com and see all the story, along with comments of 1000 people nationwide with the same complaint. Also you will find links to the law suit, request for governmental agencies to investigate, TV, Newspapers and Magazine stories. The sales script that their sales people use is fine, but when you say “no” , and since they are young kids hired on a comission bases working as sales people, they say what is needed to get the sale.
I love your blog! But why do I like it? You are succinct and just gets to hit the nail on the head. You are definitely a person who knows the subject matter you are commenting about and commits sufficient time and research before making the posts on the blog.
Outstanding information. Added to Facebook!