Wait, what? They opened an establishment in Richmond and theyāre worried about Yelp?
It needs the help?
Click through to read the email they sent in reply to one of Yelpās threats. Genius.
yelp is the new BBB. same tactics. go, Botto Bistro!
Brilliant.
āOne star means first place, guys!ā
I thought Yelp users had already made Yelp unreliable.
Yelp isnāt even reliable enough to ascertain a venueās street address, let alone whether or not they are worth visiting. Yelpers themselves are a vapid bunch, reading the āreviewsā is almost as bad as reading the comments on YouTube.
Too late!
On one hand I cheer these guys for fighting back against yelpās aggressive tactics. Because seriously, fuck the shakedown.
On the other, yelp is an amazing tool while traveling. Iāve found some very good restaurants in other cities that I literally would never have had a chance to experience without their tool or a tool like it. Yes the reviews are shit and yes the app pushes advertisements way too hard, but something like it definitely needs to exist because I do love to eat different things, and I need something to point me at the good spots.
I canāt help but think these are the same types of people that, once they get negative karma attached to their forum accounts, decide to start a race to the bottom.
OK, first off, Richmond has a gritty side but is otherwise awesome and up and coming. Donāt take my word for it: google the term āRichmond Rennaissanceā and read about all the cool stuff happening here. Gayle Maclaughlin is our kick-ass Green Party mayor that is not afraid of big banks and oil companies. Chris Magnus is arguably the best police chief in the Bay Area, if not the country.
All that said, Iāve been to Botto Bistro and itās just not very good. If youāre in Richmond and want Italian, go to Salute. Youāll get better food and youāll be doing business with genuinely nice people.
In spite of my earlier comment (which was merely knee-jerk sarcasm) I can see the value of Yelp, or at least a site like it. If I donāt know anyone personally who can vouch for a restaurant itās nice to have some kind of guide. But I prefer to look for the local alt-weekly, if oneās available.
Yelpās reliability depends on where you are. When we were visiting Western Montana, it was clear that almost all of the online reviews were written either by people associated with the restaurant (ridiculous praise with different reviewers repeating the same odd phrasing), or competitors (trashing the place so blatantly that you wonder why it hasnāt been shut down).
Isnāt this kind of like that really annoying kid in middle school who said, āI donāt want any friends anyway! You guys donāt deserve to be my friends!ā
Iāve had similar experiences with Foursquare. In Costa Rica, Google had no useful information at all, but Foursquare had checkins and tips from locals that led us to some great food. And as far as I know, Foursquare doesnāt try to extort money from restaurantsā¦
Yelp really needs to improve their customer service and fire their salespersons.
That said, people raging against the company need to get better at managing their social media profiles. When Yelp falls, the next large company that accepts user-submitted content is going to be the new focus of hate.
Iāve never used Yelp. My best friend swears by it, and has posted a lot of reviews about the various restaurants in Los Angeles that he dines at. On the other hand one of my good friends who was a waitress at a restaurant got work shifts stripped from her for a week because a young couple wrote up a bad review of her service even though she hadnāt been their server. She ended up quitting the job because of it.
Those are the only two people I know that have ever used Yelp or have an issue with it. Itās like anything on the internet: Donāt Trust, and for damn sure verify.
So do you plan to give them a 5-star review to disrupt their plan?
Remember that Yelp Now Has Court Permission to Change Business Ratings for Money.
Yelp has become the local mafia. āThatās a nice little place youāve got there. Hate to see anythingā¦ āhappenā to itās ratingsā¦ā
You cannot by any means trust a Yelp rating. Companies that refuse to pay for āadvertisingā on Yelp see negative reviews flood in. Those reviews start disappearing once they pay up.
What I would love is a way for a competitor to come in and be transparent enough to be trusted by everyone. But, itās a very tricky situation. Itās not as simple as a basic database of reviews ā Yelp does need to have a system to prevent other people (i.e. other than itself) from gaming the system with fake reviews. And that system necessitates removing some reviews, some of which may be valid.
I donāt know what the answer is. An open source system with a completely transparent log of all database transactions, including all review deletions? I donāt see that working.
On the other other hand, we would trust Yelp more if it didnāt have an ongoing history of slimy actions. So probably the answer is just ādonāt be slimy.ā
