Yelp, Yelp Inc, Yelp.com Yelp extortion San Fransisco California

Warning to all customers and yelpers:

Yelp has closed our business account because we refuse to advertise with them.  They have tried repeatedly and consistently to force our company to advertise with them. after refusing to advertise with yelp, they have "filtered" all of our positive reviews and even deleted some of our positive reviews by our customers, only to showcase any 1,2,3 star rating.  Reviews by ki. k and Monique. S are fake reviews by fake customers and, in our opinion, could work for yelp.

Please be advised that at least 1/3 of reviews on yelp are fake. Yelp keeps control of a business’s star ratings in order to extort money from businesses with promises of getting rid of, or filtering out any negative reviews, and only showcasing positive reviews, most of which are fake reviews by the company or by yelp team members.  you will notice that most, if not all, companies that advertise on yelp have a 4 or 5 star rating, however, if you look under their "not recommended reviews" they have a lot of negative reviews, or the negative reviews have been deleted by yelp. 

If you were a business that wanted to advertise on yelp, you would not want to showcase a 1 or 2 star rating.  Yelp is a business, and must make an income. Their income is solely from advertising dollars, thus, if a business has a poor rating, they will not want to advertise with yelp, so yelp helps the business by taking their money and filtering out any negative reviews.  as well, if a business has a 4-5 star rating without advertising on their business on yelp, yelp will extort money from that company by filtering out all of their positive reviews, showcasing any negative reviews, and in our opinion, going so far as to write fake negative reviews to hurt the business into advertising with yelp.

They have now closed our business account so that we are not able to leave any feedback on any reviews, and we have no control over our business on yelp.  Yelp again has full control of our business by controlling the number of stars we have, number of positive or negative reviews we have, and not allowing us to defend our business from these fake negative reviews.

Please note that yelp has a rating of 2.5 stars on its own review site (please find "yelp" near "San Francisco" and you will see that most of their negative reviews are from business owners who are having the same issue as our business, yelp trying to extort advertising dollars from the business. they have a 2.5 rating, however, if you look at all the reviews that yelp itself has filtered, they would be at a 1 star. please read these reviews from other business owners being extorted by yelp for advertising dollars.  the complaints are also from yelp reviewers who are trying to leave positive and negative reviews on businesses, but don't understand why their reviews are being filtered for no reason other than that business has spent advertising dollars to have those negative reviews removed, or the business has not opted to spend their money or submit themselves to yelps extortion practices, so their positive reviews are being filtered.

i have asked yelp to reinstate our business account so that we can face our accusers and defend our business, however, because our answers to their reviews contains comments about yelp and their faulty, fake "filtering" system, they have now banned us from yelp, however, have kept our business active on yelp in order to hurt our business.

Please help us, and thousands and thousands of other businesses who have experienced yelps extortion practices by writing to yelp, and by joining the following websites:

https://www.facebook.com/wehateyelp

https://www.facebook.com/pages/yelp-sucks-businesses-fight-back/263402807082326

https://www.facebook.com/yelpextortion

Please google "yelp extortion" and you will see hundreds of articles on yelp extortion practices.  There are even articles from past yelp employees who have admitted to writing fake negative reviews on businesses to teach them a lesson or for fun.

We have opened a case with the BBB, however, as you can see by googling "yelp BBB" most cases are unresolved, and all have the same generic comments by yelp.  The businesses are all complaining about fake reviews and extortion.  Yelp does not have any phone numbers or emails available for business to contact a yelp representative, except if you want to advertise with them.  We have also opened a case with the FTC and usa.gov to file consumer complaints against yelp.