Alert – Why You Should Never Trust a Yelp Review

by Bill Wilson, CEO, Peoples Products, Inc.

When you think of YELP, you probably relate it to something having to do with restaurants. It’s true, that’s how they got their start. But today there is much wrong with Yelp and I’d like to explain.

Yelp uses a very complicated algorithm. It’s nearly universally understood to be highly inaccurate in discerning whether a review is legitimate or fake. Sometimes, competitors weaponize review sites, such as Yelp in order to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. A 1-star review certainly is attention-getting, but is it accurate? What if I were to tell you that the majority of a company’s reviews are stashed in a small link called – not recommended reviews on the Yelp site, but the main review page is invariably filled with fake reviews, some that have even been purported to have come from Yelp employees themselves? If you have the slightest doubt to these claims, I suggest you watch the documentary. Billion Dollar Bully.

This documentary is a scary look at what goes on behind the scenes of this questionable review site. If you take the time to watch it, you will see stories of how Yelp employees themselves inflict retribution on the companies who pull their advertising from Yelp.

In the case of Peoples Products / HR40 windows, Yelp’s main review page is filled with people posing as customers who we’ve never even met. Many of whom come from states we do not do business in. I’m sure you’re thinking – we should call Yelp and get it straightened out. When we do, they literally hang up on us, laughing all the while. It’s hard to believe that Yelp is still in business, given these legitimate claims of abuse, but they stand by their algorithm and that is that.

Talk to a number of companies and you’ll hear the same story. It’s fairly broad and universally applied. For some reason, Yelp favors a small few companies, and disparages the rest.

Google the term- Yelp rip off, or Yelp fraud and you’ll see endless links that continue telling the same story.

Our advice is to use reliable sources when considering whether or not to see a company. The Better Business Bureau and Angi are but two good sources that fairly depict the true nature of consumer experiences. Google is good, although I still don’t understand why they removed over 50 legitimate reviews from our site, which lowered our overall rating. When we called about that, it became apparent that they report to no one. Claiming they would look into it, they never did.

I hope this is somewhat helpful to you because you want honest reviews that you can trust. It’s the very first step to achieving long-term satisfaction in any product you choose to purchase.

This is a link to the full movie, Billion Dollar Bully from Youtube.com