Restaurant owners feeling fleeced by online review sites
By Timothy Sandoval, Sacramento Bee
Restaurant owner Sonny Mayugba was given an offer he almost could not refuse two weeks ago.
Not by a local gangster, but by a user of a popular online review site, Yelp.com.
Mayugba said the user threatened to blast the Red Rabbit Kitchen and Bar at 2718 J St., which Mayugba co-owns, on Yelp because he believed he and his party got food poisoning from their meals.
Mayugba said it was impossible to prove whether the man got food poisoning from the restaurant but offered to give him a $60 gift card to a restaurant of his choice. The man said he deserved $100. If the restaurant did not pay up, he said he would write a bad Yelp review and report him to health authorities.
Is what happened to the Red Rabbit Kitchen an isolated case? Or has the growth in popularity of restaurant review websites – which allow anyone to write and rate restaurants from one to five stars – created a new way for some people to get preferential treatment.
Restaurant owners say online websites have changed consumer behavior as many people rely more on citizen reviews than on reviews of professional critics or advertisements. Yelp had a monthly average of more than 71 million unique visitors and 27 million reviews worldwide this year from January to the end of March, the company said.
That’s extortion. The owner should have made a formal written complaint to the Police.
Yelp is lacking in integrity most of the time, especially with the “hung-over” reviewers South Lake Tahoe often produces, which makes for wonderful objective reviews.
it seems some people from san francisco can do things better than business owners in the food industry.most of them have no clue what they are talking about, but they have their right. in most cases a good business will stand the test of time, it is just the arrogance of these people and being so degrading in their reviews that amazesme.
Yelp can cut both ways. You can usually see a pattern where there are a vast majority of good responses, then a few that crater. Pretty obvious to me the ones that
are to be dismissed-
Yelp does have an ‘owner’s response’ page section that may mitigate kook responses-
Sounds like extortion, but one bad review on Yelp shouldn’t hurt a good restaurant. The restaurant should respond to the bad review in a positive manner, and note all of the other positive reviews from others. Viewers can click on the bad reviewer’s name and see if he has a pattern of being negative. I pay more attention to positive reviews and use yelp to see which dishes people enjoy the most at any given restaurant.
First let me say, the customer in this article is just scamming the system, and the owner should try to document/record the interaction, and contact the authorities, as well as Yelp.
Yelp helps good businesses shine, and protects consumers from bad experiences. One does need to learn how to interpret the reviews.
The business type that I believe Yelp really hurts, is the one that does not rely on repeat business, you get every sucker at least once, and that is your business model, they know the people will never come back again, and they don’t care.
It can be hard to accept a rating system, as I imagine I would like to be perfect in everyone’s eyes, but one has to accept that some people are going to feel differently e.g. not everyone loves chocolate ice cream, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the chocolate ice cream because a few didn’t like it, but what if they were serving road kill ice cream, and 80% of the reviews didn’t like it? Would you want to give it a try?
Maybe not the best example, but the point I’m trying to get across is, I’m not going to avoid a place of business if they have 3 stars and a few scathing reviews. I will flock to businesses with 4-5 stars and glowing reviews more often, and will avoid like the plague, places that have a majority of 1’s, wouldn’t you?
The other telling signs for me is, if a business starts trying to submit their own reviews, under the guise of being patrons, so obvious, and then makes them look even worse. Instead try to look at what went wrong, and how you can improve your customers experience. There will be the occasional never satisfied patron review, but overall your trend will be good, and other customers will recognize that ;)
There are so many choices of where to conduct business nowadays, and any help we can get in making a good choice is a great help.
The main problem with YELP is the fact that they filter response reviews if the person has not been a regular Yelp user. It is not just the restaurant business that is harmed by yelp any business can be bad yelped wether or not the client or patron even visited the business! If my neighbor was upset at my dog barking they could bad rap my business to get back at me. My business had the good side of yelp foe quite some time until one outrageous ranting client from out of the area criticized every aspect of my business after an hour and a half appointment. This rant as well as a few others took place over two years ago. In all cases the dissapointed client was contacted and an apology was offered because they did not have their expectations met. I asked them to please remove the yelp but to this day they still exist! The person from my business involved have been long gone yet people see the reviews. As I said we have over 56 filtered reviews there that people have to work to find and of course they are not all five star but most are quite favorable.
I contacted and spoke to YELP representitives and all I got was the run around about how they do business. I was contacted a few times about advertising on yelp which I laughed out loud and said while I accept criticism ther should be some time limit for outdated reviews and their filter process is bad.
Yelp is indeed a double edged sword and I cant wait for them to go away!