When asked if any of his clients are using Yelp currently, Brant said none are, none felt it was cost effective, and the one restaurateur who tried advertising with Yelp recently found it so ineffective they were willing to pay the early termination penalty to get out of their contract with Yelp.īrant explained, “Their advertising rates, I would call them confiscatory. 80 percent of the restaurant guys that I talk to have that opinion.” They think that Yelp changes the position of reviews, and doesn’t feature good reviews, and instead features bad reviews if restaurants aren’t advertising with them. Yelp has a really serious reputation problem among the independents. “They hate it because they don’t trust Yelp. He agrees with Milliken that Yelp has a terrible reputation among the independent restaurants that comprise his clientele. Rod Brant, host of the “What’s Working Now” podcast about restaurant marketing, crafts marketing plans for independent restaurants throughout the Midwest.
“Over and over, I heard, ‘I declined to advertise, within a few days my good reviews disappeared, my negative reviews came to fore.’” To Milliken, Yelp’s tactics are not excesses by a few over-zealous sales associates, but institutionalized bullying that follows the same pattern all across the country. She declined to share the specific refutations which she says are in her documentary, possibly because she didn’t want to give out spoilers before release, but she did urge The Technoskeptic to read the language of the Ninth Circuit court ruling and draw our own conclusions. The first-time filmmaker says Billion Dollar Bully will refute Yelp’s claims that the lack of an active FTC investigation and dismissal of the class-action suit means Yelp has clean hands. “Our campaign met 150% of its funding goals within two weeks.” Asked who donated the money to fund the film, Billion Dollar Bully, Milliken replied, “Small business owners.” “But as I looked into it,” she told The Technoskeptic, “I realized it was a complete smoke screen.” Finding story after story of small businesses being abused by Yelp, Milliken started a Kickstarter campaign to make a documentary. At first, she found Yelp’s explanations credible. When Kaylie Milliken heard from her doctor that Yelp was pressuring the doctor to buy Yelp ads, she decided to investigate. “įor readers not versed in legalese, the panel essentially said “We’re not saying businesses aren’t being extorted, but there isn’t currently a law that says someone has a right NOT to be extorted.” That’s hardly a vindication of Yelp’s business practices.ĭespite the dismissal of the class-action suit, Yelp still faces a legion of small business owners hungering for it’s demise.Ī Filmmaker Takes On the “Billion Dollar Bully” According to the summary of the court’s opinion, “The panel held that the business owners failed to state a claim for extortionate, and therefore unlawful, business practices in violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law because, under the Hobbs Act and California law, unless a person has a pre-existing right to be free of the threatened economic harm, threatening economic harm to induce a person to pay for a legitimate service is not extortion. What they’ve not been so quick to point out is exactly why it was dismissed. Yelp, was dismissed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Yelp’s PR has been quick to tout that the FTC closed the investigation without taking action, and that the class action, Levitt v. Yelp has been under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, and also faced a class-action lawsuit. “Nice little business ya got here…be a shame if something happened to it.”Īccording to many small businesses, they are being extorted either they use Yelp’s advertising services, or face reputational ruin that will force their businesses to close. Yet more and more small business owners loathe Yelp, and consider it a technologically-advanced version of the time-tested protection racket. The customers for Yelp’s advertising services are the businesses getting reviewed on Yelp. Yelp, the San Francisco-based tech giant that has grown into a $3.4 billion company on the strength of its business-review service, has a little problem.
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