Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Yelp, Yelp, Yelp. When will you GET it????

So, I got another email from Yelp today. It read:

Hi Maryling,

Some of your reviews were flagged by the Yelp community, and our Customer Service team has determined that they fall outside our review guidelines (http://www.yelp.com/faq#great_review), specifically as it relates to conflicts of interest. We appreciate that you've disclosed that you own a spa when reviewing other businesses in that category, but in our opinion we believe this presents a conflict of interest and so we need to remove these reviews.

In the future, please remember that your reviews should be unbiased and objective.
If there's any hint of a conflict, please don't post the review. We hope you will
continue to provide great reviews, while keeping in mind our Review Guidelines. See
you on Yelp!

Regards,
Cecilia
Yelp User Support
San Francisco, California

Oh my goodness, all I've got to say is that they have their head further up their collective ass than I thought. Okay, so here are the facts:

1. I had legitimately been to ALL of the day spas or spas that I reviewed as a customer. I handed them my very own precious money.
2. I had great experiences at ALL of the day spas I reviewed, and I posted 4- or 5-star reviews about each one. If I didn't have a great experience, then I did not post a review.
3. For most of those reviews, I did not even own a spa when I had those experiences. So now I can't write about them?

It's okay to leave up a review from someone who's never been to your spa or just wants to write something evil about you because they have a vendetta against you, but it's not okay to preserve a review from a legitimate customer? What gives? And it's not okay for me to say GOOD things about spas that are now my competitors (simply because I bought a spa now, but did not back then)? HUH????????????????

I am scratching my head. Well, just another arrow in my quiver for why I just will never, ever support Yelp financially.

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