CHP http://www.californiahomepro.com Just another WordPress site Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:56:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Yelp’s ad pitch gets bad reviews from some Seattle-area business owners http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/yelps-ad-pitch-gets-bad-reviews-from-some-seattle-area-business-owners/ http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/yelps-ad-pitch-gets-bad-reviews-from-some-seattle-area-business-owners/#comments Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:17:32 +0000 cahomepro http://www.californiahomepro.com/?p=16999

Owners of some small businesses here say they’ve been pressured to Yelp when the consumer review site’s screening system displays disproportionately negative reviews.

By Johanna Somers

Seattle Times business reporter

Marcia Evans, owner of Jewel Hospitality, a Seattle catering business, is no fan of Yelp. "I hate them," she said recently.

Enlarge this photoJORDAN STEAD / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Marcia Evans, owner of Jewel Hospitality, a Seattle catering business, is no fan of Yelp. “I hate them,” she said recently.

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advertising

Some Seattle-area businesses say the consumer-review site Yelp isn’t exactly what it claims to be: “Real People. Real Reviews.” Instead, they say, Yelp manipulates how reviews appear to coerce businesses to advertise.

“If you buy ad space with them ($300 to $800 per month), this will help ‘control’ or eliminate negative reviews by reviewers of your business.” That’s the proposition Marcia Evans, owner of Jewel Hospitality, a Seattle catering company, described in a 2009 complaint to the Washington Attorney General’s Office. Asked recently about Yelp, Evans said, “I hate them.”

Stacy Oltman, the general manager of Hill’s Neighborhood Restaurant in Shoreline, said she got a call in June from a Yelp salesperson who said, “You have gotten a terrible review online. We would love to help you remove it.”

The number the salesperson gave her led Oltman to a Yelp call center where she got a pitch to advertise.

Stewart Patey, owner of Mattress City in Everett, and Kim Nguyen, owner of Hoa Nails and Spa in Redmond, have similar complaints: They say legitimate positive reviews on their Yelp pages disappeared recently because they did not agree to advertise with Yelp.

The San Francisco-based company says it doesn’t do business that way. Regarding the offer to remove or downplay a negative review, Darnell Holloway, Yelp’s manager of local business outreach, said, “Generally speaking that is not a sales tactic from our company.”

He insisted the company’s approach is straightforward: “Businesses can’t pay for favorable reviews, and our automated filter doesn’t penalize nonadvertisers.”

Yelp hosts about 30 million reviews — anyone can write what they think about a company and rate it from a low of one star to a high of five. However, the company uses an undisclosed algorithm to filter out about 20 percent of the reviews — with the goal, it says, of enforcing guidelines such as no hate speech, and eliminating fake reviews.

The workings of that filter system were part of a class-action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, that was dismissed in October and is now on appeal. The four firms that sued claimed Yelp “unlawfully manipulated the content of their business review pages in order to induce them to pay for advertising.”

Reviews that are filtered out can be seen only by clicking the light gray word “filtered” at the bottom of the Yelp page. The filtered reviews are also not calculated in businesses’ overall ratings.

Holloway said the filter is needed to prevent people from gaming the system and to enforce the site’s rules. Those include no threats or harassment, no negative reviews of competitors, and no reviews without firsthand experience.

Why it was dismissed

Lawrence Murray, an attorney for San Francisco-based Lawrence D Murray & Associates, which is handling the class-action lawsuit, said about eight other individual lawsuits have been filed as well. None has been filed in Washington state.

Federal Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco dismissed the suit in October after ruling the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate that Yelp was trying to extort advertising revenue from businesses, according to court documents.

The judge also said that Yelp was not liable for what third parties posted on its website, and was not liable for how it organized its content since it’s allowed to exercise “traditional editorial functions.”

Holloway said, “We are confident that the appeals court will affirm the district court’s decision that the claims lack merit.”

However, the judge’s ruling said it could be argued that businesses and the public are being harmed if Yelp is misrepresenting its posting criteria. If Yelp is manipulating ratings in favor of those who advertise and not disclosing this, Yelp would not be immune from claims of false advertising, the ruling said.

Record revenue

Yelp has about 78 million unique visitors a month and 990 employees. On Wednesday it reported record quarterly revenue of $32.7 million in the second quarter, 67 percent higher than a year ago, but it continues to lose money, with a quarterly net loss of $2 million.

The company’s shares jumped nearly 17 percent the next day as analysts enthused about Yelp expanding its presence in Europe and consumers’ growing use of its reviews on mobile phones.

But while Yelp is growing, Mattress City’s Patey said his business is suffering. “We are being sabotaged because we are not interested in paying $350 a month,” he said.

Patey said he had several months of positive reviews last summer, but a couple days after he rejected a Yelp salesperson’s pitch about advertising on the site, he saw his positive reviews disappear, leaving one negative review at the top of his company’s Yelp page.

He was also threatened by a Yelp employee, he said. On the last of several phone calls in which Patey asked why he needed the advertising if he already had positive reviews, the salesperson told him,”You are about to find out,” and hung up on him, Patey said. After that, Mattress City didn’t have a positive review on its page for five months, he said.

Today his Yelp page displays two negative reviews and one positive — even though there are 35 additional filtered reviews, 32 of which carry five stars. But readers can only access those other reviews by clicking on a nearly invisible link at the bottom of the page called “35 Filtered” and passing the distorted-text security measure.

Redmond nail-salon owner Nguyen said she didn’t reject the advertising, but abruptly ended a phone call with a Yelp representative to help a customer a few weeks ago. In the next couple of days, she said, she noticed that her positive reviews were filtered out and her negative reviews stayed visible at the top of the page.

Besides these recent cases, 15 complaints have been filed against Yelp at the Washington Attorney General’s Office since January 2009. Half of them raised similar issues.

Businesses elsewhere also have complaints about feeling pressured. Ernie Buletti, the owner of RedSpaghetti Tattoo & Piercing in Sonoma County, Calif., said he considers the review that spells out “F*** Y** RED SPAGHETTI TATTOO” on his Yelp site to be hate speech. But despite his emails and phone calls to Yelp, the company won’t take the review down, Buletti said.

Once RedSpaghetti had the bad reviews, someone claiming to be from Yelp asked him to pay as much as $5,000 to “join” and advertise with Yelp. In exchange, he would be able to “manage” his account and have his business’s negative reviews “not appear,” Buletti said.

“We have been held hostage,” he said.

In the past three years the Better Business Bureau in the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern Coastal California has received 493 complaints against Yelp; in a third of them the complainant was not satisfied with Yelp’s response.

By comparison, CityGrid Media — which owns review sites such as Citysearch, Insider Pages and Urbanspoon — drew less than half as many complaints, 231.

Social-media solution

Yelp’s Holloway said businesses that feel trapped by negative reviews can work on developing a strong reputation by providing great customer service offline and responding diplomatically to reviews online. Businesses can respond publicly or privately to Yelp reviews, he said.

Adryenn Ashley, a small-business advocate in Reno, Nev., and longtime critic of Yelp, has another suggestion for small businesses unhappy with how they are portrayed on Yelp or other outside websites: They should think about growing a social media presence of their own. If a business isn’t online or its only online presence is a negative Yelp page, it is losing money, she said.

A small business can get a domain name and establish a blog, and then go to a content distribution service that can push blog posts out to about 46 social-network sites, she said.

A business can also set up a Google+ account with a photograph and add the Google+ link to its website to increase how Google recognizes the relevance of the company’s website. Businesses should also claim their Google+ Local or Yahoo! Local review sites if they want to strengthen their Web presence, she said.

If a company can become more relevant on other websites or social-media sites, the Yelp page will be further down the list or at least won’t be the only site that pops up on search engines, she said.

“The only way you can fight back is to get popular,” Ashley said.

Johanna Somers: 206-464-3714 or jsomers@seattletimes.com

]]> http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/yelps-ad-pitch-gets-bad-reviews-from-some-seattle-area-business-owners/feed/ 0 Yelp! squawks, but settles OT suit for $1.25 million http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/yelp-squawks-but-settles-ot-suit-for-1-25-million/ http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/yelp-squawks-but-settles-ot-suit-for-1-25-million/#comments Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:12:01 +0000 cahomepro http://www.californiahomepro.com/?p=16996

by on August 19, 2012 1:00am
in Human Resources,Overtime Labor Laws

A settlement has ended a class-action wage-and-hour suit filed on behalf of nearly 1,000 employees at Yelp!, the website that allows consumers to submit reviews of  restaurants, stores and health care professionals.

The executives sued, arguing that Yelp! misclassified sales representatives as exempt and failed to pay them overtime.

The sales reps were paid a base salary, but could earn more based on performance.

The lawsuit alleged violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the California Labor Code and the California Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Order.

Yelp! agreed to pay up, although it contended in the settlement motion that “the employees’ claims have no merit and a majority of class members, including two of the named plaintiffs, signed releases preventing them from bringing the claims asserted in the filing.”

Three named plaintiffs will receive $5,000 each. The rest of the $1.25 million settlement will cover attorneys’ fees, court costs and California state fines.

]]> http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/yelp-squawks-but-settles-ot-suit-for-1-25-million/feed/ 0 California Homepro Shines at the Fall Home Show 2012, Pleasanton, CA http://www.californiahomepro.com/events/california-homepro-shines-at-the-fall-home-show-2012-pleasanton-ca/ http://www.californiahomepro.com/events/california-homepro-shines-at-the-fall-home-show-2012-pleasanton-ca/#comments Mon, 08 Oct 2012 20:37:23 +0000 cahomepro http://www.californiahomepro.com/?p=16692 California Homepro shows off their many home improvement products this at the Alameda County Home and Garden Show in Pleasanton…

 

]]> http://www.californiahomepro.com/events/california-homepro-shines-at-the-fall-home-show-2012-pleasanton-ca/feed/ 0 Visit California Homepro at the Home and Garden Show this Weekend in Pleasanton… http://www.californiahomepro.com/events/visit-california-homepro-at-the-home-and-garden-show-this-weekend-in-pleasanton/ http://www.californiahomepro.com/events/visit-california-homepro-at-the-home-and-garden-show-this-weekend-in-pleasanton/#comments Fri, 05 Oct 2012 23:36:02 +0000 cahomepro http://www.californiahomepro.com/?p=16484 Alameda County Home & Garden Shows 26th Annual “Fall Show”

Date: 10/05/2012 – 10/07/2012
Time: Fri 12pm – 6pm; Sat 10am to 6pm; Sun 10am – 5pm.
Presented By: Capital Showcase
For More Information (Details )

]]> http://www.californiahomepro.com/events/visit-california-homepro-at-the-home-and-garden-show-this-weekend-in-pleasanton/feed/ 0 Small Business Owners Renew Pay-For-Play Allegations Against Yelp http://www.californiahomepro.com/community/small-business-owners-renew-pay-for-play-allegations-against-yelp/ http://www.californiahomepro.com/community/small-business-owners-renew-pay-for-play-allegations-against-yelp/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:47:28 +0000 cahomepro http://www.californiahomepro.com/?p=16121 By Dave Copeland· September 27th, 2012

Yelp, the leading website for online reviews of restaurants, hotels and other service-based businesses, has long denied ongoing allegations of pay-for-play. But small business owners continue to insist their good reviews are being held hostage until they agree to buy advertising. Read More…

]]> http://www.californiahomepro.com/community/small-business-owners-renew-pay-for-play-allegations-against-yelp/feed/ 0 Do You Want House Painting in The Bay Area That Lasts? http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/do-you-want-house-painting-in-the-bay-area-that-lasts/ http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/do-you-want-house-painting-in-the-bay-area-that-lasts/#comments Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:27:16 +0000 cahomepro http://www.californiahomepro.com/?p=14836 You’ve seen house paint jobs in the Bay Area that start to peel within a year. That doesn’t have to happen to you. At California Homepro we don’t Paint your Home’s Exterior– We protect it by Coating it with the best product in the marketplace today!

Choosing a Painting Contractor in the Bay Area: Every year thousands of homeowners hire professional painting contractors; then find themselves disappointed with the results. Why? Because Painting your home isn’t the answer- Coating it is…

California Homepro’s Exterior Coating offers you the highest quality protection for the exterior painting of your Bay Area home. We are a full service coating company that specializes in exterior coating for your home. And we offer a lifetime warranty which means you’ll never have to paint your Bay Area home again!

Texcote™ Textured Elastomeric Coatings: Elastomeric coating is a 100% acrylic resin polymer for use on residential and commercial exteriors. It is formulated for masonry, wood and stucco surfaces and resists cracking and water damage. Available in smooth and textured…

One of the newest types of coatings is formulated for use on one the oldest types of building materials. You may already be familiar with elastomeric, but it’s much more than “just another paint.” Elastomeric & Texcote™ textured coatings are specifically intended for application on masonry substrates, wood and stucco. Special steps must be taken to ensure their optimum performance.

Texcote™ Textured and Behr elastomeric coatings are relatively new to the American architectural coatings industry, having only been introduced in the United States in the mid-1980s. They were first developed after World War II, to help rehabilitate damaged masonry buildings. They address a common problem of masonry and stucco construction – water penetrable cracks. These unsightly cracks can make even the soundest construction job appear flawed, and may also eventually lead to the deterioration of the structural integrity of the building.

There are over 16,000 painting contractors in California so please choose wisely. We recommend that you chose California Homepro because we are one of the few factory direct applicators of Texcote in Northern California.

For more information about our exterior coating services for your Bay Area home, please call 877-384-6635 for a free consultation today!

]]> http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/do-you-want-house-painting-in-the-bay-area-that-lasts/feed/ 0 Business Owners Are Getting Fed Up With Yelp! http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/business-owners-all-over-the-country-are-getting-fed-up-with-yelp/ http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/business-owners-all-over-the-country-are-getting-fed-up-with-yelp/#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2012 18:50:29 +0000 cahomepro http://www.californiahomepro.com/?p=14804

And, for a good reason businesses are starting to fight back.

For instance, at http://yelp-sucks.com/tell-your-yelp-story/ you’ll see:

Jennifer Marsack

September 11, 2012 at 8:06 am (UTC 0)

My business has received several 5 stars reviews on multiple websites over the years. I have 1 negative review on the yelp website and six 5 STAR REVIEWS that have been filtered…. YELP is destroying all my hard work as a FAMILY OWNED business for the last 5 years by filtering out the 6 five star reviews we have received!! So unfair and, and SO part of the reason small businesses are disappearing in our economy….thanks YELP for being part of BIG BUSINESS ie the 1% and screwing the small business owners trying to survive in this economy!!

Tanya Olsen

July 19, 2012 at 1:08 am (UTC 0)

I am a small business owner of a Yogurt Shop in Salt Lake City Utah. I am shocked over the control that companies such as Yelp have. Think about it…They are using our name on their sites, for their financial benefit. I can’t believe it’s allowed as a business practice. I have many, many happy customers. But it seems as though it’s the one’s (and there are only a few), who don’t get their way and end up posting the comments. I have asked Yelp, urban spoon, and Google maps to please remove one horrible comment that was very long and destructive from one individual. But they keep emailing me back rejection letters indicating that they can leave the posts up. I even told them to completely remove my business from their site. They again rejected. Because of this. I have a very low rating due to one individual. I would love to get any information from anybody out there who knows of a recent class action suit against any of the above mentioned companies. LET’S PUT A STOP TO THIS KIND OF PRACTICE!! It’s hard enough to be a small business in the good o’le USA!

milo.zador

April 27, 2012 at 8:02 pm (UTC 0)

It’s interesting that you can’t filter malicious negative reviews but have NO PROBLEM filtering the nice reviews people post. You claim that you filter both negative and positive. its a lie. i have seen no evidence of ANY negative reviews being filtered. It’s because Yelp would lose leverage with its businesses. A customer will not purchase ads on Yelp so filtering negative reviews only hurts the end user. Filtering the positive reviews forces a business to evaluate and possible become blackmailed by YELP to purchase advertising in exchange for less filtered positive reviews. ALL in ALL-Yelp is a scam. It too will fade….anyone remember Friendster??? Enough said.

paul koumanelis

December 31, 2011 at 6:46 pm (UTC 0)

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION PHONE NUMBER 1-877-382-4357
I am a small business owner who has run afoul of a competitor. The competing business has bombarded me (using YELP) with out and out fabrications, libelous accusations, and outrageous drivel via what I can only assume to be one writer with several pseudonyms or one (very unethical) ‘on-line presence’ service with a stable of (fiction) writers masquerading as unhappy clients. I have written to yelp on many occasions to explain. You have a better chance of finding God. I haven’t found a phone # you can call (unless, of course, you want to buy advertising), and all my letters have elicited only (the same, word for word), boilerplate answers generated by some robot. I finally got so angry i called the FTC (federal trade commission), at 877-382-4357. They filed a complaint, and said if they see a pattern (meaning a lot of angry businesspeople filing complaints) they will go after them (yelp).The gentleman i spoke with seemed particularly interested in the “extortion for advertising” angle. So what are you waiting for??? If yelp has wronged you as it has me, CALL NOW AND FILE A COMPLAINT!!! ONCE AGAIN: FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION PHONE NUMBER IS 877-382-4357

If you own a business and feel Yelp is misrepresenting your company by filtering your positive reviews from actual customers while Yelp shows false negative reviews from non-customers and competitors like they have with our company, there is a site you can go to and where you can tell the real story… Click here

]]> http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/business-owners-all-over-the-country-are-getting-fed-up-with-yelp/feed/ 0 NY dentist sues Yelp over bad reviews http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/ny-dentist-sues-yelp-over-bad-reviews/ http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/ny-dentist-sues-yelp-over-bad-reviews/#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2012 18:15:33 +0000 cahomepro http://www.californiahomepro.com/?p=14796 By Donna Domino, Features Editor

September 19, 2012 — A Manhattan cosmetic dentist is suing Yelp over bad reviews, claiming the site lists only defamatory reviews and filters out positive ones.

The complaint, filed July 25 in Manhattan Supreme Court by Mal Braverman, DMD, states that the negative reviews have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars while boosting Yelp’s website traffic. The suit seeks $400,000 in compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages.

Yelp is accused of libel and slander for publishing negative reviews, causing “great financial and personal harm” to Dr. Braverman by containing material that is “false, intentionally misleading, and defamatory,” according to the complaint.

Dr. Braverman also claims that the site recommends other dentists who are Yelp advertisers.

A check of the site revealed four negative reviews of Dr. Braverman, in which he responded with apologies if there were a misunderstanding. Good reviews appear to be left up for only a day or two before they are “filtered” to a link near the bottom of the page.”

Dr. Braverman — a co-founder and past president of the New York chapter of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry and a fellow of the International Academy of Dental-Facial Esthetics — has 19 positive reviews, but they’re not easy to see. To find them, you have to click on a faint (“19 Filtered”) link. Additionally, the page shows links for five of Dr. Braverman’s competitors who are listed under a “Best of Yelp New York cosmetic dentists” red banner.

“What they’re doing is absolutely despicable,” Dr. Braverman told DrBicuspid.com. “It’s all for the aggrandizement of their business, period. It’s just to publish slanderous, defamatory reviews and censure all the good ones.”

Yelp did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.

]]> http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/ny-dentist-sues-yelp-over-bad-reviews/feed/ 0 San Jose Earthquakes Odwalla Player of the Month… http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/san-jose-earthquakes-odwalla-player-of-the-month/ http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/san-jose-earthquakes-odwalla-player-of-the-month/#comments Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:36:54 +0000 cahomepro http://www.californiahomepro.com/?p=14790

The San Jose Earthquakes have named Montgomery “Gummy” Carey (Son of California Homepro’s Office Manager- Katie Carey) the Odwalla Player of the Month for September 2012.

Montgomery has been playing soccer since he was three years old. He has had multiple seasons as the leading scorer for Mountain House Flash Soccer, playing at both striker and midfielder. Montgomery was selected as one of the team captains for his U-6 outdoor, U-8 outdoor and U-8 tournament teams.

Read More…

]]> http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/san-jose-earthquakes-odwalla-player-of-the-month/feed/ 0 Yelp Extortion: The Lawsuit’s Dismissed. http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/yelp-extortion-the-lawsuits-dismissed/ http://www.californiahomepro.com/press/yelp-extortion-the-lawsuits-dismissed/#comments Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:07:59 +0000 cahomepro http://www.californiahomepro.com/?p=14707  
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Are They Back At It In 2012?

The phone calls came almost daily. It started to get creepy.

“Hi, this is Mike from Yelp,” the voice would say. “You’ve had three hundred visitors to your site this month. You’ve had a really good response. But you have a few bad ones at the top. I could do something about those.”

This wasn’t your average sales pitch. At least, not the kind that John, an East Bay restaurateur, was used to. Read more

 
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