Hello All,
I own a house cleaning service in Rancho. Our business listing ended up on Yelp with some great reviews. We had 9, count em, 9 5-star reviews, all from active Yelp users. Yelp called us to see if we wanted to advertise when we first started the business in 2012. We politely explained our business was a baby and couldn't afford to pay the $300+ per month with 12-month contract fees they were charging. Within a few weeks, we began to see reviews dwindling away. Guess why, guess! You got it, the FILTER! That devil of a so-called legitimate review finder. We contacted Yelp, irate! After having them explain over and over that they had no control over the filter and could not delete listings, we let the issue go. When all was said and done, we had 11 of 13 reviews filtered.
A few months ago we changed the business name to Hansen's Home Services and one of our new clients created a new listing when he noticed we were not on Yelp. Our old listing was still on the site, though. He wrote a review and another client followed. Yelp contacted us again, to advertise.
The young man was very nice, very helpful and I explained to him the story about how all of our reviews were filtered. I had already done my homework on how the filter "works". Inactive users, users who always post 5-star ratings, anything that may appear to be a scam - is filtered. Well, I agree with the idea of this. But, WHY are our reviews filtered? I believe all but 2 or 3 reviewers have 3,10, even 30 previously written reviews. These reviews meet the criteria for the filter to leave them alone. Gavin, the young man I spoke with explained that the filter should eventually kick them back out. It's been several months. When he called back, I explained to him that nothing had been kicked back out. He understood my frustration and contacted his supervisors to have the new and old listings merged - not what I wanted. I wanted the old listing deleted. "We can't do that". The old listing was filled with reviews using our old business name. How confusing to the readers. It was also for catering services that I do on the side. They created a new listing for my catering services. About a month later Gavin called yet again. I told him I wouldn't be able to advertise with them until the issue was fairly resolved. I also told him I did not want the listing for catering services on Yelp because I do that service on the side, when I have time. I did not want people calling about that service. Much to my surprise, that listing was deleted within two days. Not closed, deleted and removed from the site. I thought they couldn't delete listings?
I conducted a little research experiment to prove myself right - A Rocklin client of ours and a Folsom client of ours both wrote reviews that were filtered. A client in Gold River, too. The GR client called up last week and said he was going to write a review because he had been so happy with service. The review was up for less than five hours. The client from Folsom called up and said her review was filtered, and she was deleting it and writing a new one. This review was filtered within minutes. All of these reviews came from active users, different parts of the area, different IP addresses.
My question is, has this happened to any other business owners? Have you found a solution to the issue? We've got tons of great clients from Yelp before all of our reviews were filtered. Yelp has been in court for this issue a few times now. They always seem to get around it.
