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Comment by parthdesai | Hacker News Reader

> "Mr. Stoppelman feels he has no choice. Like a lot of small internet companies, Yelp lives in a world where one company, Google, accounts for an outsize share of its business, and could destroy it at any time."

Ah the irony. Yelp is the same website that bullied small businesses to pay for positive reviews[1].

[1]http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-accused-of-bullying-bus...

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"Ah the irony. Yelp is the same website that bullied small businesses to pay for positive reviews"

No, Yelp is accused of this. Nobody has ever shown it to be true.

(I can also tell you, as someone who worked there, that it definitely is not true, but you don't have to take my word for it. You just have to not confuse accusations with facts.)

I can see both being true. Assuming the sales staff are on commission, there's a strong possibility some asshattery happened.

Perhaps you didn't run into any unethical sales staff.

I ran into plenty of idiots in sales. I don't assume anything about what salespeople say...but I know for a fact that salespeople at Yelp have no ability to affect reviews.

Anyone has the ability to affect reviews to some degree. And anyone can imply they have more control.

"Anyone has the ability to affect reviews to some degree."

No, they don't. Except in the imaginations of conspiracy theorists.

As someone who also worked there, the official company line internally is a suspiciously specific denial that does not actually deny the main accusations I had heard previously. I consider it just as plausible that Yelp squelches negative reviews when paid as I did before.

I came here looking for claims like these. It always has baffled me the number of first hand accounts of Yelp salesperson shenanigans with no documented examples.

What do you think is the root of the accusations? Do yelp salespeople promise things they can't deliver?

I know of one cafe owner that had legitimate 5 star reviews removed. They were returned after the bad press.

there are a lot of businesses on yelp. some of them are bound to suck. blaming somebody else is the easiest option and yelp is the easiest target.

I was thinking more about the reports that Yelp salespeople suggest that they can clean up bad reviews.

Trustpilot is the new kid on the block for the review shakedown, blackmail as a service provider

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