Fake Yelp Review What Recourse?

[jrobbins]

We have a customer that is reportedly very upset that there are several bad reviews on Yelp regarding her specifically that are not true. She said the reviews have been there for several months and that she uses this branch often and has never had an experience like is described in the review. Is there any recourse?

 

[Cherie Dickey]

Hey @jrobbins

Unfortunately, not really. Especially not with Yelp. Unless the reviews out and out violate their guidelines (profanity, harassment, etc), they normally pretty much refuse to remove them as a rule. There have even been law suits over this with Yelp. If the reviews are all by the same person, then you might be able to get support to remove all but one of them.

The best course of action when a review can't be removed is to respond to it professionally and without emotion. There is some great advice in this thread: Unfair threat to bad review - Local Search Forum

Cherie

 

[jrobbins]

Thank you Cherie.

 

[MeganR]

We have a customer that is reportedly very upset that there are several bad reviews on Yelp regarding her specifically that are not true. She said the reviews have been there for several months and that she uses this branch often and has never had an experience like is described in the review. Is there any recourse?

I'll tell you that I have had success getting multiple fake reviews pulled by citing Yelp's TOS. You need to review their TOS and identify the best option because once you submit it doesn't allow you to resubmit and point to a different TOS. It will ask you on your first submission what the violation is. For this one....I don't have the TOS in front of me, but is there anything truly defamatory, e.g., claiming fraud, etc?

 

[Tony Wang]

I agree with MeganR, carefully read the TOS. Removal is hard and unlikely, but not impossible.

Also do some digging around on the reviewer's profile. You never know what you'll find to help your case. The business owner may be able to shed some light on this, too. I once uncovered an angry customer leaving a bad review under a fake profile; actually, my client was able to figure that one out, knowing the details of the case, that's why I say the owner may have insights.

 

[MeganR]

Sorry, for delay in response. I actually got another review pulled down last week, citing TOS.

What I mean by that is go to:

Terms of Service – Yelp Terms of Service

www.yelp.com

Carefully, research what might qualify as reason for violation of TOS.

Remember, it's been my experience that you only get one shot at this. If they deny, and you go back to try to argue another reason to pull down the review, it won't even allow you to submit a second request.

Put your best foot forward in selecting the reason for taking it down, e.g., defamatory, wrong business, competitor, etc;

I've had them pulled down: 1) w/o being a yelp advertiser and 2) solely through contacting them through their online report/flag form.