Portland restaurateur accuses Yelp of unfair practices
The owner of Vinland says he was downgraded after he declined to buy ads, but Yelp denies any such practice exists.
David Levi isn’t the first restaurant owner to accuse Yelp of poor practices, but he believes he has some evidence to back his beliefs.
The owner of the Portland, Maine organic restaurant Vinland says that after he declined to advertise with the online user-review site, a Yelp representative lowered the score of her review from more than a year before.
Levi confronted Yelp’s Portland community manager, Steff Deschenes, in an email after he discovered that her four-star review of the restaurant had changed to a three-star review.
“We’ve had our frustrations with Yelp hiding a disproportionate number of our five-star reviews. To see the local representative make this downgrade so long after visiting is disturbing,’’ Levi wrote in emails released to The Portland Press Herald.
The downgrade came, Levi says, after Deschenes and others at Yelp attempted to solicit business from Vinland, which he declined. Deschenes responded with an email of her own, saying that her reviews aren’t linked with her role at Yelp.
“First, it’s important to note that my reviews on Yelp have nothing to do with me as a community manager,’’ Deschenes wrote. “I was using the site long before I ever worked for Yelp and will do so long after, so when I leave a review, it’s from a personal standpoint.’’
Deschenes also says that she has no affiliation with the Yelp sales department, a claim affirmed by a Yelp spokeswoman in an email to Boston.com:
“The Yelp Community team and the Yelp Sales department work completely independently of one another, and Yelp Community Managers do not have direct access to communication between business owners and Yelp salespeople.’’
The spokeswoman also stated that the company has never accepted money to manipulate reviews. Businesses can pay for advertising, but nothing else, she said. Levi isn’t alone in criticizing the display of reviews, though. Others, such as a group of small businesses in San Francisco, have bemoaned the placement of good reviews and bad reviews on their establishments’ Yelp pages.
“The order is determined by recency, user voting, and other review quality factors, which is why an older review may appear before a newer one,’’ the spokeswoman said. “To personalize the experience for each individual user, we’ll favor reviews from a user’s friends and the users they follow. Users have the option to sort the reviews in a few other ways: by date, star rating, and those written by Elites.’’
Yelp currently boasts 83 million average monthly mobile unique visitors and 79 million average monthly desktop unique visitors. Georgios Zerfas, a Boston University marketing professor who studies the effects of online reviews, told CBS Boston that the influence of Yelp reviews can really make a difference.
“The threat [that online reviews pose to restaurant owners] to can be substantial. Online reviews are a major component of the consumer decision making process, and because of that they can affect the financial performance of businesses,’’ he said.
Levi could not be reached for comment.
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