Yelp Class Action Lawsuit



mGrunin said:
I think it's fine for a business to contact sites like "Yelp" and ask for a bad review to be removed, and for Yelp to charge them. BBB does it, and many other known companies, so it's nothing new.

What's not alright, and what they have been accused of is:

- Faking Negative Reviews
- Deleting Positive Reviews
- Calling businesses themselves and telling them to fork over the money

This "extortion" model can be ran legally, as we see with BBB, just that Yelp needs to be be open about it, not fuck with the reviews, and let businesses themselves decide if they want to pay, without getting constant calls and notices to pay.
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Agreed. This is going to be a very interesting lawsuit to see how it plays out. If all this talk of them manipulating reviews from THEIR side, they are going to be really f'ed in the end. Big difference between a visitor to a site making a comment/review, whether it is negative or defamatory, vs. the site operator or its employees doing it themselves. Seems to be going the same way as the other mentioned site, Ripoffreport, who I think in the past has been accused of making the postings. Big issue here is going to be who made the reviews (yelp or its "users"), how reviews were edited by Yelp staff, etc..

And if a lot of these extortion claims come to be true, they will probably be hit with the RICO act. Interesting to see what comes of this case and I hope since this is a class action, a lot more business owners can jump in on it. I've heard very similar stories from some local businesses owners out in the NY/NJ area. Seems like Yelp became too big for their own good and started to get greedy. Hope it bites them in the ass.
 
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