Yelp is crazy unethical. Even before I heard about this nonsense, I worked at a small business in San Francisco whose customer traffic was directly influenced by their cesspool of a site.
Anyway, my supervisor and I worked hard to make sure every customer was happy. And we were succeeding! We had a perfect 5 star rating on Yelp! It was amazing! Then one day we got a 1 Star Rating on our Yelp Page. Someone from Pennsylvania left a nasty review on our site. It was scathing.
Now, that’s not something that’s too far out of the realm of possibility for my job. While I sold mattresses in a brick and mortar, we also sold mattresses via Amazon and our online store and people from all over the country purchased mattresses from us. But I digress. The reason this is important is, well, where it gets dicey for Yelp. Because sure enough, Yelp sent us an email telling us that if we paid some fee they would push all the bad reviews off the site. They were extorting money out of us!
And here’s where it gets really interesting. My supervisor contacted the customer to see if there was anything we could do to make them happy with their purchase, so they can change their review. But the customer in question had literally never heard of our company and obviously never purchased anything from us.
Yelp literally committed fraud, and it was only when we threatened to sue that they took the fraudulent review off of our page.
Yelp is awful.
I worked for a solar company (smaller, not one of the big national ones) and my friend worked in marketing, so part of that was looking over the Yelp reviews and reaching out to people. Someone left this scathing one star review for us, but the person wasn’t a customer. The working theory around the office was it was a fake by a competitor or just a really confused person. But because it was bad the head-honchos got on my friend’s ass to get in touch with Yelp to get it removed or whatever. I think they ended up paying to have it moved or did some incentive with customers to get them to flood the page with 5 stars to balance it out. The way that Yelp scams is gross.
actually i can’t find the link but a bunch of social scientists were like … hmmm about this. And they created a fake frozen yogurt shop with a random address typed into google (i think it was a NJ city) and sure enough 1 star and 2 star reviews came pouring in about how their frozen yogurt was melted, or tasted bad or there were rats but the place never existed 🙂
“You should’ve expected to be fired for this.” Yeah. She did. But after months of starving herself and recognizing she will never claw her way out of this hole, she at least wants to say something. Of course, low wage employees should be silent and grateful for their gruel, right? How dare they talk back or have emotions.
“You complained about the snacks!” Complained? No, she said that the snacks provided at work are literally her only meal, the only food she can afford outside a bowl of rice every day. The only way to interpret what she said as “complaining about the snacks,” is in the context of “I am complaining that all I can afford to eat are snacks and am slowly starving.”
“What did you expect, living in an expensive area like the Bay Area?”
Counter question: Why is this never asked to the employers? So lets actually humor these chucklefucks and say that Yelp, one of the most well known and used websites, literally cannot afford to pay their employees a living wage… because its the Bay Area.
Why are they located there, then? Why are they not located in a more reasonable location that frees them up to pay a living wage? They’re the ones who picked that location and you want to tell me they have zero responsibility in this? No sale.
I mean, sure, if they moved to a less fancy area, they’d have to give up some local conveniences and networking opportunities and some of their favorite eateries, but hey, you have to make sacrifices when your new to the working world. That’s what it takes to “live within your means,” right?
“More whiny, entitled Millennials.”
Uh huh. The world will be a marginally better place when people who sneer at “millennials” finally fucking die.
Power to Talia Jane, and fuck Yelp.
Reblogging this since I have actually seen this fucking argument on my dash this morning.
“What did you expect, living in an expensive area like the Bay Area?”
Counter question: Why is this never asked to the employers? So lets actually humor these chucklefucks and say that Yelp, one of the most well known and used websites, literally cannot afford to pay their employees a living wage… because its the Bay Area.
Why are they located there, then? Why are they not located in a more reasonable location that frees them up to pay a living wage? They’re the ones who picked that location and you want to tell me they have zero responsibility in this? No sale.
I mean, sure, if they moved to a less fancy area, they’d have to give up some local conveniences and networking opportunities and some of their favorite eateries, but hey, you have to make sacrifices when your new to the working world. That’s what it takes to “live within your means,” right?
This this THIS THIS THIS
One of the things for which I remain deeply grateful to Jordan Weisman, the person who hired me into the game industry, was that when he first hired me full-time, and I was preparing to move out to Seattle, he asked what my salary requirements were. Being young and naive, I told him what I was making in Milwaukee.
He said, very firmly, “you can’t live on that in Seattle,” and offered me a considerably higher salary.
If your company can’t afford to pay its workers a living wage in the city where it’s located, your company is not living within its means.
do u ever just think about the fact that molly weasley saw HARRY POTTER, the boy who defeated voldemort, and went “i’m gonna knit this kid a christmas sweater”
what i love thinking about is
in the book ron says he told his mum that harry wasn’t expecting any christmas presents and that’s why she sent him them
and knowing ron can be a bit scatty/oblivious he probably didn’t mention it til like two days before christmas
so i just like to think of molly sitting up all night knitting harry his sweater and baking him homemade fudge or whatever because she’d be damned if she’d let harry go present-less at christmas
Or maybe Harry is just as dismissive. Like, Ron is dreaming aloud of him mom’s homemade fudge and asks Harry what he wants and Harry shrugs “the Dursley never give me anything, last year I got a half-used eraser” and Ron is like 0_0 because what, no one is going to give a gift to his new best friend? So he takes poor Errol telling Percy it’s an emergency and Percy’s like no! and Ron’s like HARRY NEVER GETS CHRISTMAS GIFTS YOU GIT and Percy’s like Oh. Ok. Write mom. And Ron’s letter is mainly MOM HARRY NEVER GETS CHRISTMAS GIFTS FROM HIS MUGGLES WHAT DO I DO and then it’s December 23 at night and Arthur is ready to go to bed and sees his wife get the yarn and the knitting needles out again and Honey I thought you were done? Did we get another child while I was at work? YES, she answers, furious. Ron’s new friend, little Harry. If I get this done by tomorrow morning I can make a batch of fudge and send Errol back with it. And that’s when Arthur Weasley realized they did get another kid when he wasn’t looking but, honestly, once you went past the five kids mark you stopped counting.
“
Did we get another child while I was at work?” “YES”
