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Yelp,Be Aware

4/11/17       
Slam Dunk

I have been a paid subscriber to Yelp since '09. It's been a love-hate thing because Yelp allows any wacko with a foul disposition to post negative comments about a business. But we do good, and the negative reviews have been about little things...until recently. We refinished a kitchen for a woman 3 years ago, she was the most unreasonable, and unpredictable person I have ever met. One day nice, and would say she can't wait until the job is done so she could post a glowing review on Yelp, the next she would be accusing us of crazy things. She just posted a review filled with lies about my business. I asked Yelp to remove it, but to no avail, so I quit my paid subscription. I've had 2- 5 star review since, and Yelp has 'filtered' them (hidden them from view). Since then I have come to find out that Yelp plays hardball, if you don't pay they will set out to punish your business. I've since directed my Yelp $$ toward other advertising.

4/11/17       #2: Yelp,Be Aware ...
cabmaker

We also have a " 1 star" overall rating on Yelp. We have had a total of three reviews. Two of them were absolutely glowing but these are not obvious to find. If a prospective customer wanted to find these two there is a way to do it but the path is not obvious nor intuitive. This is listed This is under the section called "2 other reviews that are not recommended".

The one bad review we have is from a customer we have never worked for.

This citizen called us up and wanted us to drive out to their house, look at their project and give them an estimate. I told him that we don't do that on spec. I did, however, try to help him find someone to do this for him.

I recommended that he make a rudimentary sketch of what he thought he wanted, take a couple pictures of the space he wanted to fill, and put together some links to pictures of cabinets he did like. I then recommended that he go to HOUZZ and look for cabinetmakers under the "Find a Pro" section.

I thought I was being helpful.

His interpretation was that the job was too small, I was too arrogant and I was just jerking him around.

When I contacted Yelp abut this they said I could submit a response but that I would also have to prove who I was with a photograph that could be posted on their website. I told them to pound sand.

The next day my two glowing reviews were AWOL

Yelp is a racket, a subset of the internet titans who proudly assert their job is "move fast & break things". These are the very same people who can figure out who you know and send you an unsolicited request from "LinkedIn" or can serve you up an advertisement on Amazon for an item you were researching from BH Camera yet somehow can't close down terrorists groups using their platform to recruit their next student or plan their next picnic.

I now find myself to be exceedingly nice and no longer pick up the phone unless I know who is on the other end. Our customers are motivated people. If they really want to talk with us they will leave a message.

4/11/17       #3: Yelp,Be Aware ...
Pat Gilbert

It's always big evil business, I tell you.

4/12/17       #4: Yelp,Be Aware ...
cabmaker

Pat,

How do you feel about United Airlines giving a customer a beating then dragging them down them down the aisle?

How do you think the public should respond if a cabinet shop said "Sorry, we overbooked. No cabinets for you!"

But then again your patron saint, Ayn Rand, would just say the customer has no viable complaint and should have just studied harder in school.

Is there nothing big business can do that could be wrong in your eyes?

4/12/17       #5: Yelp,Be Aware ...
Pat Gilbert

United F'd up. They should have simply kept raising the offer until someone agreed to get off the airplane.

No conservative spends much time dwelling on Rand, she doesn't even scratch the surface of the subject.

The market will and should punish United they F'd up.

I only have a problem when the government subsidizes, or over regulates business.

4/12/17       #6: Yelp,Be Aware ...
cabmaker

Pat,

You say you only have a problem when government subsidizes or "over" regulates business.

Can we infer from this that you like "some" regulation of business? What kind of regulations do you support?

In the absence of government intervention do you think we could count on business to do the right thing and "self"-regulate for those areas you think should be regulated?

The last question is an easy one: Can you name a business that is not subsidized by the government?

4/12/17       #7: Yelp,Be Aware ...
Economics 101

Rule 1 -- Don't argue with a cop. Any cop.

In this case, get off the plane peacefully and sue everyone later if you think you were wronged.

It wasn't United that beat or dragged him, it was 3 Chicago Airport cops, doing their job. Maybe not well, but there's about 300 of them policing O'Hare and none of them are armed. Since they can't pull a gun on you to secure your immediate cooperation, it makes them more likely to engage you physically .

If he'd cooperated, he might have a nuisance lawsuit. As it is, he'll sue and probably settle for next to nothing since he refused the lawful order of an actual cop and then fought him. Good luck with that cause of action. The result will probably be sealed by terms of the settlement.

This guy is not a doctor, he's a convicted felon. Convicted in 2005 on multiple counts of illegally prescribing and trafficking painkillers and lost his medical license. He became a pro poker player in 2006. Hasn't been a doctor for 12 years.

While no cabinetmaker in his right mind overbooks his production schedule intentionally, the customer's recourse is his contract regarding delivery and penalties, if any, for failure to deliver under the terms.

Not to have a physical fight with the cabinetmaker or the local constabulary who might show up to remove a belligerent customer from your shop.

United and probably all carriers are no doubt reconsidering how to handle these situations. So is Chicago and their airport cops.

Obviously, United could have handled this better, more money would have coaxed a 4th passenger off of the plane to accommodate United's personnel. But, it's their airplane, they can do as they wish under existing rules. And they did.

Just as nobody can walk into your shop, even after being invited by you and then demand that you build his cabinet, RIGHT NOW, even if he's already paid for it.

This is all a tempest in a teapot because this convicted felon is a very, very large jerk.

Early today, people all over the place were jabbering about how UAL is down 3%. LOL. It closed down about 1% at $70.71. Sorry, no collapse.

UAL has traded between about 65 and 75 for about 5 months. It's about $5 off its all-time high and sells for 10 times earnings. In other words, cheap.

Not that it can't get cheaper, but if it paid a 3% dividend I'd buy it and write a January 2018 call option for $5.00, take my ~$7.00 of income and just own it. But they don't, so I won't.

If you look at today's price action to see if anything significant happened yesterday, you'd have to say no. Just another insignificant jiggle.

The economy took UAL down to about $3 in '09, but today it could fall to about $40 and its strong uptrend would remain intact. They don't look like geniuses today, but they are the 3rd largest air carrier in the world and somehow, despite their occasional stupidity manage to do 36 billion of gross rev per year.

A few weeks from now, everybody will have forgotten about this clown and business will go on as before except the rules will be better for throwing a jerk off of your airplane.

Now, perhaps back to Yelp, an outfit I would avoid for the reasons above, having heard a few similar stories and reading reviews that I know are bogus simply from having been at this or that restaurant, for instance.

I would write Yelp a very nice, civil letter and tell them that the review(s) are false and defamatory. That unless removed you might sue them and subpoena them and their ISP to produce the identity of the defamatory poster(s.)

They know that they and their ISP can be forced by a court (via subpoena) to divulge the identity of the poster(s) who made the allegedly defamatory statements.

That you would then be able to depose the poster(s) under oath regarding their defamatory statements made about you on the Yelp site.

Yelp also knows that if all of that happened, the poster(s) would probably voluntarily withdraw their defamatory statements, not wanting to be sued for their folly. Knowing that they are already in the middle of an expensive legal battle. Over whatever defamatory things they said.

Yelp likely doesn't need or want all that possible aggravation.They might decide that it would be a good idea to dump the garbage and save you all the trouble and expense. Not to mention themselves.

Not bad, if all you have to do is write a nice letter detailing your possible future actions, depending on their behavior. Sort of the squeaky wheel gets the oil principle.

You just have to be a little bit squeakier than the rest of the wheels that seem to get blown off routinely.

If they don't dump the junk, then you have to be prepared to spend a lot of money to force them to do it, because you certainly can if you can prove the defamation.

But, alas, it's rarely worth it. What with lawyers and all not being free.

And don't ever threaten any legal action that you don't fully intend to follow through on, that's a form of attempted extortion in some jurisdictions.

And always, ALWAYS get the advice of a lawyer before you do anything along these lines, even sending a nice letter that might mention possible legal implications.

If you look for a lawyer to do a review of any letter or other options you may have, I'd ask any lawyer friends whether they or any lawyer they might know has a particular or even generalized dislike for Yelp. Might result in bargain rates.

4/12/17       #8: Yelp,Be Aware ...
Pat Gilbert

Tim

I think building codes are for the most part useful. I don't know much about it but it seems like the SEC is useful. I love small claims court. Traffic laws are probably more helpful than not, although that is debatable.

OTOH the economy is self organizing very little of it needs overlords to keep us out of trouble. Money itself could just as well be unsupervised, despite what the fed tells you.

Fractional reserves are arrived at by the players themselves. As was the case with United as that faux pas cost them plenty, not a crash, but plenty.

The video below explains how the economy is self organizing.

My business is not subsidized. I realize that you think that you set up a trap. And now you are going to explain how the roads and electricity etc subsidize me.

Those services are provided by the private sector, with toll roads, electricity can be provided without a public utility, water is provided before the government takes over the water department, etc etc.

The difference is that the government adds a useless layer of bureaucracy that adds no benefit.

If you look at a cost of living calculators a family could save 30% simply by moving from Seattle to Dallas or Houston. Funny thing is that the wages remain the same or even are higher because you don't have to compete with subsidized labor.

Here is an article about how Houston is self organizing and is one of the cheapest places in the country to live.

https://fee.org/articles/how-spontaneous-order-keeps-houston-affordable/

Regarding reviews, Angie's list is popular, consumer reports is useful, UL is useful. A lawsuit maybe useful if it was a class action against Yelp. Or perhaps a viral video would have some impact.

They do play games with the reviews. They say it is their "algorithms". All I know is that I have 4 reviews of which only one is in the normal viewing area. I don't pay for advertising with them, so I don't think it is out of spite.

How the economy is self organizing.

4/12/17       #9: Yelp,Be Aware ...
Slam Dunk

Thanks for all the great replies about Yelp, the input is much appreciated!

4/12/17       #10: Yelp,Be Aware ...
Cabmaker

Pat,

So the Hoover Dam could have been financed with a bake sale?

The railroads didn't need any Lieu Lands in order to finance their development>

The entrepreneurial militia could have taken care of those pesky Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor.

The publicly financed STEM programs could be implemented at lower cost if everybody was just home-schooled? How would they coordinate this? Would they be using semaphore? Even that needed an agreed upon alphabet.

4/12/17       #11: Yelp,Be Aware ...
Cabmaker

Econ 101,

Thank you for the very thorough response.

This same business model is how the Better Business Bureau operates. They keep encouraging us to join but we say we've managed to stay in business for 30 years.

They say that BBB accreditation is only conferred to the best of the best and requires a great track record. I point out to them that my neighbor was only in business 3 days before his BBB sticker arrived. As it turns out, for $300 you can make that pesky requirement of track record go away.

4/12/17       #12: Yelp,Be Aware ...
pat gilbert

Private contractors build all public projects. The financing could have been put together through some sort of co-op. The bigger question is should it be built in the first place.

The Great Northern Railway was a privately funded transcontinental railway. IIRC he didn't go belly up like a lot of the other railways during that time period and government misallocating money.

Sort of like the Wright Brothers verses Samuel Pierpoint Langley, or Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Even the military could be privatized and the police as I have shown in a previous episode.

Not to mention that we wouldn't have sociopath presidents instigating wars either.

I don't know why STEM could not be worked on or funded by the private sector.

It would sure be cheaper than NASA e.g. in space exploration. Besides Space X is mopping the floor with them.

4/12/17       #13: Yelp,Be Aware ...
Alan F.

Cabmaker,
I have been driving though a temporary roundabout for about 12 years. 12 years ago a church was built half a block north of a 4 way stop sign. A condition of building the church was they PAY IN ADVANCE 1 million for the costs for a 4 way light at the intersection to be completed after the city completed some other items. They city doesn't have the money for the intersection. Not sure when and where they spent it. I know they want to raise taxes for road improvements, must be in that budget. Luckily the states raised the tax on diesel .36 per gallon and the sales tax on gas to help roads. The city can probably find a million for the intersection one of these years.

Roundabouts can work if people knew how to drive in them, the problem with this intersection is the east west traffic moves at about 50 MPH and no one slows to the 20 mph speed limit, the other problem is the driver that doesn't under stand or wants to be safe comes to a stop at the yield and waits for the intersection to be empty, or proceed to just before the next inlet and stops.
Its an absolute cluster that could be solved with either a wider two lane round about or a traffic signal. Unfortunately the city has no money. They were smart enough to make the landowner pay, they just weren't smart enough to keep the money for what it was for.

If I didn't have to drive through this 2-5 times a day it may not bother me

End of woeful tale on spending

I also paid for improvements for road widening when I bought my house 20 years ago, road still hasn't been widened yet everyone that bought a house had to pay to widen the roads in advance.

So when I hear ads on the radio about how there is no money for infrastructure what they mean is we charged you once and used it somewhere else so now we need money.

Imagine if you took a 100% deposit on a job and 20 years later still hadn't done the work and told the owner you needed to be paid 150% more to do the job due to increases in costs.

A-

4/12/17       #14: Yelp,Be Aware ...
cabmaker

Pat.

The railroads were financed by grants of land conferred by Congress. The railroads were gifted alternating swatches of land on either side of the railroad track as an inducement to produce the railroad. If the land was already privately owned on any particular stretch of track then the railroad was given a much larger quantity of land elsewhere call Lieu Lands. Without this government subsidy the railroads would not have been built.

Same with the private space race.
Do you really think SpaceX would be happening without all that previous NASA research?

As for the private militia keeping peace in the China Sea. How well do you think this going to work out?

STEM could probably be managed out by the private sector but the science will probably break down as soon as we have home schooled students being trained by teachers who were also home schooled.

Not sure how they would work out the curriculum. Maybe they could have a committee meeting at the grange?

I do, however, agree with you about sociopath Presidents.

4/12/17       #15: Yelp,Be Aware ...
cabmaker

Pat,

You are right, however, about privatization of the police force.

United Airlines has vowed now to only use their own goons when dragging seated customers off the airplane because they mismanaged their resources.

4/12/17       #16: Yelp,Be Aware ...
pat gilbert

Sorry Tim, but here are some inconvenient facts to reconcile with you narrative.

"The Great Northern was the only privately funded – and successfully built – transcontinental railroad in U.S. history. No federal land grants were used during its construction, unlike all other transcontinental railroads"

As to your point about NASA, instead of conjecture lets look at another inconvenient fact.

Samuel Pierpont Langley was give 70,000 (about 2,000,000 dollars in today's money) to build the 1st flying machine in 1898. The Wright brothers were given ZERO dollars to build a flying machine. The day that the Wright Brothers succeeded Samuel Pierpont Langley faded away, producing nothing for his money.

As to the private military, it couldn't help but work out better. We have had a hundred years of war instigation by sociopaths. Wilson deliberately got the Lusitania sunk so the US would have an excuse to get into WWl, FDR pulled a lot of crap to get the US into WWll, before you say the Japanese bombed the US first consider why would the Japanese bomb the biggest military power in the world out of the clear blue sky?, LBJ blatantly lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to escalate the Vietnam war, Bush 43 lied about WMDs, Truman executed over 100,000 people for BS reasons.

How could it be worst than what he have????

Have you looked at the results of public school lately, I GUARANTEE you that homeschooling would be better.

Most if not all innovation comes from individuals tis not from government.

4/12/17       #17: Yelp,Be Aware ...
cabmaker

So why doesn't Somalia own Google?

4/13/17       #18: Yelp,Be Aware ...
Pat Gilbert

A countries standard of living is determined by it's capitalization. The difference between the US and Somalia is capitalization.

This means that cabinet makers in the US have CNC and computerized everything, cabinetmakers in Somalia (if they exist use crude equipment).

If not encumbered with the layers of useless bureaucrats countries improve rapidly. As indicated in the comparison of the states. If you look at the freest countries in the world they also have the highest standard of living and the lowest government interference.

Somalia was actually on track to continue improving every since they got rid of their government. Which they now got back so we will see. The point is that Somalia was doing better with no government.

4/13/17       #19: Yelp,Be Aware ...
Economics 101

Oh, yeah, the good ol' BBB.

Total nonsense in my opinion, too.

A friend of mine in the collectibles business for now 25 years, about 10 years ago showed me the rantings and ravings of some irrational nut-case who had complained to some BBB branch office somewhere about a transaction. We're talking about a hundred buck item.

The BBB's sternly worded letter about the complaint of course included a solicitation for a BBB membership.

I wrote a nice response for her indicating that she wasn't in need of a BBB membership at any level, not then and not ever and that it they ever published or propagated the goofy accusations of the complainer that she would sue them both for libel and defamation.

And she would have, she was fuming and loaded for bear, cost be damned.

Never heard from the complainer or the BBB again.

The funniest thing about the unhinged complainer? She thought that the BBB was a law enforcement agency.

As opposed to the voluntary business association it actually is with zero power to do anything to anyone other than to possibly libel and defame you, apparently in the interest of what might be characterized by some as the attempted extortion of an annual donation for their seal of approval, thus making you gold with the uninformed public.

Having actual lawyers, they seem to back away from BS complaints pretty quickly when warned.


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