YELP

I have been reading a little about the YELP issue and I have to say I agree with the claims against Yelp. However, my position against Yelp stems more from an alternate source. Yelp seems to be defending itself much like the company Vision Appraisal did in many of the real estate property tax appeals here in CT. For example, as property owners vigorously pursued the valuation methodologies and demanded the production of their valuation tools, Vision Appraisal defended them as proprietary. In my lawsuits for the property tax appeals, I spent a huge amount of time backing into all their formulas and debunking their "methodologies and proprietary formulas", and that was the end of them; cases won for me. Yelp seems hell bent on the same sort of scheme. With the Court resting on the failure to prove extortion, I lean towards the following: Why filter and why should Yelp, whose guiding principle, as posted on their site, is to help people find great local businesses like dentists, hair stylists and mechanics, have a filter at all? In my humble opinion, the claim against Yelp in its simplest form, is a reckless filter of free speech, which whether they intend it (or not) defames and libels businesses, negatively financially affecting those businesses, altering the choices of customers, and that their alleged fair filter decimates businesses by filtering every good review and posting only negative reviews. It is simply a no-brainer to prove that their filter is filtering all or the largest majority of good reviews. My business has seven reviews showing and fifteen filtered reviews. No filter program could possibly, in its broadest spectrum, fairly filter 2 of every 3 reviews, and for that matter 8 out of 9 five star reviews, and every single review posted after my email correspondence to Yelp confronting them about their filter of all of our great reviews. And why should any business be allowed to apply a filter to the opinions of others? Especially when those filtered opinions damage the pursuit of my life, my liberty and my happiness? Interestingly enough and before I even knew about these cases, Yelp emailed me telling me how they were going to tell me how to drive more business to my company. When I responded by email with my ardent disappointment about Yelp, their email response was:

"This is where the filter comes in. The filter tries to show the most useful and helpful reviews and rather than doing a subjective evaluation about how well the review was written, for instance, it focuses on objective data. While the data being evaluated is intentionally kept a mystery, what I can say is what the engineers tell me, which is that the filter applies the same rules and analysis to all businesses and all reviews. Certainly we understand that legitimate customer reviews can get caught in the filter. While it's unfortunate and proves to be frustrating, it is a byproduct of having to have a system of checks and balances that keeps the overall content of the site helpful and reliable."

I would submit to you that this filter, as they define it, does not show the most useful and helpful reviews, and emphatically can be shown by example after example to be NOT applying the same rules and analysis to all businesses and all reviews, and therefore NOT a byproduct of any system of checks and balances.

In addition, where the rubber meets the road financially is that Yelp is, with and by the use of their sister company, giftrocket.com, presenting themselves and marketing the sale of gift cards for any business; for example, my business, without my explicit consent. For example, when a person buys a gift card to my business at giftrocket, they charge a $1.00 fee, plus 5% of the value of the gift card amount to the purchaser; all without my consent. To me, that is illegal and interfering with the trade at my business without my consent. They do not have my consent to advertise my name or solicit the sale of a gift card to my business on their website. Yet, they are advertising the sale of gift cards to my business. They are extorting a fee and a percent of the value of the gift card when I already offer gift cards without a fee. This is extortion to me.

Yelp, with a reckless disregard for the consequences, is knowingly hampering free speech, interfering in fair trade and unfairly participating in the defamation of our business.
For all of the above reasons, I will pursue a claim against Yelp, and while it may be difficult to prove the value of their interference, it is interference nonetheless.