Why This Tiny Italian Restaurant Gives a Discount for Bad Yelp Reviews
In recent years, Yelp has been publicly accused of extortion—asking for money from businesses that are automatically listed on the site in exchange for preferred placement on the site. There are also accusations of abruptly vanishing positive reviews and suddenly appearing negative reviews. Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed two cases alleging that such behavior by Yelp is illegal.
“The business owners may deem the posting or order of user reviews as a threat of economic harm, but it is not unlawful for Yelp to post and sequence the reviews,” Judge Marsha Berzon wrote for the three-judge panel. “As Yelp has the right to charge for legitimate advertising services, the threat of economic harm that Yelp leveraged is, at most, hard bargaining.”
But now, in the recent weeks since they’ve been actively seeking one-star reviews on Yelp, Botto Bistro’s owners claim that those calls have stopped. Just after 11am on Friday, as lunch diners came in to tuck into an early lunch, Co-owner Davide Cerretini explained to Ars why he’s decided to mock the entire Yelp system.
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