Yelp Takes Down Review That Sparked Legal Threat
from the weak-sauce dept
Yesterday we had the story of how an 18-month-old Yelp review for Casey Movers in Massachusetts spurred the company to send a legal threat to the author, Kristen Buckley, leading her husband, Phil Buckley to do some research and uncover questionable "positive" reviews of the company, and to call the company out for its legal threat. That story has been getting a lot of attention from a variety of sources, and some have noticed that the original review is gone. Yes, gone. If you go there, you can now see Kristen's followup comment about the legal threat, and Casey Movers' response to the original review -- but not the original review itself.So what happened? Apparently Yelp took the review down because it violated their policy "because it lacks firsthand experience." The issue is that Kristen admits that the movers were hired by her parents, and the review was on their behalf. Peter notes that Kristen was present when the events happened, so the "lacks firsthand experience" is pretty questionable. That said, the removal seems odd no matter what. The review was up for 18 months and Yelp just took an interest in taking it down in the days after the legal threat went out?
It seems unfortunate in timing -- especially since the reasons for the disappearance of the review are not made public (they were sent via email to Kristen). Anyone reading about this story elsewhere and going to Yelp to see the review are likely to now believe that the original review was taken down due to Casey Movers' complaints about the accuracy of the review, when that doesn't appear to be the case.
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Filed Under: policy violation, streisand effect, takedown
Companies: casey movers, yelp
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par for the course
Just google "yelp extortion" to get an idea about some of their business practices.
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So...
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I'm going to bury yelp
*** stay tuned in march 2013
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Re:
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http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=8QAHOwtLZnZJFEA8nad7uw
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http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=wqoXYLWmpkEH0YvTmHBsJQ
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more coverage please
Here was my reply I received from yelp:
Hi there,
We're writing to let you know that we've removed your review of Casey Movers. Though we understand this business has received media attention due to recent events and that users may want to share their opinions, we hope you'll understand that Yelp reviews are not the place for matters outside of your own consumer experience. Our Content Guidelines (http://www.yelp.com/guidelines) make clear that reviews should focus on an actual customer experience, and we think this is an important requirement for keeping Yelp a useful site for consumer reviews.
Due to our guidelines, please note that we will not be accepting further postings from you for this listing.
Thanks for your understanding and for keeping our guidelines in mind as you continue to participate on Yelp.
Regards,
Holly
Yelp User Support
San Francisco, California
the last part I can't even understand. What if I did do business with Casey Movers somehow? What if I do in the future?
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Kristen's Mom has reposted
Second. When Kristen told her mom what happened, she decided to sign up for Yelp and post her "first-hand" account.
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Re: Kristen's Mom has reposted
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Yelp removed my review of Casey Movers
Dean, at Yelp, stated that I violated their Content Guidelines, however he declined to say exactly which one. I reviewed their Content Guidelines and I very clearly did not violate any of their guidelines.
So in response to this I helped my mother, the person who actually did business with Casey Movers, create a Yelp profile and post a review.
Her review was showing up under Casey Movers for approximately 45 minutes......and then it was moved to the Filtered Reviews section.
http://www.yelp.com/filtered_reviews/DK4el9_OBk6tLy3sdtfUBg?fsid=UiI4w6nGowYSMGgZHeW_vw
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I am not sure how he can sleep at night knowing that he is running such a joke of a company.
You can see here that you're one of thousands of people who feel the same way you do:
http://m.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco
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Just more skeeze from yelp
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The Real Scandal
I own a business listed on Yelp. It has 45 reviews, 11 filtered reviews, and 0 removed. It's good to know that a scammy business can game the system on there.
Also why is the CAPTCHA necessary to see the filtered reviews? Who would set up a bot to scrape those?
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I got food poisoning on my honeymoon at I'O restaurant in Maui Hawaii. I ordered the trio meat plate. I ate the whole lamb, but my wife tried everything else. I got food poisoning for 1 day. I Yelped about their lack of safe cooking standards, I even posted my chargeback attempt with them on my AmEx. Both my review and later scanned picture of the chargeback letter were both removed.
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San Diego Harbor Police racially profiled me and later submitted false statements to FBI
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Re: San Diego Harbor Police racially profiled me and later submitted false statements to FBI
Pigs protecting pigs.
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Troy Nicol, Australian criminal/cop in San Diego
Google: Troy Nicol Australia
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Go Internall To take them down
What you don't what done to you don't do to others. All your doing hear is advertising. Set up a profile in yelp its no charge
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