We had 5 great reviews (no bad) on Yelp. Sure enough, they contacted us to buy advertising. While we were speaking, I looked online and all but one of our company reviews had disappeared. When I asked the salesman about it, he explained that they have an "algorithm" that FILTERS OUT INFREQUENT REVIEWERS. When I pushed him for a better explanation he said, "5% of people make the decisions for the other 95% everyday, we use the same principle."

I told him that I was personally a Yelp member but only did reviews about 4x/yr - when a company was outstanding or if they really sucked. He responded that only I could see my reviews, but others couldn't because I'm not a frequent reviewer. That was it for me. This company operates on principles that are completely unpalatable. All our reviews eventually have disappeared. No loss, we have never received a new customer from Yelp anyway. And I let my personal account go inactive.

This company are scammers. They allow companys to PAY to have their bad reviews removed. I have a friend that works at YELP and we had a long discussion about this. I have written over 30 reviews and about 10 are bad. 7 of the 10 reviews have been removed by YELP after the company PAID them to remove it. THEY NEED TO HAVE A DISCLAIMER THAT THEY DO THIS BECAUSE IT IS VERY BIASED AND MISLEADS CONSUMERS WHO USE THEIR SITE.

This site is for 'consumers' to rate business, like ripoff, but its more misleading. Thing is, when consumers report bad services *like being ripped off* most reviews *like mine which were mostly negative towards bad businesses cheating me out of money* were deleted b/c business owners got mad. Oh boo hoo.

Its annoying that only good reviews were allowed to stay and negative ones were deleted, when mine didn't violated the terms of use. A site for consumers to share their experience, positive a/o negative, are not given the full portunity to report bad service, since they'll be deleted right away.

Most are good and bad reviews but mine, which are about bad ripoff insurance agencies and banks were deleted b/c the YELP community felt it needed to be taken down. Plus business owners threw a wittle tantrum b/c I was giving them a bad name for their already bad service. Oh poor babies.

I find this yelp.com site completely misleading and favors bad businesses. If the consumers cant warn people about terrible businesses, which would help unknowing consumers of the trials and tribulations that they would mostly encounter, why even bother having the site at all. This site IS a RIP OFF!!