Yelp for Business Owners

I have a basic business account with Yelp with no cost. Besides the advertisement guy kept calling me which I refused to do anything with them. Everything seems ok. So recently they kept sending me message of the bonus $300, so I was like why not. I clicked on it, nothing particular shows my pricing or anything. A few weeks later they charge my credit card for $540 all the sudden! I am in the middle disputing that. I cannot even remove my credit card info in my yelp account, very similar to Home Advisor. I will advise you DO NOT take any offers from YELP. They probably lure everyone in with this promo. The messed up thing is with this charged suppose to increase my leads but I have no major increase on the leads, means this is just another way to scam your money with their make-up campaign system.

Signed by business up and was offered what I believed to be "trial run or bonus credit for new businesses". I tried to use the offer to try out their ad platform, but it turned out the offer was more like a top up. I was charged above $400 in just 10 days! Once I noticed that I cancelled the campaign altogether and called them.
All they did was to "apologize for the inconvenience" and refusing to refund any already made charges.

I believe the company is playing on the mental model of the customers who come from the user experience of being offered a promotion to try out a platform when they join. Yelp refuses to highlight the fact that the customer is going to be charged before the promotion kicks in and plays on this mental model. I don't have the right statistics to support my claim, but at the very least, it was the case for me.

I started a Yelp biz for home cleaning. I was super nervous about after reading all the bad reviews. Get ahold of Kevin DWork senior elite director to help you set your page up. He's up front honest and he'll explain how to run your Yelp biz page. Super helpful

I tried to service out in the past for a few months and more recently for a few months and I find that a majority not all but a vast majority of the calls or request receive through the Yelp for business are people looking for pricing that falls in line with the unlicensed contractor or handyman type I don't find a disservice is beneficial to a licensed contractor possibly in the service industry for electrical plumbing so on and so forth HVAC but not for a contractor doing major renovations.
As most of all contractors know it is nearly impossible to compete with pricing from an unlicensed person that doesn't have Insurance liability Worker's Comp. Or licensure to pay for.

They called me several times & left vms/emails. Finally one day I answered. The guy assured me I wouldn't pay anything until after 30 days. Told me I had a $300 credit to use to get started. Helped me build an amazing looking Yelp page. Sure I did have 2 ppl reach out in a week. Which should be normal if something like this works. I'm happy with that part. What I'm not happy about is seeing $103.27 that was taken out of my account without my permission. After seeing all the other reviews looks like I'm not the only one they've done this to! I changed my card info on the site and reached out to who is supposed to be my rep. I hope I get my money back. This is a critical time for me while expanding my business. I really can't afford a hit like this. I wouldn't suggest Yelp to anyone.

I have always tried to be savey on business. Yelp promised me to moon. It was supposed to be 450 a month. After a week i had 2 clicks. Late night I checked in. I didnt have any responses. And a bill from Yelp for 113 dollars. THATS IT. Since i had used a credit card... i went to the bank next morning. Explained it to the manager. She said cancel the card and get a new one. Bingo. I wrote the CS. "Hate to see you go" All other BS. Blah blah blah. Email says "But you will be charged at the end of the month" yeah good luck with that. So instead of me being reactive. I was proactive. They got 113 from me. But that will be it..

DO NOT engage with these people. Complete scam. They use a play on words to "help" you set up your account and tell you there are no upfront charges and that you will have no charges today and even offer a $300 ad credit for when/if you decide to run an ad. Then 30 days down the road they try and charge you over and over for ads you never authorized. I have called "customer success" multiple times and they have all hung up on me as the call progresses. This site and team is a total scam and needs to be reported to the Attorney General.

Yelp Ads are utterly worthless. The problem is that their keyword filters do nothing to keep service seekers looking for other things from clicking on your ad instead. In my case I place an ad with them for several months hoping to get prospects seeking the services of a tax attorney. I selected the right keywords from their very limited keyword menu, and also selected the correct filters to keep people looking for tax return preparation from clicking on my ad. The filter did not work at all. The only contacts I ended up getting were from people looking to get H&R Block tax returns completed! And even on those contacts I could not even get these people on the phone. This was the most disappointing experience I have ever had in placing an ad. Do yourself a favor and stay far, far away from this company.

Tried them once, never again. Was so disgusted at the pathetic service that I ended the contract one month early even though it meant I would pay an early termination fee - still better than keeping it. I told them, then, that IF they charge me that fee, I would never consider them again. They charged and now I love telling each new sales person they setup for my area, that until they reimburse that fee, I have NO interest in talking with them at all (and reimburse on good faith not with the promise of future business). It was a pretty worthless service. 'priority this', 'BS that'. My fault for signing up but I now want to help others avoid the unnecessary cost and to use their money more wisely. Will it get you more 'leads'? Sure!. But so would spending a butt load of money on TV ads but the key point is ROI and theirs is very poor. So, I STRONGLY recommend you look elsewhere for your precious marketing dollars!

They're going to reel you in with "free trial" services that don't really amount to that. They divide those credits through several months and make the site difficult to navigate so you can cancel services that also do NOT provide any benefits to your business. Invest your money in something worth while.

If you value your sanity, and your checkbook, you will hang up the minute Yelp contacts you... and carefully review any (oh, the many emails you will get) emails you receive from them to be 100% certain that you don't inadvertently fall for their come-ons and subscribe to an "advertising program". Their advertising program means nothing, and will produce no results, despite what they tell you.
BTW - - Their "free" offer is not free. You will give them your credit card number to secure your "free" advertising, and next thing you know, you have been billed for $500+/month is various programs and add-ons.
Never, ever do business with these people. If you try to get out of it, you will find it very difficult, and you will ultimately find yourself having paid $1000's of dollars (yes, as a sole proprietor) for nothing.
These folks PREY on small business owners being too busy to fully comprehend the trap that is Yelp for Business. Stay far away!

This company should be liquidated. They have reduced productivity, wasted peoples time and done so much of nothing that several lifetimes of wasted hours are forever gone from history. If everyone that spent time dealing with this so called company spent that same time picking up litter the planet would be as clean as it was in 10,000 BC.

Yelp Biz offers you a $300 credit to try it out but you enter your card. I didn't get a single cent of business out of it and didn't realize you only have 2 weeks to cancel. My personal debit card was charged $178.44. It's hard to get to their billing, they sent me some form and told me their 'Premium Team' will review it. I am yet to get a refund. Don't try it. Get a free Google Business account!

I have been a faithful advertiser on yelp since 2020, I ask several clients who we did/do business to give us an honest review of our services. Over the last 3 years Yelp has refuse to allow any of our good reviews on to the site and the one bad review we got from a client we turned down; they immediately posted that one. Yelp says "don't ask for reviews" this is the exact opposite of Business 101, the number one thing all businesses do and should always do, is ask for a referral. What is a review nothing more than a referral. So, my days of spending my hard earn advertising dollars at Yelp are over. Yes, they are a $2.65 Billion dollar company and don't need my little ad dollars. To that all I will say is two words. BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO!