Yelp for Business Owners

YELP SALES GUY:" we will issue you $300 worth of free ads. "

Me: "Will the ads stopped running after I've used up the FRE $300 credit?
SALES GUY: "Yeah it will stop once it runs out"

1 month later---

Me: I open my YELP business dashbaord BY CHANCE and finds i've been $156+. I was like, wtf? I got no calls, no nothing from yelp. I call customer service and finally some lady answers with a loud TV in the background (lolz. No joke.) Nothing she could do about the refund (no point of arguing with her. But I had to tell her to tell their "SALES GUY" to not promise them that the ads will stop once the $300 runs out). So she tells me to fill out a form and wait 10 days.

-- 10 days later

I get an email from "BRANDON" saying

"My name is Brandon and I am part of the Yelp Payment Inquiry Team. We have reached a determination regarding a refund request submitted for the accrued charges on your Yelp for Business Owners account (biz.yelp.com).

After further investigation on your account, we've determined a refund is not warranted at this time. We appreciate your patience in waiting for a decision.

We will not be issuing a refund for services delivered as these programs are self-managed and numerous resources are made available regarding the products purchased as well as the ability to stop services at any time within your Yelp for Business Owner's Account.

If you have any further questions in regards to the advertising campaign, please respond to this email.
"

They post bad reviews on my HVAC business with customers I never service or ever seen! Then later asked by phone calls from yelp to pay yelp!

Signed up for a 300 dollar free ad campaign. 10 dollar a day budget and cancelled 11 days after my 30 days at 10 dollar a day maximum trial. Had 8 clicks for 22 days in december was set at 5 clicks for 10 a day maximum... charged 300 dollars for 22 days not 30 like stated. Canceled on Jan 22 11 days after what I thought my cut off was. Had 3 clicks ok ill pay the 13 dollars or what ever no biggie. Get a bill for 267 dollars for 3 clicks. Call them they claim the promotion is for a month so even if i signed up on the 27 id still use the entire 300 dollar promotion. WTF thats not at all what yall stated when setting things up. Secondly they claim my new bill started on the first of jan not the 11 like i was told on setting it up and when i had spoke to the first rep. Earlier. So accoding to them I was charged 300 dollars for 22 days in december and now 267 dollars for 22 days in Jan. How does this billing make any since when there was only 3 clicks. And I am supposed to be charged 10 dollars for 5 clicks a day! This place is a super scam and will twist there words to make them sound as confusing as possible be wary.

Hello, I canceled services on June 9th. Yesterdays date was august 1st. I have recieved a charge to my card for $461.00 causing my card to decline and for me to get an overdraft. I was unable to fill my car up at the gas station due to this rogue charge. I spoke to several reps about this charge and I was talked to in circles. All telling me that I could not speak with a manager. The sales rep that put me onto this plan told me it was $300 with a $100 promotion. NOT $461.00. I am 18 years old barely getting buy. Living Job to Job trying to make a living and start up a company with what little resources I have money not being one of them. I realized $300 was over my head. After several $360 charges to my card I called Jessica K a "Customer Success manager" Whom told me how to go about canceling my account. She explicitly told me my cad will no longer be charged. NOT MY CHARGES WOULD ROLL OVER. This is fraud. To someone who looked to you guys to help him get his business running with barely anything. If I am not credited my money back I will look to pursue legally. Your company makes billions. You scammed me of my money without my consent. I am contacting the Better Business Bureau. I will report this charge to my bank as fraudulent. I will also contact my attorney! Please save me the stress and refund me my hard earned money. Thank you and I look forward to hearing what the next steps are to get my money back.

Where do I start?

I paid $305 for ads in March and received zero referrals. When my bill arrived on April 1, i sent an email requesting a cancellation and I I called. The phone rep said that he couldn't give me a refund, but that April ads would be comped. I said ok.

On May 1, I was charged $226. I didn't notice the charge until May 14th. I called and spoke to a very nice, competent person named Jaye. Based on the case notes, she said I had a great case for a refund. I filled out the form and it was denied.

I called again. This time Ashley told me that I canceled on April 1, but called on April 3rd to reinstate. This is a LIE. Incidentally, all of my case notes were "missing". The calls were not recorded. They flat out lied to me.

I called AGAIN. I waited for 20 minutes, and, when I finally got through, the rep hung up.

Now my company doesn't come up when I search for landscapers. It's not even listed in the top 100.

Yelp should be ashamed of itself for these tactics. I have been lied to and black-balled.

I am working on obtaining refunds through my credit card company. I have the email I sent requesting cancellation. Smoking gun? I hope so.

DO NOT ADVERTISE ON YELP!

Customers taht lose a case in court being allowed to post bad reviews to get even about legal judgement calls

Do not sign up for yelp ads! Total scam and they'll keep the money. No refunds and you get charged after cancelation so keep an eye on it.

I'm a small business owner with a certain budget for advertising. A Yelp sales person contacted me to see if I might be interested in paying for their service to steer customers my way. I was pretty skeptical but she tried a number of angles..."yelp is the preferred search engine for millennials", "Yelp is different and better than other search engines", "customers can contact your business directly through yelp" i. E. it's the most user friendly search engine ever. I bit, but set a spending limit of no more than $300 per month, with the assurance that I would probably never reach that limit and, if I did, my business would be growing proportionally. Last month they billed my credit card for $525 and I can't recall a single customer that found me through Yelp (I do check with each customer to see how they found me). I called to cancel and they tried the old "Oh... we're sorry we feel that way." Then..."if you really want to cancel, you can go online and cancel through our website." This of course sounds like an exercise in futility to me, so I demanded that for $525 of zero value, surely they are capable of shutting it down on their end. FINALLY they agreed to shut off my account. We'll see if they do. Oh, and by the way, they can't forward you to a supervisor if you ask. They're a frigging "state of the art" search engine, and you can't go up the chain of command if you are looking for answers? They are web criminals in my opinion. I'll be watching to see if they actually shut off my account, and I'll also notify my credit card company that I do not want to honor any more charges from Yelp. I'll be surprised is any of this goes smoothly.

Yelp also scammed me regarding promotional ads. Stated I would get $300 in free ads for the month if I set up my ad campaign. They walked me through it on the phone, and explained their $300.00 credit should cover the amount for the ads. NOPE, at the end of the 'billing period', they charged my $291.00. When I called in, they said, well, the charges and details were on the last page where you clicked, get started. So, my bad for believing the rep. Then, the following month, I was charged another $180 for absolutely nothing, even though they said "You will not be charged any more." I should have cancelled the credit card and dealt with changing my other recurring charges... BTW, there is absolutely no way to remove your billing information from your account. Once you put it in there, you cannot change it or remove it. REALLY, this was for the ads you told me how to set up, so that I would NOT BE CHARGED the first month... DO NOT EVER USE THIS COMPANY FOR ANY KIND OF ADVERTISING OR CAMPAIGNS, BAD NEWS.

Only promise you promo $$. They actually take your budget and divide by the clicks and send you bill.

After a number of telephone calls from Yelp representatives, I was politely walked through the sign-up website to try Yelp. I was also shown how to discontinue my ads. So, I decided to try it for one months. I set the "trial" to end on the last day of the month I signed up. I thought this was all I had to do, my understanding from the Yelp representative. However, my credit card was billed for the first month - OK, but then it was billed for the 2nd month and then the 3rd month. I called to get a refund for the two months. The Yelp person on the phone explained that I only stopped my receiving of results, and that I have to go to another place on their website to actually stop the ads.
This was not explained to me by the Yelp representative when signing up. Not only have I not received a refund, Yelp is still billing me for another month, "your ads were still running." Yelp is a SCAM, or why would they have a program that when you shut down wanting to receive reports that it does not shut down the advertising? Yelp should be shut down by the government for stealing from small businesses. Any decent company would not require a special way to stop billing when the business requests discontinuing the reports. And any decent company would gladly refund this overcharge. DON'T USE YELP - RUN FROM THIS CHEATING SCAM!

I am a small business owner in Fremont, California. I have been advertising on Yelp for the past 5-6 years. Recently, I noticed that my business performance is way down compared to last year and after doing some research, I realized that I am not getting same number of customers from Yelp compared to last year. I started to do some digging and found out that even after I increased my budget from $4,000 to $5,000 per month, I am getting even less customers from Yelp than last month. I did some more research and found out that Yelp has increased the cost of "pay-per-click" over 50%. We as advertisers do not choose the cost per click, Yelp does (unlike google and other platforms) and the way they do it by making advertisers to believe there is an automatic auction and other factors that can change the cost per click, misleading verbiage. Basically, what Yelp does is to calculate the cost per click based on my monthly budget divided by the number of clicks. Another words, if they underperform or cut their cost down on advertising to generate more revenue, I pay a higher price for Yelp. Or if there is a slow month, Yelp does not care, they get paid no matter what. To give you an idea, if there are 100,000 clicks per month in one region generated by Yelp and total budget for that region is $400,000, the cost per click would be $4, but if next month there are 50,000 clicks for the same region, then the cost per click goes up to $8 for Yelp to make the same revenue of $400,000.
I called Yelp and talked to two different people and they had no answer and even they agreed with me, there was nothing they could do about it nor gave me a number for their superior. I have spoken to many other Yelp advertisers and they all feel they are getting cheated out of their money. My $5,000 budget is exactly how much Yelp charges my card, $5,000, not a penny less or more. What Yelp is doing is exactly like if I charge my customers 50% more simply because I had a slow month!
I have spent over $250,000 on Yelp over the past few years and I think I have been overcharged over $100,000.
I advertised on Google in the past, the difference is that I get to pick the cost per click for keywords and my budget was $4,000 per month, at the end of the month it was never $4,000 but close to it ($3,500 to $3,900), simply number of clicks multiplied by cost that I picked.
Look into your account and you will see, and if you can find a way to do something about it, please don't hesitate to share

I can't stand Yelp. They are the worst. They call almost everyday to have you sign up for there service. Literally for the past three years they called almost everyday. They don't have a DNC list. Then i finally try out their service for one month and of course it does nothing. I wasted my money on ads and highlighting my business for one month. I thought i had signed up for a monthly service because they don't inform you it is a year subscription to highlight more info about your business. Now they won't cancel my account and they say i owe till the end of the year paying for a service that produces ZERO RESULTS. Then they offered FREE ads for the inconvenience this has caused me. I receive ZERO LEADS FROM RUNNING ADS and then the next months BILL IS DOUBLE because they charge you a monthly fee To run ads even when you're not actively running ads (TOTAL BULL$#*!) On top of this dumpster fire of a company, They prize themselves on being a Review based business yet NONE of MY 30,5 STAR REVIEWS SHOW UP ON EITHER BUSINESS PAGE! DO NOT EVER PAY FOR THEIR SERVICE! #CANCELYELP