Comment by sean_patel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sean_patel | Hacker News Reader

This is nothing new. Kathleen Richards, an investigative reporter with the East Bay Express, reported on this at length back in 2009.

See "Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0" => ( 2009 ) http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-...

EDIT 2: Mobile view (1st page only) if browsing from iPhones, Droids... https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbaye...

I remember being alarmed that time when I read this. So I asked a local Indian Restaurant owner located on 2nd Street and Market Street here in San Francisco, with who I had become good friends with, since he was from the same city as my dad (Bombay).

The restaurant used to be called "Bhindi". The owner pretty much confirmed everything in that report. He even told me that the Yelp Marketing guy threatened to display his low star ratings on top and completely hide true 5-star ratings if they (the restaurant) did not buy at-least 300$ worth of ads from Yelp every month. Eventually that restaurant went out of business (don't think it was related to the Yelp Extortion 2.0 though, definitely didn't help either) and now there's Mehfil in it's place.

EDIT: Her follow up story: "Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up" https://web.archive.org/web/20090616170118/http://www.eastba...

I know that place! It's been the same restaurant but with different names for, what feels like, every few months from 2011 until about 2013 when I moved out of the city.

I first thought it was a front for something shady, but now it makes sense to why they kept changing their name so often!

Unfortunately the link to that story is entering a redirect loop on my iPhone.

Does anyone have a link to that story which works on an iPhone?

You're right. on mobile phone (iPhone) it goes into endless redirect. Crashed my safari also.

Here's a mobile URL I found on the internet archives. After it loads, tap the "Reader View" on the browser so you can see the story properly. https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbaye...

Are there any recordings of such calls?

I know, I thought of the same thing, and I did ask the "Bhindi" owner about that (voicemails) in 2009. He said that he had a bunch of emails from the marketing / sales guys, but he was wary of sharing it with me for obvious reasons. Most restaurants still live and die by yelp ratings, because people google a restaurants name and the 1st thing that comes up is the Yelp page, since most restaurants also do not have a decent website, if at all. So if someone sees 3* or lower at the top, they look for something else. "Bhindi" owner even told me that hipster yelp reviewers used to ask "extra chicken" in their 5$ Chicken Korma lunch box, and would threaten to write a low star review on yelp if they were not given it. I don't think Yelp has any control over such people or behaviour though.

Anyways, I had written to Kathleen Richards and remember connecting the two of them at that time, since it was way out of my league to investigate and report on something like this.

Few months after this story, Kathleen Richards wrote a follow up on her original story titled "Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up" which was a more or less "defensive story" because Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman critisized her original story and trashed her. That story is going to a 404, but I was able to pull it up from the Internet Archives => "Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up" https://web.archive.org/web/20090616170118/http://www.eastba...

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