I think Yelp is f'ing up on this one.

Either emulate Amazon's solution of allowing all users to comment on individual reviews, or don't do it at all.

Owners should be able to make their own comments on their place some other way, with clear delineation as to their role.

This is going to be really awkward. Why does my anecdotal experience make me believe that half of small business owners are scumbags and the typical emotionally raw, socially underdeveloped trash that can be found on daytime TV? Then again, I find consumers to be cut from a similar mold: entitled trash who only care about the short-term cost.

I never know how to read blog/forum public reviews like Yelp. I find the vast majority of people to lack class (at all income levels), tact, and reason. I find people to be incredibly irrational, emotional beings. Sure, it's easy to see a bad business when people have tons of complaints and very few positive reviews, but what about those that sit in-between?

I don't know how Yelp has planned out how to police this, but I imagine it'll be difficult. Unless they can somehow convince some people to basically work for free like a forum moderator, this is going to cost them a good amount of change. On the plus side, it'll add some integrity to the site, so it's probably a solid investment. It'll certainly help me decide on those in-between businesses where I can visually see the argument being made and decide who I would believe is right.

I'm not familiar with this site, but I would think that it is a good thing that a business can respond directly. Too often, we just get one side of the story.

@Blinky987: you sound like a charming person.

@Blinky987: You don't like people much, do you?

This is a good thing. If the owners want to be combative, people can see that and choose not to visit the establishment. If the owners are nice and respond with constructive responses, then people can see that too. There are definitely people who have terrible experiences and there are always people who just want to piss all over everything. This gives owners the opportunity to say, sorry we messed up and please give us another chance. It also gives them a chance to respond to the more incendiary comments. This is good for everyone.

@kateblack:

Amazon's system is so broken. There are SOOOO many items on there with fake reviews. When I went to buy law school review books, miraculously every book under the sun had hundreds of 5 star reviews, yet they all soundly strangely well-written. When I started to investigate the 1 and 2 star reviews, it became obvious that the majority of reviews are fake. I wouldn't trust Amazon's review system at all, though I wish I could.

$25? That better be one damn good margarita!

Oh goodie.

Now my local pizza joint can respond to the complaint about the quality and price of the lobster they purportedly sell (per the whiner on yelp)

@Blinky987:

The problem you talk about is the problem that plagues all voluntary surveys. People generally only respond if they have strong feelings either way. People in the middle are unlikely to take time out of their day to go to Yelp and write a 2.5 star review talking about how everything was okay but not great. Oftentimes, even people who have great experiences will not seek out review services such as these. Most of the time, however, negative reviews have a way of coming out of the wood work. The people with the strongest feelings will be the majority of responders and these are mostly going to be negative. This is a basic tenet of statistics.

@sparklesaurus: I am, actually! It's possible to be a complete people hater while hiding it!

It also gives you appreciation for all the fine things in life when they're done well. I tend to notice when anything breaks my very meager expectations, and I thank people properly for it. Most people would take something like a shuttle bus driver for granted, but my last one at the airport was so fantastic that I had to tell him that he was the best shuttle driver ever and tip him extra nice. I hoped, at least to him, that someone acknowledging his effort was more valuable than the cash, but cash is certainly the way in which we show our gratitude best.

Some person gets their soup and it's cold. Obviously they can have it reheated or they can be served a new portion from a new batch. Seems fine. I've seen people flip out about this when it's clear that the problem is going to be remedied. Sure, it's a problem in that in the scope of the transaction, you'd expect that they could at least serve you soup correctly. In the scope of your day, if getting cold soup is the worst thing that happened to you, it has been a pretty good day. That's how I look at things, but people get emotional over the most meaningless inconveniences.

I have seen people cry over a dinner going poorly. If you're the type of person who can shed tears over a meal, you should realize you're going to have another meal in four hours. You're probably also the person who goes on Yelp and cries that your soup was cold or that you had to wait for an hour once for food.

If I went to a place twice and received terrible service both times, or went to a place once and had a completely terrible interaction with someone, I would write about it. However, like the article outlined, some people are just plain dumb. The place didn't even serve the dish the patron complained about, and this new system will basically allow owners to say "you are an idiot," but in a much nicer fashion.

I will admit I use yelp on almost a daily basis. As they have it right now business owners can respond via e-mail with people who have posted good/bad reviews. I get e-mails quite often and most of the time they are for positive reviews I have written about the company.

I am not really sure what this is going to do to yelp.

@xthexlanternx: That system actually works reasonably well on the estimable Dave's Garden Watchdog:
[davesgarden.com]

Owners are clearly labeled as such, and yeah, they don't always do themselves a favor by responding. (I think, for instance, that an owner defensively responding to the above complaint with the information that his margarita only costs $25 is not using the system to his business's benefit.)

@Blinky987:

A lot of Americans have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Too many kids are raised with everything handed to them and don't realize the work that goes into the little things they take for granted. There isn't really anything you can do about this other than practice what you preach and raise good children of your own (if you ever have any).

@xthexlanternx: I meant the design, not the checks & balances in place.

Yelp has more than it's fair share of fake reviews. It's only going to get worse as the site gets more popular.

This is not going to go well. I see an increase in back handed responses and fake reviews to balance out bad reviews and fake bad reviews to balance out the fake good reviews...

@Blinky987: The problem is that 5-10% of the businesses are stellar, just top notch. 5-10% of businesses are garbage. These two categories make up 95% of reviews you see online. I'd wager also that a good 75% of that 95% are for the worst of the two categories. If you are running a terrible business you will abuse the system.

If you are a prickish human being you will abuse the system whether you are a businessman or a customer.

@xthexlanternx: Are you my grandfather?

Seriously. This is the same thing that every generation has said about everyone else since the dawn of time.

@xthexlanternx: I agree. As long as anonymous people can't pretend to be the business owner I don't see a problem here.

all in all, it's better to let them respond rather than have them suing everyone for bad reviews

@xthexlanternx: Right on. When I used to work in a customer service based business, the saying was, for every excellent customer experience, that person will tell about 3 other people about it. For every bad customer experience, they will tell at least 10 people. The people in between don't tell anybody anything. I've done the same. I only write customer reviews for products or services if I loved it or if I hated it (I hate you V-Moda, don't ever buy V-Moda products they are crap and their customer service is F-). See, still salty.

I agree with Yelp's decision. I am a server at a popular restaurant and I'd say that at least 1 out of every three bad reviews contains blatantly erroneous information.

@nakedscience: No. I often think of times when I could just clone myself and know that work is going to be done and done well. Most people coast through life, whereas I'm observing nearly every minute of it. In that, you watch people make the worst decisions possible and you have to wonder how their brain works in that way where they came to the conclusion that X action was the best possible choice. Let's not even talk about if the person will be able to process how poorly X action was and be able to make future decisions based on this new knowledge.

@xthexlanternx: Completely agree. I guess subconsciously, now consciously, I recognize that and it is partly the motivation of why I try to go out of my way when something goes well. I'm also the type of person who leaves detailed Amazon feedback on transactions, ebay feedback, and will write reviews for products I own. If I like something, I certainly want people to know that someone of very discerning taste likes it. I agree with you that most people will not take the time out to do this.

I also find flaws in even my most favorite things because I'm always examining and analyzing things, and I'm willing to write 99 reviews for items I like in the hopes that 1 review is read by someone who cares and can take action on it.

@redskull: Unless they are using something like Herradura Suprema it had better be two damned good margaritas.

Seems like a good idea to me. If someone's bitching about the turkey meatloaf and the restaurant doesn't even serve turkey meatloaf, that tells me a lot about the reviewer.

If the restaurant owner points out that the most expensive margarita on his menu is $25 when I know that sales tax in LA is near 10% (which puts the cost close to $28), that also tells me a lot about the restaurant owner.

@undefined: Unless you live in Los Angeles...then it's one mediocre marg...sigh.

which is why this frog drinks at home.

@Troy F.: I want to clarify that the NYT points out the cost of the magarita, not the owner, but if the owner did try to pick on that, it would be an indicator to me.

@Troy F.: Yeah, you just know, the restaurant owner who denied selling meatloaf really meant "well, we don't call it turkey meatloaf, we call it Melange de Gobbler..." I figured as much about the margarita price, so yeah, that sounds about right.

@snowburnt: I'd also wager that 63% of all statistics online are made up on the spot.

@nakedscience: Yeah, doesn't Homer totally bitch about "kids today" back in ancient Greek times?

@Yossarian: If anyone is making margaritas with Herradura's premiums, they deserve to be slapped.

That's a sipping tequila.

@Blinky987: I tend to agree with you both about small business owners (as well as the local representatives of large businesses) and consumers (and include myself in that crowd: remember that sometimes YOU are the idiot in a situation). To summarize: people suck and should be destroyed.

more on topic: I have a friend who is a yelp addict, she comments on every single place of business she goes to and does so in a fair manner (e.g. her expectations are reasonable and she doesn't rave or rant unless truly warranted). When considering the value of a comment I'd also consider the history of specific commenters. Being able to log in and flag my 'preferred' commenters would be nice.

@Troy F.: If the owner it too stupid to know what sales tax is, his business needs to fail.
Plus I would not trust that the owner didn't remove the item from the menu. Because clearly the 28 dollar margarita was true, so I doubt the meatloaf was a lie.

@Rectilinear Propagation: That's an excellent point. I hadn't considered that.

@SynMonger: there's also 3 types of lies: Lies, Damned lies, and statistics.

//props to Mr. Twain.

@Blinky987:

Of course, too, the person that cried over the poor dinner could have had a really, REALLY bad day and that was just the last straw!

@Troy F.: for ever case that there's a justified response, there's 20 crappy businesses trying to mitigate damage by blaming the customer rather than fix the problem

@Blinky987: At first I thought you were being kind of a d-bag, but now I think I kind of like you because you make a good point. My pet peeve is the people on Amazon, etc. that give a product a one star rating because of something Amazon or the post office did (i.e. the product was shipped late or arrived damaged).

I like this idea. I have read hotel reviews where the costumer complained about his whole stay and the manager replied to his comment and offered a free night. It made me stay at that hotel because the owner cared enough to monitor his hotel's reviews. I have also had dinners where I complained about poor service and poor food to the manager and he gave us a free dinner. It turns out that the regular cook was sick and the next dinner was great. We still go back to that restaurant because the manager made it right and we have not had a bad meal.

@kateblack:
There is a reason why I start with the bad reviews when looking at stuff on amazon. Read the worst and sort the sour grapes from the legit complaints and you're likely to have a better view of what to expect than reading glowing reviews.

@kateblack: Agreed, but that's the one that came to mind in the ballpark of price per ounce for a "reasonable" $25 margarita, at least away from the coasts.

The gist was that a margarita with expensive enough tequila to justify that price shouldn't have that kind of tequila in it. It is, if I may say so, a Catch-22.

@HiPwr: I agree, and reading the responses from the businesses can really give you an idea of what they are like. Are the comments nasty? Do they ever admit mistake or do they deny every charge against them?

Wow, the restaurant doesn't have turkey meatloaf on the menu, so they couldn't have possible served it? No specials, ever???

That's a restaurant surely worthy of highly rated reviews.

@kateblack:

Kindly disagree, Trip Advisor has been doing this for years with their "management response" feature, allowing hotel management to dispute hearsay, or provide correct information by a defamatory and angry reviewer. Works great.

However, one could say, the entire web 2.0 social media review model is broken; with most reviews leaning towards "this product/store changed my life!", or "i received a rash and they stole money from me at this product/store!".

garbage.

I'm a big user and believer in Yelp because I've had excellent experiences with it on many levels. I'm about to embark on it from a business side rather than a consumer side as well, and I'm looking forward to it.

To me, this is an excellent idea that allows even more direct communication between business owners and customers, much like that which we see on Twitter where customers are able to get direct responses from dedicated CS reps using Twitter as a communication tool.

If it sucks, then no one will use it and it'll die on the vine, but in theory, I think it sounds like a great idea and I'm anxious to use it to communicate with my company's customers.

@Blinky987: Blinky987, you are, BY FAR, my new favorite person on this entire website. Do you have a blog? Or a newsletter? I would seriously be there in a heartbeat.

@Drew5764: Wait, they can't be a good restaurant without turkey meatloaf? Is that what you're seriously saying????

@Corporate_guy: Um, you think he removed an item from his menu because of a bad review? What corporation do you work for and how much bail out money did you get?

Personally, I'd like to respond to some of those Yelpers myself. For example, I see a three star rating accompanying a completely positive review, where did the two stars go? And I'd like to know why a vegetarian is screwing up the ratings by reviewing a steakhouse.