Just two and a half years ago, Yelp acquired the food delivery site and app Eat24, which seemed like a complementary business at the time. Now GrubHub is buying the site for $287.5 million — a little more than double what Yelp paid for it in 2015 — while the two companies will keep linking to each other and referring customers back and forth. [More]
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Yale Dean Apologizes For Snooty, Elitist Yelp Reviews
By 5.17.17
In theory, college deans are supposed to advise and mentor students, sometimes guiding them through times where their worst impulses might get the best of them. Hopefully, Yale students are not following the lead of one dean who repeatedly used Yelp to make rude, condescending comments about local businesses and her fellow customers. [More]
Robots Now Delivering Food For Yelp’s Eat24 Service In San Francisco
By 4.12.17
Yelp’s Eat24 food delivery service is making it easier for some users who want to avoid interacting with humans as much as possible, deploying robots in San Francisco to bring food to customers. [More]
Jewelry Store Worker Ordered To Pay $34.5K For Posting Fake Yelp Review Of Rival
By 4.6.17
While it might be tempting to trash a competing business online, faking a Yelp review can be costly, as one Massachusetts jewelry store employee recently found out. [More]
Yelp Buys Restaurant Waitlist Tech Company Nowait For $40M
By 3.1.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
Yelp is trying to change the way users visit restaurants — or the way in which they wait for a table with the $40 million purchase of Nowait, a startup that uses technology to streamline the seating process at restaurants around the country. [More]
Company Demands Thousands Of Dollars Over Negative Yelp Reviews, Despite Federal Law
By 2.1.17
In December, after an inexplicably long trip through the legislative process, President Obama signed the Consumer Review Fairness Act, making it illegal for companies to demand that consumers sign away their right to speak honestly. However, not everyone seems to have gotten this message. [More]
Speak Freely America: New Federal Law Outlaws Gag Clauses That Punish You For Negative Reviews
By and 12.14.16
A new federal law will be born today. If it is signed by President Obama, one of his final acts in office will be to enshrine into law one of the core principles on which Consumerist — now in its eleventh year — was founded: That honest consumers have the right to complain. [More]
California Supreme Court To Review Yelp’s Case For Not Removing Allegedly Defamatory Reviews
By 9.22.16
Two months after a California appeals court attempted to put an end to a years-long dispute between a lawyer and a former client she accused of posting defamatory reviews by ordering Yelp to take down the comments, the Supreme Court of California unanimously agreed to hear an appeal of the case. [More]
No, Yelp’s Star Ratings Don’t Make It Liable For Bad Reviews
By 9.13.16
Federal law generally protects websites from liability for content posted by third parties, otherwise online review platforms like Yelp would need to vet every single review before it gets published. But a small-business owner in Washington believes Yelp is liable because of its star ratings and because Yelp reviews can end up on Google search results. [More]
House Passes Bill Outlawing “Gag Clauses” That Try To Punish Customers For Writing Negative Reviews
By 9.12.16
We’re nearing the finish line for a piece of legislation that will make it illegal for companies to put so-called “gag orders” in their customer contracts to prevent consumers from sharing their honest opinions with the rest of the world. [More]
Petsitter Loses $1 Million Lawsuit Over Negative Yelp Review
By 8.30.16
The six-month saga of the Texas petsitter who sued a customer for up to $1 million in damages over a negative Yelp review appears to have come to an end, with a judge agreeing to dismiss the case that made national headlines. [More]
Yelp, TripAdvisor Not Happy With Google’s New Critics’ Review Search Results
By 8.8.16
TripAdvisor and Yelp, two of the biggest names in crowdsourced reviews, say that Google is using its position as the dominant online search engine to push Google-backed reviews ahead of links to review sites. [More]
Yelp Explains Why It’s Flagging “Questionable Legal Threats” In Reviews
By 7.26.16
A couple months ago, while writing an update to the ongoing saga of the Texas couple being sued for writing a negative Yelp review about their petsitter, we noticed that Yelp had flagged the petsitter’s page with an alert that this particular review was being challenged in court. Now the company is going a step further, flagging reviews that have led to “Questionable Legal Threats.” [More]
Yelp Ordered To Remove Allegedly Defamatory Reviews Of Law Firm
By 6.10.16
Two years after a California lawyer won a default judgment against a former client accused of posting defamatory reviews of the law firm on Yelp, those reviews remained online. However, this week a California appeals court ruled that Yelp must finally remove these reviews. [More]
Couple That Was Sued For $1M Over Yelp Review Asks Court To Dismiss Lawsuit
By 6.2.16
For months, we’ve been following the saga of the Texas couple who were first sued by their petsitter for $6,766 over a negative Yelp review, only to have that case dropped and re-filed as a full-on defamation lawsuit seeking up to $1 million in damages. Now, the couple is asking the court to just throw the entire case out because it should be prohibited by Texas state law. [More]
Some Health Providers Are Sharing Patients’ Info Online In Reaction To Bad Yelp Reviews
By 5.27.16
Now that we live in a world where it seems everything can be rated — from your restaurant experience to your root canal — privacy issues are popping up in unexpected places. Like in health care providers’ responses to negative reviews from patients on Yelp, for example. [More]
Petsitter Now Suing Couple For Up To $1 Million For Negative Yelp Review
By 5.5.16
A couple months back, we told you of the Texas couple that was being sued for a few thousand dollars by a petsitter over a negative Yelp review that allegedly violated a “non-disparagement” clause in the petsitter’s contract. That suit was quickly dropped, but a new complaint filed by the petsitting business has ramped up the allegations and the dollar amount, now seeking between $200,000 to $1 million in damages. [More]
Facebook, Reddit, Wells Fargo, Bank Of America CEOs Among Those Urging North Carolina To Repeal New Anti-LGBT Law
By 3.31.16
Earlier this month, in a hurried legislative process, North Carolina lawmakers passed HB2, a bill that overrides and prevents local governments from establishing anti-discrimination rules against gay and transgender people. This morning, advocacy groups delivered a letter to NC Gov. Pat McCrory signed by top executives from more than 100 companies, all calling for the state to repeal the law. [More]
