Today's winner comes to us courtesy of a post at Jeff Soyer's place. It seems the Union Street Guesthouse in New York state tried to charge clients $500 for every negative review posted about their services. Unfortunately, they appear never to have heard of the Streisand Effect . . . because all sorts of people are now posting negative reviews about them on Yelp.com. Here's a small sample.
I am using my first amendment rights to voice my opinion that I hope this place goes under and the moron who thought he was going to get away with fining people $500 for leaving bad reviews ends up working at McDonalds.
. . .
Per "Union Street Guest House Rules," I was only allowed to use their crapper once a day, or risk being charged an extra "toilet fee." I had to ask my girlfriend of only 3 months to hammer a cork into my rectum to prevent my powerful urge to defecate a second time.
. . .
I'm not sure what the big deal is about charging a $500 fee for posting a negative review.
In fact, all 906 of you are in direct violation of the Union Streets policy and by my accounting they're owed $453,000 from you people.
. . .
Caught crabs from a women I met at the reception. I think she was a caterer. 2 stars for the chicken Parmesan! But I think it was outsourced.
There are many more comments at the link, although Yelp is being accused of taking down several hundred negative reviews. Even so, those that remain (and are constantly being augmented) are amusing, entertaining, and - I have little doubt - not precisely the reaction that the Union Street Guesthouse was hoping for . . .
Peter
I just listened to an interview with the Yelpmaster himself where he declared that the process was 'democratic' in light of some businesses being concerned that they got bad reviews quite possibly from competitors. If you don't want to play in that nasty quadrant, your business is at risk.
ReplyDeleteSo, my point is that if Yelp is taking down negative reviews, they are simply imitating the democratic PARTY, where you remove votes you don't like, rather than being, in fact, democratic.
Let the markets self-regulate!
I never use Yelp - I've thought it was a load of crap since the beginning.
Anyway, interesting, no?