I advertised with Yelp with their Yelp Impressions program and called it quits after disputes with review problems and Yelp acting inconsistent. For example, you get an irrational reviewer posting several reviews on Yelp, the reviewer is removed from the site, yet one review is taken off completely and the other identical one remains as "not recommended." I've also seen Yelp deliberately violate their own policies and my complaints fell on deaf ears. A big part of that is the staff that handles calls for businesses that pay for advertising and that call in to complain. They are unyielding and will not allow you to escalate matters to a manager. That means they get a lot of complaints.
So I got hounded for years and recently tried a trial advertisement involving their pay for click. Like all of their sales people, they misrepresent what they have to offer, what you're actually paying for, and are vague on pricing. DO NOT buy their pay for click. It's a complete waste of money and they push it because they over charge for what you receive to make quicker revenue.
Some people will buy it and this is what I advise: Whatever they tell you, tell the salesman to put in writing and send an email. Since you're registered they have your email account and will certainly send an email to confirm the sale. So they have no excuse to not provide whatever information you request.
Of particular importance is how they price their ads and how they will charge you. Unlike the impressions program where they bill you in advance each month, for Pay for Click, they bill you after the fact. Any ad incentives get lost if you stop advertising. They tell you you can carry over ad clicks that weren't used. Have them put that in writing. When you realize the program shows lots of clicks but no benefit, it's because most consumers don't really know how you are being charged or just don't care. You can cancel this program at any time and they can only charge you for the prorated amount of what you should be paying per month. That's why you want that in writing so you're not surprised when you get billed. If you cancel, YOU MUST go into the business portal, in the ads area, make sure you SELECT "end your advertisment program". If you have any of the other nonsense such as "Enhanced Profile", you must similarly end each of those that are shown. If you don't do this, you will continue to get billed. They WILL NOT merely let you write them to cancel your ads. This is SNEAKY by design in case you file a complaint with any government agency. What's worse is that Consumer Protection agencies don't deal with business to business activity which is a big flaw for small businesses.
Lastly, file a complaint with the State of California anyway. They are well aware of YELP complaints, have taken YELP to court, and the only way they'll take a closer look at their practices is if they get thousands of complaints. It works. Here is the link: https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-business-or-company
Add your opinion