Yelp for Business OwnersReviews 653

This company is a total scam. They literally stole over $800 from my bank account — and their customer service? An absolute joke. No answers, no accountability, just silence and excuses. Yelp loves pretending to be a "trusted platform," but behind the scenes it's all smoke and mirrors: fake positive reviews, hidden real ones, and sneaky charges that somehow always benefit them. It's almost ironic — the site that claims to expose bad businesses has become one of the worst offenders itself. If you value your time, your money, or your sanity, stay far away from Yelp.

I received 0 sales from running ads from them. They upcharge and deceive you with their sales tactics. I cancelled our ads after 2 months of trying it out, and then a few months later, I shockingly see a charge of $570 on our credit card. Apparently, I had "paused" the account instead of cancelling it, with no notification at all that it had restarted it. This was never our intention - they make cancelling your accounts so difficult, constantly deceiving you. I never got any money back. This was the biggest mistake for a small business owner. Please do not fall for their tactics.

They offered me a "free" trial and said they would monitor and contact me when the "Free" part had run out. Just got a bill for $2500 I was suspicious of Yelp to begin with, now I will do my best to help shut them down!

Yelp sold me on their process with information that was never supported, when I cancelled after 30 days, and called to confirm they said the account was closed. That was December of 2024, in January of 2025 they billed me for another month of so called service with minimum hits and no results, I cancelled them again when received and again try to confirm it was cancelled, when I contested the January service charge they have refused to refund the amount. They are one of many services that are nothing but a scam.

Yelp will constantly blow up your phone with calls from their customer service department who barely speak English and harass you on products and services.
1st you pay ridiculous amounts 600 dollars and up to run ads that target certain groups. Supposedly my ads reached 12k people and had no leads whatsoever. Second time I reached about the same another 12 k with no leads. Then they want you to increase ur spending limit to reach more people. The only people profiting off this is yelp. Business owners are not getting anything. It makes no sense as a business owner to pay 1200 dollars on advertising and receive nothing. Infact all my customers that I have received found me on Google or word of mouth. Not yelp. Something isn't right. Do NOT use yelp or Angie. They are both scams

They will destroy your small biz with their fraudulent gatekeeping practices they erase reviews and force you to contact so called leads that are not interested in your service because they are random generated and called leads

Yelp fails to provide a trustworthy platform for objective, genuine reviews and does not accurately reflect customer sentiment. The platform prioritizes negative reviews algorithmically and hides positive ones arbitrarily. Google, on the other hand, offers a larger sample size and a fairer representation of a business's reputation without manipulating review visibility. As a marketer, I was told by a Yelp salesperson not to solicit customer reviews, however, if our business paid for Yelp ads we could offer incentives for customers to leave reviews. After I turned down the salesperson over the phone, several of our newly acquired 5 star reviews vanished. Tell me how this isn't extortion.

Yelp will destroy small business. They delete reviews they want add fake reviews. Won't remove personal info or change business info they hold your business hostage. Stay away from Yelp if you run a small business. It's detrimental. Horrible company. Check out other stories on Reddit

A Yelp sales agent "Business Success Manager" or whatever cold called me while I was driving, kept me on the line by promising me sales/leads that same night and that she was "personally invested" in my business because it's woman-owned and that she'd love to keep in touch...then I never heard from her again. She made me stop and download the app, told me I wouldn't be charged because I had a $300 ad credit, and then made me add my credit card info anyway. It's like a scammer they lure you in so hard you can't hang up. I could have caused an accident on the road I told her to call back but this b*tch only cared about her commission. I've lost almost $200 since they rejected my refund request. Do not trust Yelp.

They are a scam. I am so burnt on them I don't even want to type it all over again. The worst hogwash ever. I have canceled a million times by email and phone. Yet they continue to charge me for what? I have no clue. They can call a million times a day all day from a million different numbers for what. Guess is good as mine. Joke & scam. Please stay away from them. I can't believe with all the same complaints. Nothing is done about it.

After advertising on Yelp Business for over 7 years, I have consistenly found customer service to be ignorant, non-responsive, and yes, downright stupid and ridiculous.

Their latest game was to overspend my minimum budget by hundreds of dollars a month. Yelp (surprise, surprise) completely ignored my email requests to resolve this issue. Multiple attempts of reaching them on the phone resulted in a hour on hold and being hung-up on.

I finally resorted to disputing the charges with my bank and in response YELP sent me an e-mail, instead of trying to resolve the issue stated, "In good faith" they were cancelling my advertising campaign, I have NEVER heard of anything so stupid and $#*!ed. STAY AWAY FROM THESE CLOWNS!

I am a small business owner in Fremont, California. I have been advertising on Yelp for the past 5-6 years. Recently, I noticed that my business performance is way down compared to last year and after doing some research, I realized that I am not getting same number of customers from Yelp compared to last year. I started to do some digging and found out that even after I increased my budget from $4,000 to $5,000 per month, I am getting even less customers from Yelp than last month. I did some more research and found out that Yelp has increased the cost of "pay-per-click" over 50%. We as advertisers do not choose the cost per click, Yelp does (unlike google and other platforms) and the way they do it by making advertisers to believe there is an automatic auction and other factors that can change the cost per click, misleading verbiage. Basically, what Yelp does is to calculate the cost per click based on my monthly budget divided by the number of clicks. Another words, if they underperform or cut their cost down on advertising to generate more revenue, I pay a higher price for Yelp. Or if there is a slow month, Yelp does not care, they get paid no matter what. To give you an idea, if there are 100,000 clicks per month in one region generated by Yelp and total budget for that region is $400,000, the cost per click would be $4, but if next month there are 50,000 clicks for the same region, then the cost per click goes up to $8 for Yelp to make the same revenue of $400,000.
I called Yelp and talked to two different people and they had no answer and even they agreed with me, there was nothing they could do about it nor gave me a number for their superior. I have spoken to many other Yelp advertisers and they all feel they are getting cheated out of their money. My $5,000 budget is exactly how much Yelp charges my card, $5,000, not a penny less or more. What Yelp is doing is exactly like if I charge my customers 50% more simply because I had a slow month!
I have spent over $250,000 on Yelp over the past few years and I think I have been overcharged over $100,000.
I advertised on Google in the past, the difference is that I get to pick the cost per click for keywords and my budget was $4,000 per month, at the end of the month it was never $4,000 but close to it ($3,500 to $3,900), simply number of clicks multiplied by cost that I picked.
Look into your account and you will see, and if you can find a way to do something about it, please don't hesitate to share

It's a scam where Yelp bills you for miscellaneous charges. There is no value in enrolling in their digital marketing as you will be charged if even these adds don't being you a penny worth of business.

The Yelp ads are a scam, don't fall for there trap, don't even answer their emails, they will promise the world that they have a proven ROI, however as you see almost no positive feedback, don't get burnt like many have been, including me.

You work hard to please your customers, you pay a lot of money for advertising on Yelp and they decide to take down two of my customers 5 star reviews in a row, I'm using this site and paying a crap ton of money to advertise to try to boost my business and get more customers and the best way to do that is to allow potential new customers to see the reviews of past customers and see what they had to say about you and the quality of work you did. I am beyond pissed about this and when you call Yelp for an explanation they give you some BS reason for why it happened, I'm done with Yelp, I can take my money elsewhere and my suggestion to anyone thinking of advertising their business on Yelp is to do the same. Don't do it, advertise somewhere else. I've included pics of both reviews that were taken off of my page below.

Please don't use Yelp for Business. They tell you that the service is free, then charge you for nothing and refuse to refund you for the nothing that they charged you without permission.

I am small business owner of a salon and I wasn't gaining customer due to the area I was in. It was a very dead area. I managed to run ads and got customers in. One day I received so many calls from yelp saying our ads will help you out. They lead me into the $300 budget instead charged me $900 first they charged 300 IN THE SAME MONTH.
And said they don't give refunds. Mind you I wouldn't care if they even took $900 BUT AT LEAST GIVE MY BUSINESS EXPOSURE! They will hide all the 200 GOOD REVIEWS AND SHOW 50 Bad reviews on ur business page. Do not trust them please if u are a small business owner stay away from yelp!

After one phone call with a rushed salesman. A salesman who forced me to put a credit card as a place holder to get to the next page. Apparently signed me up for ads that ran daily. The card I put in was now costing 19 a day until our threshold of 480 monthly. I received an email letting me know that my ad was going well? I never agreed to that. I went ahead and cancelled the service and they forwarded my bill for 96 and change. The customer representative put me on hold so she could listen to my call. Not only was she rude when she returned she tried to gaslight me into thinking the salesman gave me full details on the call and told me my card would be run. All lies and my business is still out the money. I'd say the forced usage of Yelp Business experience did not impress nor did it come close to worthy of their price tag during the 7 days they claimed. Yielding an actual call or website click outside of my own would have been a plus.

Decided not to advertise with yelp and they misled me on how to cancel it. They make you go in and cancel it and it's very complicated. It never got completely cancelled due to the lengthy process and they trick you making you think its cancelled. They continued to bill me even though I called them explaining the situation. They would not give me a refund even though they wasted my time while they listened to my conversations them regarding the matter. They are a greedy company and I do not recommend wasting a dime on their advertising!

Yelp contacted me and gave me a hard sell on using there service on a trial basis...ir was a total flop. When I cancelled the service they removed ALL OF MY POSITIVE reviews and only left the negative.

Called Yelp and they indicated that I would have to pay for a service to get them reinstated. This is clearly extortion and unethical.