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JTMiller09

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When is the NRA going to step up and protect imdepemdent restauraunts from fraudulant reviews? I’ll be the first to.admit that we screw up and when I made aware of, make every attempt to make it right for the guest.

What drives me insane are the fake reviews from ex-employees, competitors and just jealous angy people.

Seems pretty simple, require that the Reviewer enter a ticket number/date & time, to be able to submit a review. Will it fix all the fraud, no…but at least it’s an attempt to host a review site with some integrity and legitacy.

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Yes exactly. You get a couple good ones then you get some jerk with a 1⭐. We had another pizza shop prank call us three times in one night, caller ID idiots.
 
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I think that ALL reviews, good, bad, whatever should disappear after some set period of time like 18 months or 2 years.

Owners should be able to challenge reviews and have the customer be required to scan a receipt or CC statement to the website to verify or it gets taken down.

We got a one star for being closed when they wanted order and another for not having a to-go order ready in 10 minutes when we told them 20.
 
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Im so tired of the constant ‘spin’ customers use to support their narrative when posting a bad review.

Im tired of the customers that write a review on a restaurant only after they have a negative experience. They go 100 times but the 101st time, mildly inconvenienced= scathing review.

Im tired of not being able to defend myself by saying what actually happened with bad reviewer.

Im tired of yelpers using it as a weapon.

Im tired of having to constantly worry about this.
Does any other industry get held to this whole review bs? Bc it feels like its only this industry.
 
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JTMiller09 said:
When is the NRA going to step up and protect imdepemdent restauraunts from fraudulant reviews? I’ll be the first to.admit that we screw up and when I made aware of, make every attempt to make it right for the guest.

What drives me insane are the fake reviews from ex-employees, competitors and just jealous angy people.

Seems pretty simple, require that the Reviewer enter a ticket number/date & time, to be able to submit a review. Will it fix all the fraud, no…but at least it’s an attempt to host a review site with some integrity and legitacy.

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Make sure you ask all your customers for a review. Print out a small card with a simple url to your google listing, facebook or whichever you prefer to get reviews on and give them along with the food so people can leave reviews. If the orders come from online make sure to send out an email the next day to the customer asking for a review. You’ll be surprised how many people will leave reviews when asked. I took a pizzeria client of mine from 3.9 to 4.3 in his Google listing in about 3 months. Simply by sending out emails asking for a review.
In due time the good reviews will outweigh the bad ones.
 
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MPS is right. This is the same advice I received from a business neighbor a while ago. I think it is correct.

We do about 20,000 orders per year. Historically we used to get about 15-20 reviews spread across Yelp, Trip Advisor and Google. Guess what many were not good. Go figure.

Do we screw up? Sure. I don’t doubt that we deserve half the bad reviews we have gotten. Even though I think that a 1* should be for a business that messes up badly AND then refuses to fix it I realize that some reviewers don’t see it that way.

My neighbor’s advice:
  1. Even though you do a good job almost all the time you will screw up and you will get bad reviews as a result.
  2. If you get 8 bad reviews in a year out of 20 reviews it looks pretty bad.
  3. The answer is to make sure that the customers who are happy with you are also writing reviews. With the same 8 bad reviews the picture is a LOT different if you have 100 good ones instead of 20!
  4. Focus on getting reviews from customers that are happy with you. Ask for reviews. Respond responsibly to the bad ones and move on.
With all that said, I think it is OK to respond strongly to clearly BS reviews and unreasonable customers. As long as most of your responses are positive and respectful, calling out a liar will not do you harm. Everybody reading reviews and responses realizes by now that there is a lot of hot air in the system.
 
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bodegahwy said:
I think that ALL reviews, good, bad, whatever should disappear after some set period of time like 18 months or 2 years.

Owners should be able to challenge reviews and have the customer be required to scan a receipt or CC statement to the website to verify or it gets taken down.

We got a one star for being closed when they wanted order and another for not having a to-go order ready in 10 minutes when we told them 20.
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Agreed. I remember you saying this a year or two ago and I told countless people about as I agreed wholeheartedly. Don’t get me started on Yelp’s “filter” either!

I owned a pizza place awhile back and we were 4.5 stars on Yelp and 4.9 on Google when I sold it. The current owner decided to lower the quality of toppings to try and make more money (even though our bottom line was stout) and cut labor nearly in half as well. He’s currently 3.5 stars on Yelp and 3.1 on Google but many of my reviews are still up from several years ago otherwise he’d likely be around 2.0 on both review sites if using the reviews from the past 2 years or less.

As much as business owners may hate these review sites, they can make or break your business these days. Just worry about your food quality and service, then the rest will take care of itself. I do reply to people who I believe are idiots and try to explain the situation and even offer to make things right from time to time. Sometimes it helps, sometimes people are just idiots.
 
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We have screwed up plenty of times and received a bad review from it. I’m totally OK with that. You gotta take your medicine sometimes. My issue with Yelp is we show up in searches that are our of our delivery area. When we turn down the delivery and a 1 star review shows up. We have a couple dozen of these reviews.

A few months ago we had review come in where the guy referred to a teenage girl or ours with lewd terminology. I was furious and flagged the review with Yelp. They refused to remove it stating that it was " colorful language " That was it for me with Yelp. They are on the “colorful language” list.
 
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What did he say?
I only ask because that sounds like a liability… or could be… on their part.
 
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URNUTS said:
What did he say?
I only ask because that sounds like a liability… or could be… on their part.
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I’m sure there is no liability. The guy had a legit complaint. They lost his carry out order on a busy night where it didn’t get made. The girl was there on her day off but offered to help because it was a big night. She noticed he was waiting longer than normal so she made an extra effort to help him and get him his order. She also went to the manager to get the guy a discount approved for his extra wait time. The guy then goes on yelp and refers to the girl as “swine”. We have been called all kinds of stuff over the years but for some reason this one hit me as being over the top rude and uncalled for.

Its odd though, when this happened I went thru all of our reviews. I flagged about 30 or so Yelp reviews as being fraud, fake or lewd. While I was at it I decided to do all the Google reviews too. Every one of the Google reviews look legit. I flagged none??
 
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We never ask a customer to leave a review. I see that is being way too pushy and good food and good vibe in the shop will make things happen in the right direction. I also never respond to a review but did report one that was removed by Yelp. The customer gave us 1 star because we are not open during hours she can come. We offer no coupons, specials, etc. My wife and I are onsite during all open and prep hours and I am physically doing the prep and pizza making. My wife is on the register/making salads/answering phone. With this level of control we are able to put out a solid consistent pie. It goes haywire when one turns the operation over but that is something one has to accept. In our 2 years open we have made the Yelp top 100 places to eat in the USA and do not advertise with them. We have had multiple offers to partner/expand but are not interested. I will train someone in what we do and then they can open their own name shop and we remain spiritually but not financially connected. Walter
 
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Understood. Swine? WTF does that even mean? I mean, I understand but… that’s an odd one.
I’ve had some very lewd and inappropriate stuff said over the years about female employees so… that was where my head was.
 
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URNUTS said:
Understood. Swine? WTF does that even mean? I mean, I understand but… that’s an odd one.
I’ve had some very lewd and inappropriate stuff said over the years about female employees so… that was where my head was.
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Yea, we have had people called all of those things. This one, for whatever reason, I was overly offended by.
 
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A shop in my area enlisted a bunch of friends and family to write stellar reviews for his store.
I havent done this bc idk it feels morally wrong somehow.
But anyway do you guys think its a fair play considering all the bogus reviews we get from the customers?
 
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December said:
A shop in my area enlisted a bunch of friends and family to write stellar reviews for his store.
I havent done this bc idk it feels morally wrong somehow.
But anyway do you guys think its a fair play considering all the bogus reviews we get from the customers?
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I wouldn’t do this. As you say it feels morally wrong and puts bad energy on your shop. Give love, kindness, hope, and friendship to your customers along with a great pizza and good reviews will come. Good energy breeds good energy and that keeps the bad energy people away. We get 2-6 calls a week from customers who want to tell us how much they liked the pizza and the experience. Get the flow of the river going in the good direction and all will be good 🙂
 
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You can tell sometimes- sometimes they are so sickening and reveal details or contain comments that no legit patron would know, say or think of.
 
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I personally like what a guy did last year. After Yelp refused to fix stuff, he started a campaign for everyone to leave a 1 star review. He gave them a free bread or something. After a couple weeks Yelp contacted him and demanded he stop or they would remove his listing. He said OH ? you mean your going to do what i asked you to do 2 months ago ?
 
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pizzapiratespp said:
I’m sure there is no liability. The guy had a legit complaint. They lost his carry out order on a busy night where it didn’t get made. The girl was there on her day off but offered to help because it was a big night. She noticed he was waiting longer than normal so she made an extra effort to help him and get him his order. She also went to the manager to get the guy a discount approved for his extra wait time. The guy then goes on yelp and refers to the girl as “swine”. We have been called all kinds of stuff over the years but for some reason this one hit me as being over the top rude and uncalled for.

Its odd though, when this happened I went thru all of our reviews. I flagged about 30 or so Yelp reviews as being fraud, fake or lewd. While I was at it I decided to do all the Google reviews too. Every one of the Google reviews look legit. I flagged none??
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I’m pretty sure this violates their terms of service. They clearly state any defaming language specifically done toward a person is a violation. What bs.

We had a neighbor write a bogus review claiming we have roaches which in the almost 4 years of being here I have not seen 1 never been cited for in our health inspections. He was just a bad dude that got angry because my husband told him to park at the end of the parking lot instead of right in front of where he works. (Our parking situation is really bad). I reported it to yelp numerous times called them about it repealed their decision when they refused to take it down.

We have 131 total reviews 31 which are filtered 30 of those which are 4 star and over only 1 filtered review is a 1 star. All our bad reviews are up top even though most of them are pretty old. We have a 4.5 rating. I have given up on them. I don’t even look at it anymore.

I too feel awkward about asking for good reviews but we do get people on the weekly who tell us how much they love our pizza and that is good enough for me screw yelp.

Yea yelp sucks!

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