Scammers Attack Restaurants

I read this and am almost afraid to post it for fear that someone or a textbot could find and implement it after reading.

It is anecdotal but I have no doubt there are people who have tried this and probably succeeded. I know in previous employment if someone complained we went out of our way to make them happy. Replace the product, apologize and give them a gift card to use. There were a very very few but still some who figured it out and worked the system.

Anyway, here is an article about using Yelp! or Angie's List threats to extort a restauranteur. I don't use Yelp except in rare cases to find a place close by when out of town. Certainly even less here in Louisville and surrounding area, and once Menu and Hours hits the AppStore and I get it I won't use it at all here.

From FOX News: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/ ... e-reviews/

Have any restaurants here in the Louisville Metro encounter a direct approach like this? How would you handle it?

I know what I would do. I would say, wow, I am sorry, yes I'll get you a gift card to whatever tomorrow if you will come back to pick it up then. Then I would have the police there to hear as I presented the person the getinjail card to them, and one of the TV stations filming it as well so they could have their 15 minutes of fame, immediately.

Are business owners allowed to post on Yelp? If so, I would simply post a pre-emptive entry along the lines of "Today a supposed Yelper attempted to blackmail me" along with a few basic details. That would probably take the sting out of any extremely negative reviews that popped up soon afterwards.

IMHO it is all part of what we are giving up for the sake of convienience . Newspapers and magazines were once held responsible for what they printed. If they printed it, they better be able to back it up or be held accountable. There is little/no accountability on the web. Any yahoo can post on a website, do a bunch of damage to a business or individual, then be off. Personally I think Robin does a good job in curtailing tht sort of behavior on LHB but most sites are not as diligent. Reader beware.

I am not sure if businesses are allowed to post on Yelp. I have a Yelp business account and I was trying to post a good reveiw for a restaurant I went to in Nashville the other week. I logged into my account, went to post a review and it was asking me to log into an ordinary account. I just kept going round in circles. It was very annoying as the restaurant in question had mostly rave reviews apart from this one from the day before I visited. It was a ridiculous review, and I wanted to comment on it.