(From kitchenette.jezebel.com)
“Ill-founded
or just plain lying negative reviews on Yelp are usually a reason for
restaurant owners to lose sleep, as are Yelp's extortionist business
practices.
The owners of one restaurant near San Francisco, CA, however, have come
up with the best and snarkiest possible solution to the problem.
Chefs
and co-owners Davide Cerritini and Michele Massimo of Botto Italian
Bistro in Richmond, CA (both originally from Tuscany) finally got tired
of Yelp's
attempts to extort money from them through repeated "advertising
inquiries" and review manipulation (a practice which, let's remind
everyone, a federal judge recently ruled was totally OK).* Cerritini
says he would be happy to not even participate in Yelp's
dog-and-pony show and has asked them to be removed entirely from their
site, but Yelp never responded. So what did Cerritini and Massimo do to
finally address the problem? Did they just grin and bear it, like 99% of
all restaurants that regularly have to deal
with Yelp's garbage? Was their response thereafter to send a
sternly-worded letter to Yelp? Perhaps they sought the advice of legal
counsel?
NOPE.
Their answer to the problem was way, way funnier than any of those:
they started offering discounts (25% off any pizza and a chance to win a
cooking
class) for any customer who left them a 1-star Yelp review. You read
that correctly: they are deliberately bringing their review average as
low as possible in an effort to f*** with Yelp.”
No comments:
Post a Comment