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Instead of wallowing over a poor Yelp review, the brilliant minds over at Pizzeria Delfina have decided to reclaim, if you will, cranky customer reviews. See, they're having employees wear shirts printed with quotes from one-star Yelp reviews. This also brings up another question: Who in their right goddamn mind would give Pizzeria Delfina one star? Sure, it irks that they still don't sell by the slice. Other than that, the place is solid. Seriously, just look at this severe tastiness. (Eater, via 7x7)
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This is awesome! Someone at Delfina is very smart.
Very amusing.
A lot of attitude, though, for recessionary times.
My favorite shirt like this was the one at Fulton Street B&G. On the front it said "Our Attitude Matches Yours" and the back "Go F*ck Yourself"
Agreed its a very clever takedown of Yelp as a whole. Not just the semi-literate ramblings of the disaffected but the entire idea of the value of user-generated reviews. And they do it without seeming holier than thou which is crucial.
ps brock, should that maybe be amended to: via eater, via 7x7?
who would give them one-star reviews?
Easy!
People being paid by Yelp to give negative reviews in order to coerce (extort, etc) a business into throwing money Yelp's way in order to bury the negative reviews.
Yelp's got no integrity to me anymore.
Anyone taking Yelp seriously anymore is a sucker.
It's a scam.
If you'd actually read the reviews that SFist linked, you'd notice that they were the type of reviews that only a fool would take seriously (1 star because it was cold and they chose to sit outside? WTF?). Yelp is by no means perfect, but it's not difficult to sift through the riff-raff either.
Also, just FYI, out of the 616 reviews only 15 have one star, and on the first page only one is a bad review (2 stars, written 2 days ago). Note that the place is not a sponsor.
I think you underestimate the number of fools out there.
It still doesn't mean Yelp has any integrity, or that user-reviewing works at all except to let a small amount of people feel very important and Yelp gets to laugh all the way to the bank.
I'm not underestimating the number of fools so much as I am overestimating the ability of a fool to recognize absurdity when it's sitting there in front of their face.
I guess I just haven't seen any iota of evidence as to what you're implying. I've seen a lot of talk about it, but not actual proof. I'm not defending their sales practices (in fact, I'm quite willing to believe that some of their salespeople have been making shit up in order to meet their goals, and this is where most of the more serious accusations are coming in), but from what I can tell, I don't see what you say is happening actually happening.
Anyway, I'm no Yelp cheerleader and I think there's definitely a place for professional reviewers. All I know is that I've made a few discoveries because of Yelp that I would not have through most other sources.
On a related note, I think the t-shirt idea is kick-ass.
It might be hard to believe, but sometimes people dislike things. Yeah there are a lot of idiots on Yelp, but that's just because there are a ton of idiots in society. It seems like a lot of places these days can't possibly understand how people might not like them. Maybe instead of bitching about bad reviews they should try to pay attention to them and if they're not just the ravings of lunatics (which I've certainly seen... along with plenty of outright falsehoods) improve on the problem areas.
I think it's funny that of the three one-star reviews you linked, only one is because of the food. One gave up after waiting an hour and left without even eating. Dude, I know waiting sucks, but it's not really the restaurant's fault.
I've never eaten there because I can't stand waiting for anything.
I would recommend that the "gals" at Two Gals With a Truck never do this.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/two-gals-with-a-truck-san-francisco
brilliant.
Self-deprecating, clever, and so much better for business than a lawsuit.
Fail. They have strong 4-star rating, and they feel the need to make t-shirts? It makes them look like more of a sensitive bitch ass than the sensitive bitch asses complaining on yelp. Yelp isn't going anywhere, and most people are smart enough to ignore the whiners. Get over it.
> Yelp isn't going anywhere
Perhaps true, but by this time next year there is no way we will be wasting time with a front-page blog posting detailing their corrupt ways.
> Get over it
We have! May we assist with directions?
yes.
If I Yelped, I'd give them a 1 star rating after waiting well over an hour for a pizza. Ordered it to go and came back at the suggested time to pick it up. Was rudely told it still wasn't ready, waited another 15 min and then asked again. Still not ready. Went shopping at Bi-Rite, got stuck in a long line, returned to find it still was no where to be found. Finally got pizza, walked a whole block back to my house and had a nice cold pizza. Needless to say, I've found other places to spend my money.
Perhaps they were protesting American Apparel instead of making pizza?
Yelp is yuck. I find some reviews that's:
--Bunch of bullshit. For example, one "elite" user wrote several short paragraphs of their experience on the bus to the festival, then wrote two very brief sentences about the festival itself. And what happened? All their "friends" gave it supporting votes for helpful and cool.
--Writes about places that have been long closed. One former Round Table was still on Yelp for over a year and people were writing reviews at least six months into their closure.
I personally prefer epinions. They sometimes go local with reviews of restaurants, but typically focus on a nationwide scale, examples: theme parks, airlines, cruise ships, etc. At least the users can vote if the article is quality material, and the best reviewed articles gets placed on the top and also earns a small financial incentive for quality articles which can very based on how many people read your reviews (I sometimes get 5 to 30 cents per article every month).