Special thanks to the on-the-ball tipster who informed SFist of this humorous yet slightly disturbing occurrence surrounding Yelper Marie K.'s 3-star review of Perish Trust, an antique store on Divisadero Street, last week.
See, back in December, Marie had given a fairly favorable write-up (scroll down to read "previous review" under her updated one) of the shop, which made us want to visit -- the salted caramels she mentioned were enough of an incentive. But Marie had forewarned buyers that the item she had purchased had taken quite a bit of elbow grease to clean, which was disappointing since the mark-up on the price was high. Sounds like a fair enough review.
Well, Marie stopped back into Perish Trust last weekend, eight months later, and was accosted by the man behind the counter, who said they had read her Yelp review. He then pulled out a highly accessible "Wanted" poster with her Yelp profile photo on it from behind the counter and said, "People in this neighborhood know about you." Here's how the rest of the visit went down:
At this point I am seriously weirded out and backing away from the counter... he says (almost yelling at this point), "Get out of here, we don't want you here." I say, "Ok, I'm leaving, I won't be back, but you know this isn't the way to get a good Yelp review!" He yells (seriously, eyes bugging out, voice raised, really crazy looking, starting to come out from behind the counter) "You can just leave! You think we care about your Yelp reviews?! We don't care about you!"
This puts a whole new spin on "Buyer Beware."
Update: Marie K. has since deleted her harrowing story of the Wanted poster experience and is currently working it out with The Perish Trust owners. Thanks to Tendernob for the update.