
Yelp Is Replacing Restaurants’ Phone Numbers So Grubhub Can Take a Cut - pulisse
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjwebw/yelp-is-sneakily-replacing-restaurants-phone-numbers-so-grubhub-can-take-a-cut
======
mabbo
It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their
goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no
or little value.

In this example, what benefit is GrubHub providing to anyone? The person used
Yelp solely to look up the phone number of a restaurant. GrubHub deserves 15%
of his order for that? Why, because they made a deal to give X% of it to Yelp,
and convinced the restaurant this was a good deal?

What value did they provide here?

Meanwgile, Yelp used to be a resource to find good businesses. Now it's...
Something else. It's leveraging it's market power to make money rather
providing customers with any value.

I don't know what the answer is but it feels like society needs to come up
with a new word, new idea, (or probably an old one we've forgotten) and make
it both an ethically bad thing and then also an illegal one (or at least one
that is taxed higher).

~~~
asdff
To me, this is a sign of grubhub/insert copycat delivery service circling the
drain, trying to extract whatever cash they can get before the inevitable.
Anecdata, but among my peers people sort by delivery fee or try to game the
system for a new user discount. Delivery fees can easily be $7 now which is
like buying another entire portion at some restaurants.

Personally, I use grubhub a lot--as a menu to look at for when I call the
restaurant directly with my pickup order.

~~~
c3534l
Yelp can't grow anymore. Now is when they make money and pay back their
investors.

------
mikestew
I've been in this industry 30-some years. I thought I'd seen the worst SV has
to offer, but my jaw is just on the ground. I mean, I _knew_ Yelp was
constantly up to no good, but...just wow.

I suppose I should be furious at Yelp (or GrubHub, or...someone), but I'm
really more furious at Apple for having not cut that partnership a _long_ time
ago. It just gets my goat every time I click an icon in Apple Maps, Yelp pops
up, and there's no way to change data sources. And now this? I'm normally not
one for a strongly-worded letter, but I might fire off some feedback on this
one.

~~~
m463
Does anyone remember getting out the phonebook to dial a local tow truck?

~~~
reilly3000
Tow truck companies and PI lawyers routinely paid $5k/mo+ even in small
markets to get those calls from yellowpages ads.

------
sundayedition
I've found Google Maps review quality and quantity improved over the last few
years so it's rare that I'd even open Yelp in recent months.

With this, I'm deleting my Yelp app.

~~~
duxup
When I used to use Yelp, I found the reviews are so hard to wade though.

So many:

\- I had a bad time .. once.

\- This restaurant isn't as good as this other place that is twice as
expensive.

\- We had to wait a "long time".

\- The food sucked (because they don't like the kind of food they serve...).

\- This place sucks and you should go to this other completely different
place.

~~~
stevenwliao
With so many good restaurants, why would I go back to one where I had a bad
time?

~~~
perl4ever
That's not the question. It's natural not to want to go back to somewhere
something bad happened. The question is why anybody else would care about bad
luck that someone had, as opposed to a bad experience that was representative.

~~~
stevenwliao
There is no canonical bad experience. The best estimate is the ratio of good
to bad reviews, and most will be from a single experience, unless people
suddenly start volunteering to visit restaurants that treated them poorly the
first time...

------
kadabra9
Yelp is such a slimy company.

First they wall off their mobile web reviews to try to force you to download
their POS app, they have the whole extortion racket going trying to strongarm
restaurants into paying for advertising, and now this.

Friendly reminder - if you are on mobile and trying to read a Yelp review and
don't want to download their app, simply hold refresh, click "request desktop
site" and it will load the full review without forcing you to get the app.

~~~
ilikehurdles
[https://www.yelp-support.com/article/Does-Yelp-extort-
small-...](https://www.yelp-support.com/article/Does-Yelp-extort-small-
businesses?l=en_US)

I've kind of gotten tired of diving into the whole "yelp extorted my brother's
cousin's friend's coworker's business for better ratings" anecdotal story
schtick so I'm just going to link the above -- or are you suggesting they're
getting away with lying on official communication? If yelp is altering reviews
for paying clients, please show the evidence as I have yet to see anything but
anecdotal stories about some folks getting a phone call from someone allegedly
from yelp allegedly having the power to do this. I suspect, at worst, that
they either misunderstood the sales pitch or were contacted by a scummy SEO-
like company.

On the mobile experience, what are you referring to? The mobile site is fully
functional with reviews, search, ratings, etc. I can't say the same of
Twitter, Tumblr, and most major other sites. I despise mobile apps as much as
the next person but I hardly see how Yelp is unique or even worse than others
here. Please clarify.

You literally do not need the mobile app or even render the desktop site to
read full reviews. I'm looking at a fully expanded review in mobile safari
right now.

~~~
largbae
I think the challenge with finding firsthand reports on HN is that the owners
of small brick-and-mortar businesses that Yelp is alleged to exploit are not
well represented in this community.

Having said that, I have firsthand experience in having my own review of such
a business censored:

6 months ago I wrote a review for the RazzleDazzle Barber Shop in Riverview,
FL. Great little shop, I was surprised that it had zero reviews and was gray
in Yelp. A month later, I returned for my second haircut and asked about
business. I heard the same story about Yelp pressuring for sales, and
mentioned that I had already written a 5-star review.

Upon checking Yelp, I noticed that the shop was still gray with 0 reviews,
despite having left one a month ago myself. After carefully reading the site,
I found that the keyword is "0 Recommended Reviews." At the bottom is a gray
link that leads to more than a dozen reviews that are "Not Recommended", all
5-star, including my own. I wasn't the first to review the shop, the other
reviews were hidden.

I wrote Yelp support to ask why this review was censored, despite my other
reviews for other businesses being accepted. They assured me that an algorithm
decides what reviews are recommended for protection of customers and that's
all that's happening.

However, within a day my review was the only recommended review, and the
barber shop was live on the site instead of gray. A few other reviews have
been accepted since.

Go have a look for yourself, scroll to the bottom of that shop and click the
"x Reviews that are currently not recommended" link in gray at the bottom. You
will even find my original 5 star review, so perhaps they made a copy of it to
get it to show.

~~~
kjeetgill
It's their anti-fraud system. Reviews get moved to Recommend after the _user_
passes some minimum anti-fraud Activity threshold.

If that was your first review, it's almost always unrecommended at first. This
stops a lot of the "ask your friends and families" for 5 stars sorts of
reviews.

------
MentallyRetired
It's hard to make money as a directory service with Google and Apple Maps
around. The shadier they get, the bigger of a sign it is that they're in
trouble financially, I would think.

~~~
jedberg
I've tried using Google to find places to eat, but Yelp's search is just so
much easier. If I'm in a new place, I just pull up Yelp, click "Restaurants"
and go with the first thing that has food I like. It's never failed me yet. It
might not be the best or cheapest around, but usually the thing with 4+ stars
is still pretty good. We've found a couple of places that way where we keep
going back every time we're in town just because we liked it so much.

When I pull up Google and search for [restaurants near me] or [restaurants] in
the Maps app, it's a mess. I can't tell what is good or not. Also they usually
only have a few ratings. With Yelp I can find places with 100+ ratings out in
the middle of nowhere.

The problem for Yelp is that there is no money in providing a great service
like that, so they have to do shady things to make up for it.

~~~
thanhhaimai
Are you perhaps in the Bay Area? Yelp has a very strong presence in the Bay
Area. However, when I travel to the EU and outside of California, I notice
that the quality/quantity of reviews from Yelp vs Google is reversed. People
advised me to find restaurants using Google Maps instead. Restaurants owners
also put up sign asking to be rated on Google.

~~~
jedberg
I am in the Bay Area, but my biggest use case is when I travel outside the
area.

I agree with you though, Yelp totally breaks down outside of the USA. Seems to
work pretty well within the US though. We found some great places in Wyoming
near Yellowstone for example.

~~~
rconti
I tend to use TripAdvisor more overseas, it feels less shady, though a year
ago an app update made it suck battery like nobody's business, and I had to
delete it.

Thankfully, last trip (June) it seemed to work fine.

------
habosa
Yelp 5 years ago was a truly valuable service. You could go anywhere (in
America) and find good food.

Then they lost focus. The app has not improved an ounce since then (seriously
why is 'open now' not a default filter) and they've spent a lot of time doing
shady things or complaining about other companies. They've tried to get into
reservations, delivery, and non-food services but with half-assed attempts at
each. They also did a really bad job at maintaining a healthy reviewer
community (Google has done much better).

It's a shame because I don't think any other app took the lead here. Yelp just
walked backwards into the pack.

~~~
alephnan
It incorporated elements of delight, too, like a rocket ship that showed when
you scrolled the page. I feel these lighthearted things are symptomatic of a
product-driven culture, or at least a culture that empowered engineers to add
Easter eggs. Now that its sales driven, I’m not sure that jives well with
recruiting engineering talent.

~~~
rkho
I remember they added the "has Pokestop" tag when Pokemon Go first released.
Was a fun addition.

------
kevin_b_er
Amazing. Yelp redirects the customer who intended to look up their number in
Yelp, redirects them GrubHub. GrubHub then grifts the restaurant for it.

These online order companies are grifters. With tricks and sneaky fees, they
exploit the restaurants, they exploit the customers, and if delivery is
involved, they'll exploit the driver too.

~~~
asdff
I wonder what the solution is? Restaurants really should be running their own
delivery, but that means hiring more staff which many cannot afford to do in a
major city where commercial rents are extraordinary.

~~~
Skunkleton
The solution is to enforce business transparency, and fair labor laws. It
should be clear on the Yelp UI that they number they give me is for grubhub.
If I want food delivered, it should be by drivers who are fairly compensated.

------
makecheck
Funneling things through the app is just unhelpful on many levels.

The interface when clicking on a web page from Yelp is worse than using the
browser directly; therefore, instead of tapping, I read the web address and
just go type it out.

And don’t even get me started on E-mail/communication with businesses.
Recently I tried contacting a contractor, and happened to start the request
from a form in the Yelp app. Since the _very first thing on the form_ was
asking for my E-mail address, I logically assumed that I would receive an
E-mail reply. Instead, nothing; after awhile, I assumed just needed to find
somebody else. Then, days later (or whenever I wandered into the Yelp app
again), and only after I _just happened_ to tap on some stupid icon in the
corner, I finally see a reply: _in the app_. That is utterly useless! In fact,
all of these “E-mail look-alike” interfaces are useless: I don’t need your
company to completely recreate your own in-box interface that will surely suck
in some way, when you could have just allowed E-mail to be used. Heaven forbid
I dare to communicate with someone without your knowledge. So, yet again, like
with URLs, now I just dig up the web site manually, dig up a real E-mail
address or phone number manually, and contact them manually.

------
tjr225
I had to install their app to get in line at a local restaurant. Immediately
uninstalled.

I don't see why people use Yelp other than the fact that they have a mindshare
dominance on ratings. User generated/internet 2.0 style food ratings are
basically useless anyway, add in all of the other shady stuff Yelp does and
you have a hard pass from me.

~~~
stri8ed
I use Yelp since its significantly harder to fake reviews on it than it is on
Google. That, and the community culture is centered on high-quality reviews.

~~~
Fjolsvith
As a Google guide, I can flag irrelevant content in Google reviews.

~~~
abawany
I like and have used Google reviews for a while after having had enough of
Yelp's issues, to the point where I removed my many reviews from Yelp.
However, I think Google has a ways to go to remove junk reviews. For example,
'Baguette et Chocolat' near Austin pissed off some open-carry person, who I
think also runs a gun blog, last year by asking him to leave when he ignored
their state-law-compliant signs prohibiting the same. He then proceeded to
command his fans to leave bad reviews for this restaurant, and they complied
in droves leaving useful gems such as 'Found out the owners are hoplophobes.
Never giving them my business again.' . I spent quite a bit of time reporting
these and I think many others did as well. Yelp shut down review logging for
this restaurant fairly quickly at the time but I am not sure Google did
anything - the above "review" is still present as of today. I am disappointed
with Google but have come to realize that they embody the opposite of the
motto: "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well." Edit: Google still
allows logging reviews without comments, which further worsens the problem.

------
oneepic
Would any Yelpers here care to comment on the issue? I interviewed there in
the past, and know friends that work there. When I asked what they thought
about the "blackmail" rumors from a while back they just laughed it off,
because they honestly thought they were just rumors. And they enjoyed their
work, and their work-life balance, and all that. Sounded like a fun, positive
place to work, if you ignored the headlines.

So there's a disconnect here. Is there a dark pattern and slimy business going
on in Yelp, or is this simply a weird situation that got sensationalized by a
news article? I'm hesitant to make any assumptions.

~~~
stevejohnson
I am a former Yelp engineer. I think the thing this story describes is dumb
and bad and they should stop doing it. Inserting yourself as a useless
middleman is a classic shitty startup move.

Here are some great reasons for current and former Yelp engineers not to
engage in internet debates about accusations of nefariousness in other areas
such as the review filter or sorting algorithm:

1\. Being in internet debates mostly sucks in general, especially with people
who by default hate you.

2\. Yelp has a blanket policy that you shouldn't engage in these debates.

3\. Yelp has been sued some number of times and might be again. I would be
paranoid that something I said here would be used in another bullshit lawsuit,
especially if I were truly in a position to know things.

4\. It's pretty clear that the PR battle was lost long ago, regardless of the
truth. Leaving a comment on a thread like this changes literally nothing and
is a waste of time. Yes, that means I think I'm wasting my time right now. :-)

Every Yelp engineer I've met has intentions at least as good as, say, the
average Google engineer. Sites like Yelp can have negative effects on small
businesses the same way e.g. Spotify might have an effect on independent music
or Airbnb has an effect on the apartment rental market in a city, and
engineers aren't always good at recognizing those effects as problematic, but
Yelp engineers are certainly no worse than your standard Silicon Valley type.

I still trust Yelp reviews more than I trust local business reviews on any
other platform.

------
troydavis
Developers who have been asked to implement a UX dark pattern like this one
(or Yelp’s decision to forcibly open the App Store without warning in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625852)),
did you implement it? Why or why not?

I can’t imagine a case where I would be skilled enough to obtain employment at
Yelp, and thus at other companies too, and yet would agree to implement
something particularly slimy instead of quitting.

Obviously some people make different decisions, though. If you worked at a
well-known company when they implemented an intentionally deceptive
darkpattern, perhaps others can learn from your experience.

~~~
nrmitchi
While I haven't implemented anything like this, and have pushed back when I've
seen dark patterns like this before, it's not hard to imagine a situation
where someone would feel like they have to.

It's a fairly privileged position to be able to just up and quit. Even in the
bay area where you can in theory get another job fairly quickly, not everyone
has enough savings to bridge a gap, and health insurance I'm sure could play a
part. Not even mentioning what I'm sure is the most common reason of all:
predatory visa statuses that are tied to an employer. Ie, you quit, you have
to leave the country "immediately".

Edit to add: Perhaps this is just another reason why having high skilled visas
and work statuses tied to a specific employer is not the right answer.

~~~
mikeash
It’s also not hard to imagine a situation where developers happily implement
it. Developers can get invested in their employer and rationalize their
decisions just like anyone else. Management will provide plenty of help in
doing so.

I’m sure there are some who say, “this sucks but I can’t afford to say no.”
But I bet there are a lot more who say, “cool, this will help us make money.”
Developers aren’t uniquely virtuous.

------
duxup
Grubhub's process of creating fake websites that compete with the restaurant's
official site so that they can take a cut of any direct orders is so scummy.

I refuse to have anything to do with either company. I care about my local
restaurants, not slimy practices like that.

------
Balgair
>“I definitely implore people to forgo the three seconds of convenience to
help neighborhood businesses,” he said.

Interesting way to end the article. I think we have all seen lines around the
block for the new hotness in local resturants. If the owner is trying to get
people in the door like this, then it is likely that these apps are not the
culprit in the issues that the owner is facing.

In the article, grubhub points out a business that they helped out by pointing
the business to switch to poke' bowls. There are some interesting points about
that:

1) Per my reading, they only can point out one example. I did not see any
stats or talk about a population, just an anecdote. I may have missed
something though, or the writer decided to not use that sound bite.

2) That is consulting. They are mixing referral fees and trying to point out
that they are sucessful un-solicited consultants too. This is not initially
murky stuff, but it can get mixed up really fast. The incentives are not well
aligned.

~~~
3JPLW
How does your anecdote of dining at a hot new restaurant refute the challenges
restaurants are facing with GrubHub's fees getting tacked onto typical phone-
in orders?

~~~
Balgair
Sorry about that, I should have probably broken that up into two comments.
Thanks!

------
blue11
Streeteasy started employing the same dark pattern a few months ago. It seems
like companies who have an effective monopoly just cannot resist the
temptation.

They replaced the listing agent's number with a number that takes you to one
of their agents. (After a while they added back the option to contact the
actual listing agent, but you have to first click on a link to get to another
page.) Also, as soon as I contact an agent about a listing their agents start
spamming me with texts and emails written in a way that try to obscure that
they are not the ones who have the listing. At this point I never contact an
agent through the Streeteasy platform. I just google the agent's name to find
their contact info.

------
potench
My favorite sushi-restaurant SugarFish was originally a take-away-sushi shop,
the sushi is very high quality and somewhat inexpensive for the quality ($40 a
meal). Also dine-in lines are consistently super long (they don’t take
reservations), so I like to order pick-up / take-out. Except, now they force
you to order take-out through Postmates which charges a large 15% fee and a
flat service-charge (that I don’t recall but will update here when sugar fish
opens). Sucks because I love the restaurant but really don’t appreciate paying
Postmates fees when I’m picking it up myself. When you call in an order they
auto-direct you to Postmates.

~~~
ebg13
> _inexpensive ... ($40 a meal)_

What a wonderful world we live in.

~~~
potench
You misquoted that. Sushi is expensive, the point is it’s all relative and I
think for the quality it’s typically more in the range of $60 a meal. Very
expensive compared to other meals sure, but a good value for the quality of
sushi.

------
dreamcompiler
I think it's high time for a full-blown FTC investigation into Yelp for
restraint of trade, consumer fraud, false advertising, and whatever else the
FTC can think of. These parasites have outlived their usefulness.

Failing that, a high-profile class-action lawsuit might get their attention.

------
leroy_masochist
I'm no lawyer, but to my layman's eyes this has class action lawsuit written
all over it. Would love to hear an actual tort attorney's perspective on this.

~~~
kevin_b_er
I'm no lawyer, but I'll bet on mandatory binding arbitration and no class
action stuck into the agreement.

~~~
leroy_masochist
Isn't agreement to no class action an ipso facto law violation and
unenforceable in most states -- e.g., the way noncompete provisions are in
California?

~~~
kevin_b_er
The other way around. The supreme court continually permits no class action in
agreements split right down political lines.

~~~
leroy_masochist
I learn new things on HN every day!

------
bdcravens
I remember a few years ago when Yelp testified before Congress about how
unfair mean ole Google was.

[https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/11-9-21Stoppe...](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/11-9-21StoppelmanTestimony.pdf)

------
myrandomcomment
My local handyman (he is a real engineering, just does this after getting out
of working a corporate job) that is booked months in advance told me a story.
He was listed on Yelp with perfect reviews. One day Yelp called him and ask
him about some paid for service to improve his listing. He said no thanks. A
few days later he when from showing up in the top of the search to near the
bottom. He is a great guy and does fantastic work. I was done with Yelp from
that point.

------
shkkmo
> “There's a button where you could hit play and so I was like, what is this?”
> he said. “I hit play, and the first call was me on the phone, which freaked
> me out because I didn't know I was being recorded.”

So is grubhub providing a notification to the restaurant that they are being
recorded in two party-consent states?

And is it possible to get on the grubhub platform without agreeing to pay the
marketing commission for phonecalls?

------
amluto
Some of the practices in the article sound criminal. Grubhub appears to be
recording conversations to which they are not a party as far as either the
customer or the restaurant knows. The message they play does not sound like a
notification that _GrubHub_ is recording the call. I am not a lawyer, but I
bet this is an illegal wiretap in at least one state.

------
beart
Is there a way to turn off the Yelp integration when using DuckDuckGo?

------
SnowingXIV
Yelp is terrible to work with. From my personal experience they've crossed
over into spam territory. They will call, email, leave lengthy voicemails
(with rather extortionist language), non-stop trying to get you to pay for
their premium services.

Really slimy. I'm not one to advocate for big G but hoping them or Apple makes
them irrelevant.

------
rhacker
I've never used grubhub, but this is shady.

In a rush I once had to find and call a hotel and get a reservation. The site
I used looked like a typical priceline or whatever- looked legit. Instead of
providing the phone number of the hotel front desk, it sent me to some shady
hotel booking service. I was tired and probably not thinking straight - but
they took my card and the room was booked. After arriving at the hotel I
indeed had a reservation, that was nice. What wasn't nice was that it wasn't
paid for. I had no idea who I called, and it was super late so I had no
options. If I wasn't in a gigantic stressful situation at the time I would
have done more to figure out what happened.

Not saying that grubhub or yelp is THAT shady, but that kind of business
practice is.

------
abalone
Fun fact: this is not the first time Yelp has done this. I recall over ten
years ago they tried exactly this feature as a way to monetize listing phone
numbers as part of premium business listings, or something like that. They
would charge for phone calls like ad clickthrus.

An interesting technical detail: they made the phone numbers gifs so they
wouldn’t be indexed by search engines.

I could be misremembering details and I can’t find anything online, but I’m
pretty sure this happened.

------
fucking_tragedy
In my area, Slice bought domains containing local pizzerias' names. Slice then
set up the domains with sites _branded with the local businesses ' branding_
and replaced the phone numbers and online ordering with Slice's.

Turns out Slice was able to beat those businesses at the SEO game and now
those fake sites are the first results when looking for local pizzerias'
contact info.

~~~
rkho
This is the exact game that OrderAhead played a few years ago:

[https://www.geekwire.com/2015/orderahead-restaurant-
website-...](https://www.geekwire.com/2015/orderahead-restaurant-website-
deception-includes-widespread-violations-of-google-terms-of-service/)

I'm curious what local pizzerias think about this

------
toss1
With Yelp around, I'm genuinely glad to not be in a retail or restaurant
business.

They are the digital equivalent of "nice shop you got there, it's be a real
shame if anyone broke the window, for just a small payment, we can protect
you..."

As a potential user, considering how they actively "manage" the reviews, I
simply do not trust them. I find far better information elsewhere.

------
fortran77
Considering that you can't opt out of a Yelp listing, I think they've crossed
a line here. They're basically putting up misleading directory pages for real
businesses that intentionally have wrong information.

I hope someone can successfully argue that willfully spreading misleading
information about someone else's business is wrong and actionable.

------
spiznnx
Last month, Grubhub hijacked restaurants web traffic by buying similar domains
for the same reason, so this isn't too surprising for them:
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub-
seamless...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub-seamless-
fake-restaurant-domain-names-commission-fees)

I assume Grubhub's Eat24 acquisition from Yelp came with some poorly written
contract clause that allows them to force Yelp to implement this absurd
feature as part of their "ordering partner integration", but maybe Yelp is
unethical AND stupid after all and is doing it for part of the take. We'll
probably never know. Either way their reputation will be ruined.

Disclosure: I interned at Yelp engineering and enjoyed it. The engineers were
all nice people with as much integrity as one would hope.

------
s17n
Yelp should obviously have just been upfront that they were going to be taking
commissions, the fact that they weren't strikes me as symptomatic of a
dysfunctional org (that failed to actually align on this decision but pushed
it out anyway in a shady way).

~~~
ViViDboarder
Grubhub is taking the commission from the restaurant in this case.

~~~
scottydelta
and Yelp from Grubhub.

------
flibble
The “we bring you new customers” pitch that food portals is incredibly
deceitful. Portals didn’t arrive on the scene with millions of customers to
send to restaurants. They arrived with zero and siphoned them away using these
dirty tricks (mini sites pretending to be made by the restaurant, phone
numbers owned by the portals, requiring the portal stickers on the
restaurants’ windows).

This blog post shows what happens when restaurants decide to leave portals:
[https://www.flipdish.com/ie/the-effects-of-leaving-costly-
fo...](https://www.flipdish.com/ie/the-effects-of-leaving-costly-food-
portals/)

------
elliekelly
I'm curious whether Yelp is only doing this in states without two-party
consent to record. In the article the author (Yelp user/restaurant customer)
is told the line is recorded before being connected through but the restaurant
employee on the other end appears completely unaware. I would guess there are
at least a few Attorneys General who would take issue with this approach.

It's not even close to the shadiest part of Yelp's business but it's one that
at least some businesses could work together and push back on without running
afoul of the binding arbitration/class action prohibition in Yelp's ToS.

~~~
ViViDboarder
The article states that Grubhub is recording the calls.

~~~
elliekelly
... yes. In states that require two-party consent to record a conversation (CA
& MA, for example) Grubhub can't record a call without telling _everyone_ on
the call it's being recorded. The article opens with a story of the author
having a conversation with a restaurant employee who's clearly unaware of the
recording.

------
manishsharan
How do you use Yelp when you know that a business can bribe Yelp with
advertizing and they will suppress negative reviews? and vice versa -- if a
business refuses to advertise, they will suppress positive reviews .

------
icanhasfay
(Serious Q) What other good alternatives are out there for Yelp?

~~~
dhritzkiv
I use Foursquare and really like it (compared to Yelp). As it's crowd-sourced,
the data can be iffy (missing hours, phone numbers) in some lower density
regions, but that hasn't been a huge drawback.

~~~
drstewart
Loved Foursquare, but stopped using it when it seemed all the recommendations
were a few years old. Even now I go into it and most reviews/recommendations
are from 2014. Shame it fell off.

------
obliviousonions
Does anyone know of a good alternative to implement a waitlist for restaurants
that inst yelp? Plenty of small restaurants use it because it's easy and texts
customers about their position in line.

[https://www.yelp.nowait.com/f](https://www.yelp.nowait.com/f)

------
awwstn
Someone should build a product for restaurants that receives the call,
terminates it, and immediately calls the customer back directly. If you can
quietly get a critical mass of restaurants onto it, then Yelp wouldn't be able
to punish those restaurants.

------
bytematic
Lots of sites replace emails and telephone numbers, this is essentially
twilios whole service. They can record phone calls and read all emails back
and forth. Mostly just to do analysis and maybe increase the quality of
responses

------
mxd3
Yelp is now in free for all mode and monetizing whatever they can. They forced
a bad ZocDoc integration, which was an absolute nightmare, and broke our Yelp
pages overnight. Not surprised at all to see this.

------
alistairSH
What value does Yelp provide to end users? I've tried it in the past, but it
never feels like I get any value. A simple Google search (not Maps, just
search the usual way) works just as well, if not better.

------
stretchwithme
Isn't the restaurant business already hard enough without being charged $8 to
answer a customer's question.

Well, I guess restaurants can end their relationship with Yelp and customers
can stop using Yelp too.

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astura
IDK... a referral fee on a phone order just seems absurd.

------
emeraldd
(IANAL) I smell a class action lawsuit coming, especially if this is being
done without the knowledge or consent of the restaurants in question.

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tyingq
This seems perfect for a class action suit.

------
heyflyguy
Yelp is bad. Doordash is a close second.

------
DiabloD3
Isn't Yelp essentially committing fraud by colluding with GrubHub to
impersonate business entities?

------
jammygit
I’ve been avoiding yelp, but it’s pretty easy to forget why until something
like this is posted. Gross

------
dangjc
Are there alternatives to Yelp? Are people using Foursquare or Google Maps?

~~~
jillesvangurp
Pretty much. I've never used Yelp nuch. I guess they never focused much on the
world outside the US. I just checked my area in Berlin (which has loads of
really nice places) and they have almost nothing for this area which means
their data for Berlin is 95% incomplete. For reference, several of the top
places for Berlin on Foursquare are in the same area. Yelp seems to have none
of those.

From working on POI data in Nokia Maps back in the day, I remember that this
is a tough market. A lot of sites from back in the day no longer exist. Yelp
apparently bought qype at some point which used to have pretty decent
coverage. I actually worked with their data at Nokia so I know. It seems all
of that is missing in action in Berlin (where they used to have most
restaurants covered). I guess that was more of an acquihire/competetitor
eliminating move. Either way, their data was pretty bad as I recall but not
this bad.

Google Maps typically has most places, even the really obscure/shitty ones.
Foursquare is a bit less predictable depending on how many users they have
locally but it's typically great in popular areas. Both have invested in great
user feedback mechanisms to improve the accuracy of their data. E.g. knowing
when a new place opens and an old one disappears or changes name is key.
Between those two, you get a decent impression what is good in an area. The
reviews in Google Maps are usually pretty helpful and I see little evidence of
cheating (though that obviously happens).

I guess what happened is that Yelp used to be a cool hop user driven review
website and then VC money took over and now the users are the product that
they sell to their customers the restaurants.

------
phs318u
Thanks for the heads up. Time to uninstall the Yelp app.

------
musicale
I didn't realize Grubhub was such a sleazy company.

------
eveningcoffee
Looks like a fraud to me.

------
tempsy
Makes me think really hard about tech’s blind adoration for the “PayPal
mafia.” I find myself seeing more instances of soul crushing amoral behavior
from this group of entrepreneurs than just about any other group.

~~~
soup10
It's worth pointing out that Google shamelessly cloned Yelp and funnels
everyone into using their clone when they search for restaurants. If Yelp is
in desperate spot its because Google put them there.

~~~
rurp
Most companies face stiff competition and that's no reason to excuse immoral
behavior. Not to mention that Google tried to acquire Yelp and was turned
down. Either Yelp's plan to take on Google always included copious dark
patterns, or their earlier plans totally failed and this is what they've
fallen back on. Either way Yelp can't die soon enough.

~~~
soup10
What are you talking about stiff competition? Google just lazily cloned it and
hijack the results of restaurant searches so they win by default.

~~~
monitorman
You challenge that it is stiff competition in your first sentence, then you
define that Google is, indeed, stiff competition in your second.

~~~
soup10
Hijacking search results because they are sour the Yelp deal didn't go their
way isn't competing LOL. They've already been fined billions for similar
behavior.

~~~
goobynight
They own the search results. Google isn't a public utility that gets hijacked.

Yelp can start their own search competitor if they enjoy(ed) the synergy.

~~~
soup10
EU regulators disagree.

