It caught me off guard and I thought he was being sarcastic. I guess the least I can do is give them a plug about their new engraving service that they're offering. It's always nice to support a local small business, and you couldn't find a nicer couple in Rick and Karen. "But to then call up and offer to make the ad go away for a price, that seems like an unscrupulous business practice." I finally decided maybe I should just order the charm online or see what's the closest store that has it in store. I must say, Karen and Rick (the owners) were some of the most down to earth business owners I have ever met. From our conversation, their passion for jewelry and gemstones was very apparent. But, taking off another link would probably result in it being slightly tight. If that was the case, then I could just come back in and they will adjust it accordingly. He said Yelp is "all about connecting local businesses and consumers." Dean, the marketing consultant, said that Yelp is a fact of life for small businesses and that challenging the company's policies is going to be "a fight you're not going to win." To give his shop, called 58 Facets Jewelry, a little social-media boost, Fonger spent about $300 a month advertising on Yelp.
– Rick Fonger, who owns a California jewelry store, used to advertise on Yelp. The day after he stopped, last month, a Yelp employee called to tell him that his competitors' ads were now showing up above the reviews on his store's Yelp page. "She said that for $75 a month, she could make those ads go away," Fonger tells David Lazarus at the Los Angeles Times. When Fonger told her that sounded like extortion, "She said she could understand why I'd think that. But she said they do it to everyone." A Yelp rep later explained to Lazarus that she was simply offering Fonger the opportunity to "buy out the ad space on [his] own page." The practice does sound like extortion to Lazarus, and to the expert he consulted. The Yelp rep "said Yelp is doing the same thing that phone books do: selling ads that accompany related business listings," Lazarus writes. "The difference, of course, is that the Yellow Pages never told businesses they could pay extra to get rid of someone else's ad." And therein lies the problem. Lazarus points out that other small-business owners have accused Yelp of threatening to make negative reviews more prominent if the owners didn't buy ads on the site. "Yelp succeeds by making a problem and then taking people's money to solve it," Lazarus writes. "I'm no lawyer, but I know a racket when I see one. Anybody who calls to say that you now have a problem but that they can make that problem go away for $75 a month isn't your friend." Click for his full column.