Companies are Paying People To Give Positive Yelp Reviews

In this day and age, we have certainly come to rely on online web sites to provide us with up to date information on services in our area, restaurants, mechanics, barbers, and so on.  But, did you ever imagine that companies would stoop so low as to pay customers to give them a good review on Yelp?  Below is an actual ad that was posted on Craigslist...

"We are looking for Yelpers who are interested in making money part time working from home publishing Yelp Reviews we receive from our client's customers as testimonials!

We will:

Forward you the business page

Forward the comments

Forward you the pictures.

AND PAY YOU THROUGH PAYPAL!

All you have to do is copy the comments and place a 5 star review for the businesses we ask you to place the review for- and that's it!

You get paid for each review we send you and place that becomes recommended and not filtered."

I, personally am shocked that this is happening!  How can I possibly come to rely on any of the online review sites, if the information and the reviews are completely bogus?  It is so sad to see something as helpful as this become a victim to unscrupulous practices.

Here's more sad news...it's not illegal.  Yelp has a slogan, it's "Real People, Real Reviews".  Hmmm, makes you really wonder.

Personally, this is just another reason never to trust Yelp for online reviews.  Maybe we have to go back to doing things the old fashioned way by actually trying the place out for ourselves.  Seems like an antiquated way of doing things, huh?

Ultimately, this is just one more reason to never trust Yelp, as if you needed another one.