Thursday, April 30, 2009

The Downside of Yelp

This is going to be a direct rant against one review on yelp that I read the other day. Making this rant even worse is the fact that the reviewer is one of my friends and she's really a good and honest person. The problem is people reviewing places that they have a negative predisposition towards. What do I mean by this? The problem with her review is that 1) she doesn't like red meat and 2) she's reviewing it through the eyes of a college student. Who in their right mind, if they don't like red meat and who is living on a "college" budget goes to Lawry's in Beverly Hills. Oh, but it was for her friend's birthday. Okay, fine, but even then why would you review the place? Hmm, let's see, you dock 2 stars for the food and the price. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT! Seriously. You just rated a consistant 4.5-5 star restaurant a 3 because you don't eat the type of food they tailor too and because it's out of your price range? It's reviews like this that aggravate me the most, but what can you do. Yelp has no negative feedback system in place for inappropiate reviews, and "flagging" the review seems too harsh as a course of action. Thus, I am left to do nothing but stare the review right in the face. The real losers in this situation though is the people reading the review. I hope they're smart enough to know what her point of view was in writing what she thought was reasonable, but if they don't that's their loss. Maybe the other 200+ solid reviews will pursuade them otherwise.

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