I could be a little more forgiving, but a bad first experience bothers my wife too, so we just don’t go back. It’s hard enough agreeing on what restaurant to go to, so at least one of us won’t want to return to a place after an initial bad meal. And it’s not like I set the standard very high either, I’ve been a restaurant owner, so I cut places a lot of slack to start with. If the food is bad, the service worse, and the prices don’t match the general quality, I’m not interested in finding out what happens the next time. That said, I don’t recall this being a problem at any place recommended by someone I know.
From my point of view, bad reviews are often more specific (even if they’re specific about something I don’t care about) as opposed to good reviews which are often pretty vague.
I give restaurant reviews that include specifics a whole lot more weight than the ones that say excellent or terrible.
You should reply to the reply with: “You’ve shown that your manners and professionalism are as bad as your culinary skills. I won’t be back to the restaurant until you no longer work there, and I WILL make sure the owner/managment knows it.”
Fwiw, the restaurant has been in business for since the 70’s. the original owners have passed the business on to their son, who is the chef. There are more good reviews than bad reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor. I was willing to give it another go, until the chef scolded me. Shrug
By reacting like an asshole, he’s shot himself in the foot. If I look on Yelp, or look up reviews for anything, I expect there to be a bunch of negative ones, possibly more than positive ones. I anticipate that people are going to be more keen on complaining and bitching than they are on paying compliments. A lot of those complaints are going to come from self-important whiners and often they’re not reasonable so I don’t hold it against an establishment if there’s some complaints. But if you’re the owner and you’re going to reply, there’s only one option: be gracious, apologize, and make some sort of peace offering. That sends out the message to the complaint readers (such as myself) that 1) you’re not an ass-hole; 2) if I should have a problem, I can expect some level of decent treatment and some combination of pro-active problem solving and reimbursement. Unless your rebuttal unequivocally shows that the complainer is a moron (Complainer: ‘Our room had no ocean view. Ruined our honeymoon!’; Owner: 'You booked a hotel room in Denver CO…) you lose.
Never mind, your review will be mysteriously “filtered” within days. Bet on it.
This has been my experience as well with posting a negative review on Yelp. I too, had some fallout from the negative review from the owners of one place that I once gave a negative review to. Nothing like the OP’s, or Diosa’s (shudder) but still a really surprising reaction from someone who’s supposed to be in a hospitality profession.
YMMV, but I find Yelp to be only slightly more helpful than the restaurant’s ad in the Yellow Pages.
Sorry for your poor experience, eenerms. Congratulations on 25 years!
I have a long thread here somewhere about my experiences having Yelp reviews filtered. The restaurant (local, very upscale, inept as hell) is out of business - they ran longer than I’d bet they would.
Interestingly, I just today had a meeting with a restaurant/event venue manager who made it clear they read all their online reviews and take them very seriously. He had the shocking idea that a negative review* means they did something wrong*.
Well, I was going to idly wonder if maybe the city one’s in makes a difference, but…
tdn and I live in the same city.
I’m likely basing my comments off the Yelp of a few years ago, then. I tend to look at the reviews as one data point and really consider the language, grammar and writing style of the reviewer before deciding how much weight to give it. I do know that there have been several accusations over the years of Yelp reviews skewing falsely positive, in part because of experiences like the ones described here.
Not if the OP is a Yelp member in good standing. All of my bad reviews-- including the ones from the previously linked to thread, are still up on Yelp, unfiltered.
I agree with the others that the only way a business owner can respond to negative online reviews is with grace, apologizing, and an offer to make things right. Like others have said, I don’t give much weight to a few crazy negative reviews, but if an owner responds back to the reviews in some crazy pants, psycho way, I definitely will never set foot in the place. This goes from reviews on TripAdvisor, too. Either respond graciously or don’t respond at all.
One time, I left a 3 star review for a martini bar in Vegas-- nothing ridiculous, just that the seats were kind of uncomfortable, service was a little slow (I acknowledged they were busy so it wasn’t a huge thing), and basically ended saying it was alright, but I likely wouldn’t be back. A week later, I got a private Yelp message from the manager apologizing and asking for me to call him next time I’m in town so he can send a car to pick my friends and me up and let us get a VIP table on the house for the night. What I liked is that the guy sent this as a private message-- he wasn’t trying to publicly right the situation so he looked good, he was genuinely trying to make me have a better experience. That was nice.
That’s my experience, too. I’ve decided that restaurants are like sitcoms: they usually suck for a season or two until they work out the kinks. So I try not to go to a restaurant that’s just opened, or if I do and they’re terrible, I’ll wait a year or two and then go back.
Except for the place near our house that served our daughter a sandwich on moldy bread, and then tried to charge us for it. Nope, sorry, bridge too far.
I wrote a review for a sub shop once. It looked like a good sandwich place, so I gave it a try. While I’m waiting for my order, I notice a big sign that says “Don’t Trust The Liberal Media.” Interesting, I thought. As I walked around the place, I noticed a few laminated cards and started to read them. They were the most vitriolic, right wing, tea party, propaganda I’ve ever seen in a public place. Anti liberal, democrat, Muslim, women, gay, Obama, black, immigrant, etc. Some were phony news articles, others were extremely offensive (if not outright racist) jokes.
The sub was just average, not bad, but comparable to a chain sandwich shop. So I wrote a review, and didn’t say anything bad about the food, just that it wasn’t anything to write home about. I debated whether to mention the propaganda material, then thought screw it, if they have it available, it’s fair game. Someone posted another review that basically said I wasn’t welcome there and went on to say how wonderful the owner was, the history of the place, and a bunch of other stuff that had to be from the owner. In my opinion, it made the place look a whole lot more unwelcoming, kind of a “we don’t like your kind around here boy” vibe. Yelp actually took down the other review, most likely because the term “idiot” was used quite frequently.
Don’t take what I say as anything about this city. Just about the only reviews I have read were for things outside of the city. Overwhelmingly in California, actually.
Did you post about that place previously? This sounds really familiar.
A chef would be very foolish to engage in a war of words on a public criticism site.
That said, when you grill fish, you get scorched herbs. It’s normal.
You say waiter was loud, restaurant sayd he was waiting on a table of hard of hearing next to you. Cancel out.
As you say. I’ve collected enough data to establish that Yelp’s filtering system is erratic, unpredictable and renders many cumulative reviews and rankings meaningless.
Make an effort to look at the filtered reviews whenever you can, especially for places you know well enough to have a solid opinion. (It’s a PITA, because you have to pass through a CAPTCHA gate on every entry to reach the filtered reviews.) If you see any consistency - good reviews, bad ones, obvious shill ones, obvious real-person ones consigned to one side or the other, let me know. I see all kinds on both sides of the divide, and never for any reason I can divine. I guess I’m just not as smart as their automatic filtering system. (But I am smart enough to look elsewhere for my reviews and ratings…)
Incidentally, when I’m ever on the fence about a place, I always look at the filtered reviews (so, my point is that I’m often looking at the filtered reviews). The vast majority are usually from a one off poster, exalting from on high about how this is the single greatest restaurant of all time-- OF ALL TIME! The posts are usually a few lines and more or less the same canned stuff. It’s my guess that most of those posts are from reputation management firms, creating fake accounts to up the SEO score of the business, but that’s just me guessing.
Now, certainly, there’s always a few seemingly real reviews mixed in-- good, bad, and middle of the road. But again, those accounts almost always have a low number of reviews and all the other fun stuff we talked about before.
I actually haven’t seen a majority of such obvious shilling, but when I do, it can just as easily be in the visible reviews.
Everyone has a theory or a viewpoint on this - mostly that one class or another of review is what makes it into visible or filtered. However, everyone seems to have a different opinion and it’s easy to find examples that contradict, say, your position.
I maintain that it’s so random and so erratic that there’s no good explanation other than that Yelp is convinced their automated system is just dandy-perfect.
The only system that rep-management spammers can’t game is a random one. 
So you made a scene?