I use Yelp for services, because I find that people will generally give some narrative that is meaningful to me. So, telling me about the wait time at your nail salon or the good colorist at a hair salon, etc. is helpful. For restaurants, I tend to skim Yelp reviews and then cross-reference with Chowhound.
Slow service can deserve shaving a few stars off, though. I did that when I posted a review of a restaurant we went to in Vegas. People came in after us, ate, and left, and we were still waiting for our food. The food was excellent, but man, so slow.
Yeah, I don’t always agree with the LTH reviews, but I do find that the smaller neighborhood restaurants have their off days. A “meh” one day might be “holy crap this was the best food I’ve ever eaten!” the next. Also, ordering the wrong things can do that to you. My rule is I always give a place two, and even three, shots to impress me. Like, for example, the first time I went to Smoque. Everyone raves about their brisket in particular. The first time I had it, dry and chewy and overall meh. None of the food was objectionable, but none stood out, either.
Next time I went to Smoque, totally blown away by the brisket. I admit a prejudice against barbecue places that use Southern Prides and those types of commercial smokers, but, wow, that experience changed my perspective, and is my favorite place (other than my back yard) to get a barbecued brisket in Chicago.
Yes, a good restaurant should be more consistent, and that is a strike against them, but I find neighborhood restaurants can be pretty uneven. Still, they should hit at least 80% of the time.
I’m a craft beer drinker, and I don’t go out of my way to fault chain restaurants for not catering to my long tail food and beverage interests. People who go to, say, George’s Pizza and Wings and Crap Beer Too and are complaining that they don’t have Old Rasputin on tap drive me crazy. If you want any craft beer selection, go to the Mellow Mushroom, which is more oriented toward craft beer and fancy-shmancy pizza. Just be aware that you’ll also be paying the “cool tax” to eat there.
There’s also the issue that the service is great, but they didn’t like the taste of the food because, surprise, they hate Mexican food and they’re in a restaurant making authentic Oaxacan cuisine. Or they have a paraplegic midget who needs to be reclining to eat and digest properly and there were no fainting couches available for said midget to lay upon while eating.
The one that really gets me is that their review is showing that the person giving the negative review is a xenophobic asshole who shows up at restaurants five minutes before closing, demanding to be seated in the only area that was fully prepped and closed off so that they can camp at the table for three hours. Or they went to Chuck E Cheese and complained that there are rowdy and/or excited children ruining their mediocre pizza experience.
A lot of using Yelp is knowing how to read for context and learning about the reviewer via their reviews. Whenever I write a review, if there are caveats or Things That Must Be Acknowledged about a place, I will add them in, as they’re useful to know. If Dino’s Two Toned Taqueria required its patrons to wear silly bow ties in order to be served, I would add that in; I’d also warn folks if Dino’s were a local watering hole for octogenarians or a pickup joint for swingers, as it’s useful information. We’ve got a handful of local places that I either shop forearmed with the fact that the locals are insane or avoid because of the crowd it attracts. Two reviews of the same place from Yelp:
The thing is, with this one, there’s very little the staff can do to keep the annoying customers from being jerks in the aisles. The place is jam-packed with all sorts of food and folks would complain if they reduced selection to make the aisles wider. Overall, it’s more about knowing how to navigate places that are busier than Publix on a Tuesday morning at 10am than the setup of the aisles-- there’s enough room, but you’re better off not grabbing a cart and instead just getting as much as fits in your handbasket.
They mention the issues with problematic fellow customers, but it’s not the majority of the experience, and they warn you that being patient is going to make your experience easier. This place is not meant to be a quick “in and out with a cart full of stuff in 20 minutes” experience, but it’s worth the time spent if you can devote 30-40 minutes to grocery shopping. I’m a regular at the store, but I never go there if I’m in any hurry whatsoever for a reason.
As for giving Yelp reviews, I try to review places that I feel I can give a fair review to-- if I went there and they didn’t have what I wanted because I went to the wrong place, I don’t give them one star and say they’re awful because I was looking for tomatillos at Tire Kingdom. I just don’t give them a review. I have an okay ratings distribution, with the majority of my reviews being in the three and four star range and almost as many one and two star reviews (combined) as my five star reviews. If a place is really awful and it’s something that could have been easily fixed, they get a negative review the first time; if it’s something that’s a pattern of poor service and bad offerings (food/products/etc.), it’ll take a few times of going there before I warn others on Yelp.
I have been burned by both TripAdvisor and Yelp, when I left negative reviews for travel and restaurants that I thought were awful. I do not work for any sort of business designed to inflate or hurt business reputations. I simply think that if a place has poor services/products, that someone has to let the world know, since the other three positive reviews for the place were done by the owner and his friends.
The one that pissed me off the most was a dive shop I used in Bonaire that was by far and away the most poorly run and dangerous outfit I had ever used. Personally, I am amazed they haven’t killed someone. I wrote a detailed explanation of everything they did wrong and why, and the review never made it up on the site. Now I don’t even bother.
That said, I did just go to Portland,OR last week for the first time and used Yelp to find to good inexpensive restaurants. Both were heavily reviewed and had 4.5 stars. I figured there were too many reviews for them all to be fakes, and indeed, both were great. That said, I did not add my own review to either place.
I hate when this happens. :mad:
Seriously now, you’re right about having to read the reviews for what specifically they’re complaining about. If the worst review I read for a grocery store was that the great selection was overshadowed by too-small aisles and jerk customers, I’d still shop there. I’m not there to make friends; I want food. So I always look at negative reviews, and disregard them if the person is griping about foolishness. The problem with Yelp, though, is everybody is happy about everything all the time, so it’s hard to know if the same person who writes “The pork belly was seasoned perfectly” is the same person who picks the seeds out of bell peppers because they’re too spicy, or is someone who knows what they’re talking about.
My hypothesis as a sometimes professional pseudo-statistician is that while the mean of intellect and critical judgment of the human species is average by definition, the median skews way to the low side. So when you collect a lot of unqualified opinions on any topic that requires any degree of discernment on the quality of a product or service without any means to weight the results based upon some kind of competence metric, you end up with an evaluation that is skewed well toward the extreme if not completely meaningless. I submit for your consideration evidence of the otherwise incomprehensible popularity following products and services:[ul]
[li]Fox News[/li][li]the Chrysler PT Cruiser[/li][li]Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey[/li][li]Katy Perry[/li][li]Facebook[/li][li]America’s Funniest Home Videos[/li][li]the Tea Party movement[/li][li]Orlando, FL[/li][li]The Saw movie franchise[/li][li]Chicken McNuggets[/li][li]About 99.7% of the content on the Internet[/li][/ul]Stranger
My favourite ones (well, “favourite”) are the ones where a pissed-off owner takes the time to refute every single criticism in the previous reviews. But tries to disguise it as being a “satisfied customer” or whatever.
“The pizza was OK but I don’t care for their tomato sauce–too sweet for me!” and “Good pizza! Breadsticks are on the chewy side,” and “Drink refills aren’t free!!! 
But I LOVE their pizza so I keep coming back!!!” are all responded to with an omnibus
“I don’t know WHAT you’re talking about!!! Their tomato sauce is PERFECT and it’s DEFINITELY not too sweet. The BREADSTICKS are made from an AUTHENTIC ITALIAN RECIPE from the owner’s GRANDMOTHER and they’re DELICIOUS!!! I could eat them all day!!! And maybe you didn’t know but drinks cost MONEY for an establishment!!! That’s what you get for eating LOCAL, not at CHAIN PLACES. Sincerely, a satisfied customer!”
And so on.
[quote=“Stranger_On_A_Train, post:27, topic:587751”]
[ul]
[li]Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
While I prefer a bourbon in general (and Maker’s Mark in particular) or a Rye or some Scotches, Old No. 7 is palatable, and Gentleman Jack is downright good. What I don’t understand, though, is the popularity of restaurants to buy generic, mediocre, license barbecue sauces and other ingredients bearing the brand name!
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head right here.
IME, for Milwaukee anyway, what you have to do is pretty much just assume that four stars is a baseline for a decent but not outstanding restaurant. They’ll have good food and good service, but they’re not going to blow you away. For the really outstanding stuff, you have to look for the places with reviews that are pushing up toward the full five stars. And for everything in that 4-5 star range, you have to comb through the actual reviews themselves, to see what the people are saying and how they’re saying it. (E.g., the dude raving about the “donut holes” at the Indian restaurant might not be the biggest expert on the subject.)
[quote=“Stranger_On_A_Train, post:27, topic:587751”]
[ul]
[li]Orlando, FL[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Ha!
Yeah, whenever someone gets this defensive in a review, I check to see how many reviews they’ve made. I also do this if they’re not defensive, but unreasonably jazzed about something no sane person could even tolerate, let alone love. If the post count is 1, it’s certified bullshit.
Yeah, and I’m tired of sifting through mountains of reviews trying to pick out bits of what appears to be relevant information. Even if someone says the food is good, that’s fine, but I don’t trust these people anymore.
So it’s official. Yelp sucks. I’ve made up my mind. I’m also still certain (no evidence necessary) that people review things favorably just because they’re popular. For some reason, I once had this idea that Yelp was where you went when you wanted the real deal, the scoop from actual people trying to find what’s good, and not a bunch of inflated fanfare. I have no idea where I got such a silly idea from.
Did you read a Yelp review of Yelp?
Some days I like Yelp, some days I hate it.
It certainly seems like there are paid ads here. I’m always surprised when I come across spam on Craigslist or on paid ads on Yelp because…it’s little ol’ Pittsburgh fer chrissakes.
It’s pretty bad that considering I have maybe 20 reviews up that around half or more I’m the top “yelp sort” and nearly all are in the top 3 of Yelp sorts. I don’t give that much of a shit but I’m fucking literate, which is obviously quite a step up for most of them.
Of course it appears not many people read Yelp either. An absolute hole that I left a lengthy review for (and it’s the top Yelp sort) just had a Groupon deal and a thousand people bought it. So, whatever.