Yes ^^^ this.
I will allow some time before taking any action.
Nope, It can be a problem, but users have the ability to flag and report reviews that seem out of character, and owners have the option to respond.
Yes. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. If someone is a dick on Yelp, they are a dick in real life too and will slam the place to their friends just the same. I for one only eliminate businesses that have extremely poor reviews overall. I also read the reviews briefly to see what they are complaining about.
Well on the site itself you can report and respond. Outside of that, you could post a public response stating your side of the story. You might extend an offer to the offended party to make it right or use your services again at a reduced rate or gratis. Many local businesses do this regularly. They offer a fair, generous response to those with a legitimate gripe, and don’t bother with the riff-raff and ofenderati. Remember that each review was posted by someone who felt strongly enough about their experience to bother posting about it.
Yelp is hardly a waste of time. In my area we have hundreds of small restaurants, most of which are moderately priced by my wallet. When we moved here a couple of years ago, we didn’t know many people that we could rely on for recommendations. Yelp helped me to ensure that my fairly limited amount of discretionary income was not pissed away at a mediocre or poor restaurant when there were lots of better options just down the street. Yeah you have to wade through the crap, but a couple of minutes skim reading while in the car doesn’t take long.
They certainly screwed up that day with your order, and in general, if there wasn’t anyone around to sit customers for 35 minutes.
But your review does come across a little vengeful. I would have ranted somewhere else, and only posted an “update” if things had changed consistently. I understand there are one time reviews on Yelp, but those sorts of reviews shouldn’t be made by long term customers.
Seems like a cultural thing to me. They took the review personally, and probably don’t understand that writing something negative on the Internet isn’t considered as disrespectful as calling their mother a whore in real life.
While their response was outside general norms for Internet behavior, it’s completely understandable and expected for someone new to the Internet or from a different age/culture.
I certainly wouldn’t publicly air your private communications. Just let it be. If you have to respond, do so politely, privately, and as though you are lovingly explaining something to a mistakingly angry child.
Meh. Normally I’d agree, but “good Christian” in this context is as meaningfully religious as a clerk wishing you Merry Christmas or someone saying “bless you” when you sneeze.
I had a bunch of positive reviews slamming a (slightly) negative review I posted for a local pizza place. They called me the worst possible names, etc. I didn’t respond, and I reported the others – all brand new accounts, all obviously fake – to Yelp. Yelp removed the other reviews. I let mine stand. For context, my review was pretty much a “They charged me $25 for a pizza and it really wasn’t that great, canned veggies on the topping, I wouldn’t order again” 3-star type review, not a “This place is terrible!!!” 1-star review.
If they had contacted me and said “Hey, how can we make this better?” I totally would have given them another chance. As it stands it only really confirmed the negative.
How these sites work is by building a critical mass of reviews. There may indeed be malicious or competitor-written reviews about a restaurant or other establishment, but if one or two nasties are countered by two hundred positive reviews, then the overall ‘score’ for the place will be high regardless, and it will be fairly obvious that the negative reviews are dishonest. If someone has already posted positively about a place, then recounts a bad experience, that will also be obvious.
You utterly miss the point. I review every hotel I stay in on TripAdvisor. I am by no means a connoisseur of the hotel trade, but I pay them money for a good experience, and that’s what I write about. Crowdsourced review sites are not about being a high-falutin’ critic, they’re about saying what the customer’s experience was like. The person who gives the business its livelihood.
Honestly, this was my first thought as well.
Yeah that too. Diosa does seem to have behaved a little peculiarly in her account.
I don’t know. She said that the owner did come out at one point, but failed to acknowledge her even though he saw her there. After that, it sounds like she didn’t see any restaurant staff again, so her only option would have been to barge into the kitchen and ask WTF was going on. While that’s probably what I would have done, I can’t really fault someone for deciding, “eff this, I’m out of here” and going to get food someplace that actually cares about their business.
Nor can I, but would you have done so after “literally wait[ing] 35 minutes, standing by the register”? That is fucking weird behaviour in my book. If you want your grub, shit or get off the pot, IMO.
In her defense, she did mention ringing the bell for service by the register a couple/few times before giving up.
Give me a break, folks. Diosa already mentioned that the initial wait didn’t bother her all that much. She was pissed about the follow-up phone call, during which the owner stupidly gave her a hard time.
A lot of posters keep harping on the fact that the restaurant only screwed up once, but that isn’t the case. They screwed up twice, and the second one was a doozy. Diosa was 100% right to do what she did.
Diosa had already waited an hour when she walked out - the 15 minutes she was told her food would take, plus the extra 10 minutes she gave knowing their service is slow, plus the 35 minutes she waited with no service. Then it apparently took the owner another 45 minutes to remember her and call. That’s 1 hour 45 minutes for a 15 minute meal. The only thing she should have been doing in that call is apologizing, and it’s taking her temper out on the customer that justifies the negative review. “Cultural differences” like that are exactly the sort of thing reviews ought to mention, so other people can decide whether or not they want to deal with them, and so the owners can see that shit doesn’t fly here and have a chance to adapt their behavior to benefit their business.
I saw that, but why wouldn’t you try to alert someone who worked there if you were waiting for a pick up order? Like telling a waiter/waitress that you’re here to pick up an order. I definitely think it’s bizarre that they don’t have a host or hostess standing out front to answer phones/greet customers, but wouldn’t it make sense to flag down any restaurant employee before leaving?
I would calm down. I think your review was fair, but, I don’t think they were harassing you. What did you report them to Yelp for??? They didn’t threaten you, did they? They thought you were wrong, got hot, and emailed you about it.
Stay off of Yelp in re this restaurant. Get on with your life.
I think her mere presence in the restaurant that was as empty as that, she not being seated at a dining table with food in front of her, would give more than abundant signals that she needed service. Waiting the, what, 35 minutes, also was more than fair. She isn’t the impatient little brat that your post seems to imply. (Well, at least in this instance!)
How are people supposed to judge a restaurant’s quality based on reviews if the only reviews allowed are nice ones? If a restaurant is having problems, even if it’s minor stuff, it’s nice to be forewarned. The whole purpose of Yelp is to give folks a way to share that information with other folks they may not know.
I write reviews on Yelp and have given enough helpful ones that I had been invited into the “elite” status club; it’s not big, but it shows folks who are reading the reviews that I’ve been recognized as someone who not only posts, but posts frequently and fairly enough to get the extra doo-dad added to my profile. If I never added any negative reviews whatsoever, I might not have actually gotten that status; however, it was determined by the folks who run the regional stuff that I was giving fair and interesting reviews, which is what earned the status.
I agree on this one; any time I’ve gotten poor service, I will mention the circumstances within the post. Sometimes it’s a one-off situation*, and other times it’s a consistent issue. I’ll also tell folks if the local crowd who goes there makes the experience suck, but I’ll defend the establishment in posts where half of the negative reviews are complaining about other customers-- if it’s merely busy during certain times of year, this is not something that the owners can do a ton about. However, if it’s a handful of regulars who behave poorly and there’s not a ton of customers because they’ve scared them off, that’s something that can be managed. I don’t think I’ve ever waited an hour on food, abandoned the hope of being served and left, only to be harassed by the owner of the restaurant about it two hours after I ordered. That’s just unacceptable on the restaurant’s part.
*One time I walked into a small family restaurant and the owner was trying to manage the whole store by himself while dealing with a fussy toddler whose crib/baby jail was parked in the kitchen; halfway through the interaction, Mom comes in to criticize him and ignore the toddler while he’s trying to do twelve things at once.
I never said she was an impatient brat. I just said that if I were in a restaurant and couldn’t find someone, I’d try to let an employee know that I’ve already called for my food. If it were a matter of me coming to have a meal there, I’d probably figure there’s no point since the service is so bad but if I’ve already ordered food, I’d at least like to get it.
I suggest making no further postings about this place on Yelp and not going back there. You don’t want these maniacs handling your food.
From what I got from the OP, there *was *no one else there. The one lady that came out briefly was the only front employee, and when she went into the kitchen and didn’t come back, the front was empty (except for the other two customers).