"And these are reviews going back years," Dean pointed out. Neither Yelp, nor Google, nor Facebook caught the fake Greencare reviews that Kay Dean found. Yelp says, "While our systems to combat deceptive reviews are among the most aggressive in the industry, no system is perfect and Yelp remains vigilant in continuously adapting and improving our abilities to respond to attempts to deceive consumers through misleading content - both on and off our platform." "It's pretty amazing that they continue to get away with this stuff." "This mysterious algorithm can't work as well as they claim it does," said Milliken. In Greencare's case, Reese wonders, "Why is this algorithm not working?" Reese and others Milliken interviewed in her film are also suspicious of Yelp's touted algorithm that's supposed to combat deceptive reviews. "Why would we continue to pay them escalating amounts of money and have the reviews change if it was the contrary?" There’s no connection between the time a business starts, stops, or declines to advertise, and the placement of reviews in the recommended or not recommended sections for that business. Yelp’s recommendation software is entirely automated and applies the same objective rules to every business, and does not take a business’s advertising status into account (and never has). Yelp says, "There has never been any amount of money a business can pay Yelp to alter reviews or ratings. John Reese: Well, I agree, but honestly, as a business owner, it's very hard to go against these larger companies where you feel like you have to pay, otherwise they could just drop you down to nothing. It was very awkward to deal with somebody like that in a business where we didn't feel like we had any control over anything.ĭarcy Spears: John, what you're describing is extortion. Greencare has been spending $5,000 a month to be a Yelp advertiser.ĭarcy Spears: You're telling me that when you paid Yelp, things changed on your page?ĭarcy Spears: If that pushes down a legitimate negative review, then aren't you paying to put up a smokescreen? If you want to do another five-star review, you need to pay this amount of money." "And then they kept asking us, well, if you want to do a five-star review at this level, you need to pay this amount of money. To fix that, Reese claims they had to pay Yelp. "So, my explanation or reason for that," said Reese, "is that we ran into some issues with Yelp when we first started our company, and we were having real customers leave reviews and they were being filtered and filtered and filtered." "There's a lot of stuff out there with your company where the people saying they've had a good experience with you aren't real people, they're not real customers, and their experiences aren't real. "There have been some things on there that weren't accurate," admits Greencare owner John Reese. All I know is they have scores of fake reviews." "I have no idea how competent a contractor they are. "They're trying to mislead you," said Dean. We began investigating Greencare based on a tip from former federal criminal investigator-turned digital detective, Kay Dean.Ĭombing Facebook, Google and Yelp, Dean discovered dozens of fake five-star reviews for Greencare. PART 1: Five Star Fraud: Greencare Pool Builder customers duped by fake reviews The same thing that 13 Investigates is hearing from Greencare, a Las Vegas pool and landscaping business. Those statements all come from Kaylie Milliken's 2019 documentary on Yelp, "Billion Dollar Bully." Milliken interviewed businesses from across the country, "Thousands and thousands of business owners all saying the same thing." "If the mafia had done what Yelp is doing, they'd be thriving in every county and every jurisdiction in the United States by doing it over the internet." Though they're illegal under federal law, fake reviews fill the web. LAS VEGAS (KTNV) - Fake online reviews cheat consumers looking for real feedback, and undercut honest businesses.
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