I'm convinced that there is an untold number of third parties/scammers cold-calling listed business numbers falsely representing themselves as Yelp, targeting owners who are not technologically savvy.

Unfortunately, Yelp's current model seems to encourage extortion at the hands of these third parties, and is also incapable of punishing them.

What I think happens / Paraphrase of what I'd imagine a 3rd party call to be like:

"Hi, this is Yelp. Pay us and we'll boost your rating/visibility and hide bad reviews. If you don't pay, your Yelp ratings will suffer."

Then they just manipulate ratings and review visibility with fake accounts. Add good reviews and hide bad ones if the owner paid, and add bad reviews and hide good ones if they didn't.

(Also I'm aware that there are plenty of "legitimate" businesses that provide this service and don't misrepresent themselves as Yelp itself)

And you should be convinced.

I'm a Google Trusted Photographer in Houston and I visit and talk with businesses that get targeted every single day. I'm loosely affiliated with Google and I have to make that clear. They get calls twice a day from "Google" and "Yelp" about their pages and reviews. This is their #1 complaint when I call them or walk in their door. Being local helps.

I've gotten a few prerecorded calls from "Google Local" about my business, saying something about needing to verify details. I never really listen though, because I don't have a business (they're calling my personal cell phone). It's really quite strange.

Try having a listing on Google maps and see how many times you get called.

You know, the old protection rackets (which probably still exist) were easy to make seem non-illegal. If that's a word. One person offers to prevent the consequences of ignoring threats, but doesn't make the threat themselves. A person with little or no known connections to the first makes the actual threat and carries them out. The first guy was trying to help a neighborhood business with a potential problem, you see. In other words, if you pay me I'll protect your store from these lawless thugs destroying other people's stores who do not pay for my protection.

Now, looking at such things from a common sense perspective makes it quite obvious what's going on. But proving the same in a court of law, which often will have a much higher requirement of proof, may not be so easy.

You didn't look very hard: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/3k2bxt/yelp_salespe...

Rossman embellishes his stories. He once tried to claim that the recent debacle with error:53 and the iPhone was a conspiracy by Apple to brick phones and increase sales.

I wouldn't believe him if he told me it was pouring rain outside. I would check first and make sure it wasn't just a drizzle.

They don't need to say anything incriminating to execute this.

If you decline, the Yelp sales person could simply have their friend visit your business, have a "1-star experience" and then write a review.

Hey they faked the moon landing they can do this, surely.

Seriously though, I'd agree: you'd think at least one of these shady sales people would fess up for the publicity alone.