Why you should never waste your time on Yelp.com.

I had a recent bad experience with a local pizza (Cecil Whittaker's pizza located on West Clay in St. Charles Mo.) place that I had been a loyal customer of for over 12 years. I was shocked by the experience and so I called the owner of the restaurant to discuss it with him. I knew him and we have spoken a number of times over the years both in-person and over email.

I wanted him to be aware of the situation first, and out of respect I gave him a call. To my utter disbelief he told me to write it down for him and then basically hung up on me. Clearly he no longer cares about customers. His excuse the next day was that he was very busy.

Anyway, I digress. So in my frustration with being overcharged, treated poorly, and then being dismissed on the phone I decided to place a Yelp review. I posted the review and the very next day discovered that it had been removed.

I wasn't notified that it was removed, nor was I told why. Thinking that it was removed for putting some person's name in the review, I edited it and removed any reference to an individual. I then reposted it. The very next day again, it had been removed.

Then I remembered that they had done the same thing to me not more than a year earlier. After doing some digging, there are apparently a large number of both people and businesses that believe Yelp to be dishonest. Some people believe that negative reviews are removed for businesses that pay an advertising fee to Yelp. Others believe that Yelp is dishonest by not providing a reason for the removal of a person's review. Still others believe that many of the positive reviews on Yelp are fraudulent in nature.

Check out this link for a Forbes article talking about this very thing.

I don't know that we will ever know the complete truth. I know that Yelp has been involved in a number of lawsuits. I will never support them again with a review, either positive or negative. In my opinion they are a very dishonest company and I definitely will not trust any of their reviews in the future.

Why waste your time?

p.s. Go to Imo's or Stefanina's for the best St. Louis style pizza available. Avoid Cecil Whittakers if you care about good service and good pizza!

http://imospizza.com/

https://www.stefspizza.com/