Yelp Sued Over Extortion Scheme

What do Yelp and the Mafia have in common? Both entities allegedly like to trudge around the neighborhood and demand payments from local businesses for “protective” services. Yelp, the popular local review service, may have a friendlier face than your average slicked-back Mafia goon, but apparently its techniques are the same. At least that’s what a class action lawsuit filed in LA claims.

A Long Beach vetinary hospital claims that Yelp asked for payment in exchange for removing negative reviews. The vetinary hospital initiated the contact, asking Yelp to pull a “false and defamatory” review from Yelp’s website and was told that it’d need to pay $300 a month for removing the review. You would think Yelp could have at least offered a one-time payment.

We might have expected this had Yelp come under the dominating regime that is Google, but on its own, it seems like such a helpful little service–like the friendly, helpful townie of the Internet.

Frankly, the whole situation sounds like a real mess. Why would a business expect Yelp to remove a negative review, anyway? Isn’t that what the service is all about–good with the bad? And who defames a vetinary hospital? A law firm or collection agency, maybe, but a vetinary hospital?

Yelp denied the claims in a statement. [via CNET] [Photo: AMagill]