So, the company who controls the online reputation of most restaurants (and isn't known for doing a good job) is now going to have a hand in their orders/payment processing/delivery. What could possibly go wrong there?
How is Yelp going to handle a 1-star review that was prompted by a missed order, a late delivery, etc.?
The same thing they do now, let it potentially damage the restaurant's reputation. I've seen literally the most fucked up reviews drag down an otherwise 5-star restaurant's ratings...shit like: "The chef's tasting menu was a great price, but it was far too much food...how much sushi do they think two people can eat?" and "My waitress just had the ugliest sweater when I went in today, completely ruined my usually delicious burger! 1 star."
I really wish they had a more quantitatively factored upvote/downvote/reputation system.
Even if they didn't, how would we know? I have seen countless 1-star reviews of restaurants that I have visited where the content of the review is just bizarre: incorrect names of people, items that aren't on the menu, server practices that are completely out of the ordinary, etc. I can't help but think they are the result of a desperate Yelp ad salesman who wants to burn someone for not buying.
Wait, why on earth should people be prevented from leaving a negative review when they have a negative experience? A review site that doesn't let people leave negative reviews is an untrustworthy review site.
Sure, people are unreasonable - but that has nothing to do with Yelp! Think of it this way: you can make it look like the world experienced vastly more earthquakes in the 20th century than in the 17th, but what actually happened was that detection got much better. Similarly, Yelp doesn't at all change people's propensity to think unreasonable things about restaurants they go to: it just improves detection. Improved detection, I argue, is an inherent good. Knowing what people really want makes it easier to deliver that, even if the process of finding out what people actually want is painful (and it usually is, since most of us are not very good at knowing what we actually want).
>> Wait, why on earth should people be prevented from leaving a negative review when they have a negative experience?*
They shouldn't be. But now Yelp controls both the reviews and part of the experience. It's a conflict of interest on multiple levels. It was already an issue when they started filtering reviews and letting paid accounts have more control. Now they also have a hand in ordering/processing/delivery.
The only analogy I can think of is Amazon–which has both reviews and its own products (Kindle). A bad review of the Kindle hurts Amazon directly. Therefore, it incentivises them even more to make a good product.
Yelp, on the other hand, never suffers from a bad restaurant review, a charge error, or a late delivery by one of it's partners. Only the restaurant suffers. In fact, a bad review is good for Yelp because it becomes a sales lead.
Kindle is the only product where the Amazon review system is guaranteed to be "fair" -- Amazon is delivering the entire experience.
Many other products on Amazon (where people look for reviews, even if they are buying elsewhere) have bad reviews because the "shipping was slow" or the "price went down right after I bought it" -- things that shouldn't fairly be attributed to the product.
If we assume that a consumer is more willing to order from a restaurant that has a sterling rating, then Yelp is suddenly more incentivized to limit the number of negative reviews.
(I personally don't believe this, but it's certainly a rational argument.)
The only hand that Yelp has in the process is delivering a convenient form that passes your order to services the restaurants already work with like Seamless, Grubhub, etc. It's no different than if you had visited GrubHub, placed an order, and the restaurant got it to you late.
Sorry, but every additional middleman involved is another potential bottleneck or point of failure–even if it's as trivial as an embedded form or redirect.
This is exacerbated on mobile, which is the majority of Yelp's traffic, where connections are slow/spotty.
This is really great. I find that Yelp's business search is the best out there, and I often use it in conjunction with Seamless/Grubhub, since I just trust Yelp's search more.
I wonder what the API for Yelp Platform might be like. Could be a huge moneymaker.
Isn't that a bit of a misnomer, they are integrating with existing delivery services. From the subject I figured they were providing their own? Either way... cool....
It may seem crowded right now, but some/most of these companies will probably not succeed. I'd just like one of them to succeed!
For that matter, I'd really like someone to do what WebVan tried to do, except not become Steve Blank's canonical example of how not to run a startup. I miss the convenience.
How is Yelp going to handle a 1-star review that was prompted by a missed order, a late delivery, etc.?