How to Ruin Your Company's Yelp Reputation in One Easy Step

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

What’s the Latest?

An upscale hotel about 20 miles south of Albany has seen its Yelp profile destroyed after the New York Post reported on its punitive campaign to crack down on negative online reviews. From The Post:

The Union Street Guest House, near Catskills estates built by the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, charges couples who book weddings at the venue $500 for every bad review posted online by their guests…

…If you take down the nasty review, you’ll get your money back.

For any bad reviews that do make it online, the innkeepers aggressively post “mean spirited nonsense,” and “she made all of this up.”

The Union Street Guest House, according to its website, offers “spacious rooms with classic lines and stylish sensibility.” You can no doubt smell the wafting snobbery all the way down the Hudson.

What’s the Big Idea?

You’ve got to love how the internet levels its own brand of poetic justice. Here are three of the many reviews that have been posted on the Inn’s Yelp page today:

I like to end my posts on the Ideafeed with an apt lesson for readers to take away from the featured news story. But really, there’s not much more to be said that hasn’t already been covered by the above. The Union Street Guest House’s draconian policy (read more about it here) completely backfired. Even if they complain and Yelp elects to expunge the trolling reviews, the memory of this incident is sure enough to blemish the hotel’s reputation for a long time.