LIVE TO EAT: "The restaurant owner who asked for 1-star Yelp reviews."

This guy reminds me of me, at least back in the day before I mellowed. This is a must read.

The restaurant owner who asked for 1-star Yelp reviews, by Zachary Crockett (The Hustle)

How one small business owner flipped the online review ecosystem on its head.

In 2014, chef Davide Cerretini advertised a special that would forever change his fate: Anyone who left his restaurant a 1-star review on Yelp would get 25% off a pizza.

See, his Bay Area-based Italian joint, Botto Bistro, was at a crossroads. Like many small businesses, it was enslaved to the whims of online reviewers, whose public dispatches could make or break its reputation.

He’d had enough: It was time to pry the stars from the “cold, grubby hands of Yelpers” and take control of his own destiny.

But the move would set Cerretini at the center of a long-standing battle between Yelp and disgruntled business owners — a battle including cries of “extortion,” review manipulation, and predatory advertising tactics ...

LIVE TO EAT: "7 steps to try before resorting to a bad review on Yelp."

A satisfied customer (Catania 2016).

While staying in Porto in February, we enjoyed a wonderful meal at a family-operated eatery called Taberna Stº. António. It's near the university quarter, and seems to be successfully keeping both locals and tourists fed and satisfied.

Except an American who wrote a one-star review on social media. Now, it helps to know that just about every source of information about the Taberna Stº. António concurs that reservations are a good idea owing to the small size. There are only 10, maybe 12 tables, and for dinner service, the establishment is geared to turn them once, then clean up and go home.

We walked past at about 6:00 p.m., an hour before the restaurant begins evening seating, and thought it might be expeditious to make a reservation. It took all of a minute for the friendly bartender to record our names in the old-school notebook. It was a wonderful meal.

Another satisfied customer (Porto 2018) 

Accordingly, the reason for the one-star take-down from the clueless American, which occurred a few weeks before our excellent experience, was that he came to the Taberna Stº. António without a reservation, it was fully booked with no available tables, and so BOOM, a negative review: how dare they not have space to seat us?

How can you give a bad review to a place you haven't even entered? It still annoys me. Click through for the details of how better outcomes result from communication between real people.

7 steps to try before resorting to a bad review on Yelp, by Neil Swidey (Boston Globe Magazine)

We don’t always have to air our grievances about a business with the entire world before telling the business.

1. Be timely.
2. Be resourceful.
3. Be firm but respectful.
4. Be honest.
5. Be succinct.
6. Be clear that you are interested in having management restore your faith in the business.
7. Be generous with feedback.

Red Room redux: Welcome to genocidal grammar and tyrannical misspelling.

I never cease to be amused by the era of lunacy empowerment, and this sort of trolling seems to be happening with more frequency since last year's election, suggesting that one tormented person is responsible for multiple comments under different names.

"Manny" uses the words "shrine" and "idolized," as did the previous offended party, to whom I forwarded a prompt reply and received no response or acknowledgement. That's because the last thing he wants is dialogue ... and that's because thinking is so very hard.

"Manny" sent no e-mails, unless he botched the .com address; even dud newalbanian.com addresses are forwarded to me for examination.

Worst of all, having selected Yelp as platform for sharing his dullardry with a mass audience, "Manny" files his one-star review under Bank Street Brewhouse, while the supposed "shrine" to which he refers is at our Grant Line location.

Yep, we're all experts now. Even when we don't know Jack Schitt.