Get Sued for a One-Star Yelp Review?

Yup, it could happen. Business owners are fighting back with lawsuits to counter the damage done by poor reviews submitted by customers. Here’s one example where a review of a dog obedience service turned into $65,000 defamation lawsuit. Now I don’t know the truth, and I don’t know where the $65K figure came from, but that’s an awfully steep price for voicing your opinion. The Yelp review of Dog Tranquility even got picked up by the Today show. Check it out.

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As a consumer, I do rely on Yelp’s reviews to help make decisions, but I also don’t take Yelp reviews at face value. For example, extremely high reviews with a small amount of reviewers don’t mean much to me, especially when the reviewers have little to no Yelp connections and less than three reviews. This just seems like friends trying to boost the business. Nothing wrong per se, but not necessarily the truth either. Ideally, more reviews paint a clearer picture. But if there’s a potential lawsuit threatening your opinion, then we’ll never get that clearer picture.