The following are reviews that customers have posted on Yelp.com. When a new review is posted on Yelp.com, we display it here as well because any positive review will almost certainly be filtered from our Yelp rating within 48 hours.
Yelp claims that their automated software that makes the recommendation selections is unbiased, see the updated Yelp video that explains their recommendation software (complete video found here) has been updated to say "...Yelps recommendation software automatically evaluates all reviews. It's looking for those that may be most useful and reliable from active users. These are recommended reviews. And, in fact, most reviews are recommended. Our philosophy is "quality over quantity", which is why the rest are not recommended. These are written by users we don't know enough about, or sometimes they could be unhelpful rants... Reviews that Yelp doesn't recommend can still be seen via a link at the bottom of each businesses profile page but they don't factor into the businesses overall Yelp star rating or review count...".
Admittedly, Yelp has significantly cleaned up the language in the newer video. It is much more accurate than prior videos. However, there are still things that we want to point out here to for our customers and potential customer to consider.
Yelp is not forthcoming that they have an automated system that filters reviews. You only find that out when you click "71 reviews that are not recommended". Then they show you the video before they show you the filtered reviews. Goldrush Getaways has 167 recommended reviews. As of August 2023, we have 3 negative reviews this year and all 3 are 1-star reviews from people posting their thoughts on a promotional piece that we sent in the mail. In fact the majority of the negative reviews come from people that received a marketing piece and have not contacted out company. We had the drawing for 2022 winner of the Tesla 3 or $49,000 cash earlier this year. It is a legitimate, insured promotion. We can understand if someone is not interested, or wants to be placed on a do not mail list, which we are happy to do, but Yelp leaves these 1 star reviews on their website for several years, yet filters dozens of 5 star reviews from our actual members that use our service, so we feel the need to point out the imbalance of our recommended reviews. They also penalize companies that ask for reviews from customers, so we don't solicit reviews from our members.
We don't feel that Yelp is out to get us. We just want everyone to be aware that Yelp filters customer reviews with an automated system, Yelp recommends reviews that Goldrush Getaways can prove contain false information, and that Yelp recommends reviews without verifying claims made by the reviewer. Yelp is permitted by law to allow someone to libel our company on their website. Yelp will not take down a review purely based on a false claim as their response is that they don't take sides. As a small business, all we can do is reply to the review, which is at least visible to the public. It appears that Yelp thinks a review from over 9 years ago from a person that received a marketing mailer but never even visited our business, has no friends (on Yelp) and only 1 review is more credible than a review from one of our actual members that has been a customer for years. We only ask that you keep all of this information in mind. We welcome both positive and negative feedback from the public and our members. We view negative feedback as an opportunity to learn and to improve our product and our service. Thank you.