A Slap of the Hands (No Thumbs Up)

CONSPIRACY! DECEIT! LIES!

Okay, that may be a bit extreme. Review Party Dot Com isn’t uncovering any grand conspiracy or alleging anything. But we do have some news to report about our online presence, in two places we’ve come to know well. Two places that have a special place in our hearts, and have more or less swept us out the door.

Let’s start with the one that is most clear and present, the ouster of our Yelp account:

The Yelp account we started as a podcast has gotten the axe. And it makes sense. We violated the Terms of Service.

We did fully intend to write reviews under one account (maybe on some sort of fun tour), but it’s not easy to get out and about during a pandemic. And we signed up under the RPDC banner knowing that not using a real name would prevent us from ever becoming a Yelp Elite. The thought was that, yes, incidental traffic would serve as incidental promotion.

We’ve already discussed how leaving reviews are analogous to posting on social media (which is all about promotion), and hey- isn’t Yelp all about promoting (or demoting) content? Content which just so happens to be restaurants and reviews thereof?

It’s okay, we aren’t too upset. We’re already planning a comeback as the Hamburger Yelper, even though that would still keep us from being Elite.

What gets our goose the most is that question: how did they find us? We hadn’t posted any reviews (see: pandemic). Our only activity is following our good friend Darth Craiger and getting a follow back. So Craig, maybe you’re such a big deal that Yelp HQ had to check out who these nobodies were that you were signalboosting. If so, all glory to the mighty Craig. Worth it, if you ask us.

So we’ll be back, folks, don’t worry about that. Yelp hasn’t seen the last of us.

But there’s a place we know even better than Yelp that’s been giving us some trouble, less than five star service for sure. It’s our bread, our butter, our Amazon.

The Review Party Dot Com account hasn’t purchased anything, so it can’t leave reviews. This makes sense. I’ve written about spam reviews, and I’m glad to see that Amazon is fencing their pages from internet graffiti. It’s the same problem that Meme Reviews bring; the true reviews, the helpful content gets diluted and lost in the tide.

Just look at reviews on Four Seasons Landscaping (is this going to age well?). The reviews there are all political and farcical in nature, left by internet jokesters who obviously had never been to nor used the services of the business.

So okay, Amazon wants you to make a few purchases before leaving a review. The RPDC account hasn’t, so it can’t. All is fair.

But here’s the thing, reader. My personal account has been iced out as well.

Or, it was. I just checked again as I wrote this, and it appears I can once again leave reviews. Don’t you love when that happens?

Anyway, the point I was going to make was that it appeared I’d been blocked from writing reviews, and the only review I’d left in recent memory was for the Compensated Reviews post. Compensated reviews aren’t what Amazon wants, unless they’re the ones doing the compensating through their Vine program, but that’s another blog for another day. And it may finally be time for a followup on the compensated reviews post.

Well. This is ending with less of an impact than I thought it would. But hey! I don’t even have to say we will be back to Amazon. We ARE back. And we’re getting back to business.