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It seems that yet another restaurant has had enough of a Yelper’s behaviour and decided to bite back. Ratter reports that the owners of the Brisbane Chinese restaurant in San Francisco were shocked to find a one-star review on Yelp from a customer named Dan who said he visited the restaurant but was refused entry by a member of staff who said they couldn’t sit one person.
In his review, which has since been deleted, he stated: "The waiter came up and asked how many," Dan wrote in his first review. "I said one, I had planned to sit at the bar or get the food to go. She said "one? no, one?" and then ran off. I waited a minute at the door, and then left. They were busy and potentially understaffed. It's not that classy of a place, but they refused to seat me."
However, this didn’t sit right with the restaurant owner’s son You You Xue who decided to scan the CCTV tapes to see exactly what had happened. After scanning tapes Xue said he found a man who entered the restaurant alone but that he couldn’t see him speaking to any member of staff.
To respond to the review Xue posted the video online of the person he believed to be Dan with this statement: “Dan, In the interest of being fair to what you said, I am posting video of our service from 18:45 to 19:30 on 18 March 2015. If at any time you see yourself walk in and talk to the server, let me know, and I will gladly post a large banner that says 'I'm sorry Dan for calling you a liar'. Otherwise, you must be hearing voices, because I sure don't see you talking to anyone in the restaurant."
It continued: “In this first video, you can see that you entered at 19:07, which is earlier than you quoted. You can also see that you did not wait a minute at the door. You spent a total of 22 seconds in the establishment. This video also clearly shows that there were other patrons waiting. We are sincerely sorry that we forgot to recognise your very, very "VIP" status at wonderful, a status so special that you don't have to sign the waiting list like everyone else… I've never been to a restaurant where to refuse to seat people because they're wearing what you were wearing… You're dreaming if you think that's why you didn't get service.”
But it didn’t end there. In the interest of protecting his reputation on Yelp and in response to the video, Dan only went an replied. Here’s what he said: “Aftermath: the owner put an inflammatory response with video of someone else claiming it was me. I also did not give you permission to put video of me on the internet. After that people start harassing me and threatening to tarnish my reputation online if I did not remove this review. I'd love a ceasefire, take down your BS and I'll gladly take down this review (which again is not fake). That response and situation of only further shows you character. Perhaps they cyberbully and threaten anyone who rates less than a 3?”
It’s not the first time we’ve seen arguments between Yelpers and restaurant owners. A great review was posted to a bad review by a restaurant owner in Kansas City recently and one restaurant took to posting pics of two Yelpers who threatened to write a bad review while they sat in the restaurant.
Yelp will also be the focus of a new documentary called ‘Billion Dollar Bully’ - a project currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.
