Help! I’m Having Problems with Yelp | How Does Hammas Have an A- Rating with the BBB

Audio Transcription

You have questions. America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your brought up from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of ask clay. Anything on the thrive time business coach radio show.

Yes, yes, yes and yes. Dr Z. It is ecstasy when you and Wes Carter next to me. How are you sir? We are making a clay sandwich cause you’re on that side. Oh yeah. West. And I’m on this side. It’s like he’s like the feeling in between. I like it. Yeah. So for those of you who can’t picture it, your mind, we’re in the man cave, which is a glorious space. Glorious space. And clay is in between. We’ve got it set up here. We’ve got the trifecta side. You’re the West side. It’s like a, it’s not the Bermuda triangle. We got the broken arrow triangle. Beautiful. Yeah. And if you’re out there and thrive nation and you are looking for a good time, look up Wes Carter. Look for images of Wes Carter. Turn it into a fat head. Put it on your wall and send us a picture of it.

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Well in person when she said fat head, was that like a negative term? It’s fat. It as it is where you can print a nice like it’s like an auto wrap on a wall. Like Oh that fast. Yeah, true story. True story. I used to call one of my brothers back in the day, fat head is you have a huge cranium and a sorta kind, not as big as yours, but that means pretty busy. Have a 10 and three quarters like I have, I haven’t measured it lately, but it’s, it’s rivaling years. But I used to call him fat hit. My mom pulled me aside, said, listen, don’t speak, don’t speak negative. Stop talking. If you call, if you say fat head again, you’re going to be in trouble. I’m going to punish you. I’m going to spank you.

I’m going to, you know, you’re going to get in trouble. Right, right. And my mom actually happened to be in nursing school. I was a teenage boy, you know, and so what? She was going through nursing school to be an RN and I would help her study. So I would read your questions or I’d read your stuff, you know, from her book. And so I had a little, a little kind of above my pay grade knowledge. And so what I did is I started calling him adipose Sevilla at what does that mean, adipose? It means fat and Cephalon his head. So I’d call him adipose fat and Latin basically is what I did. And she was so tickled by it. She was like, okay, you didn’t say fat head. Technically I can’t really, you’re not in trouble. But you know, I’m not sure that’s the spirit of the law.

I don’t, I don’t know. I mean she was kind of troubled with it, but anyway, so I called him. So Chuck, I’m, I’m sorry, by the way, I’m so sorry. I called you fat head and then I called you at opposed Cephalon. I just, you know, I feel bad about that. So anyway, I had to just tuck, throw that in there. So sidebar, we’re mending fences. Sidebar. See, there you go. Forgiveness. And it makes the world go round. We have a listener out there that a is having a hard time with dealing with Yelp and why I wanted to do is make this a bigger Yelp even a thing anymore. Well, okay, if you Google search right now, like Tulsa haircuts, what’s

Going to happen is you’re going to find Yelp somewhere on the first page. If you Google Tulsa automotive repair, Tulsa auto auctions, Tulsa, almost anything you’re gonna find Yelp and it’s because of an arrangement that Yelp made with Google years ago. And what I want to do is I’m going to queue up some audio clips. I have three audio clips from a different reputable news sources where they’re talking about Yelp and the better business Bureau. And I think a lot of people get frustrated with the better business Bureau and Yelp. A lot of business owners, because Z, I’m sure you’ve had the call before back in the day where you get a call from somebody and they call you and let you know that a, they’ll say, I is, excuse me, is Robert Zoellner there and your front desk person may say, Oh yeah, who’s calling? I’m calling on behalf of the better business Bureau. I need to reach Robert right away. Or maybe it sounds more serious. It’s more of like, yeah, I need to speak to Robert Zilner at Dell. I’m calling him half the better business Bureau. A have a concern about your account. There’s a level of seriousness when the better business Bureau is calling you. It’s the B B.

They’ve got it. They, I will admit, they’ve done a good job of branding something that is not what anybody thinks it is. And what is it in your mind, what is the better business? Well, I know what it is. It’s, it’s it is not any kind of governmental institution. It is a privately held company with franchises that comes in strong arms, little businesses to do there. If people are complaining, then they can help them with the, the, the complaint. And yet they were, there’s nothing authoritative at about them when they come in and they charge you per amount of customers you have. I mean, it’s, it’s an absolute scam. So, I mean, I’m going to be honest with you, an absolute scam.

Well I’m gonna do is I’m going to cue up an audio clip here. This is from, this is a fabulous audio clips. The first one here, this is from the this’ll be, let me queue this up. One second here. This’ll be ABC and West. I’d like for you to take notes on this. This is from ABC and you’re an attorney. All your firm over the years has represented a great clients like a brother, TD Jakes, Joyce Meyer, how pastor Craig Rochelle with a life church and many, many businesses. I’m going to kill the audio clip and I’d love for you to share with listeners what this means. And then Z, you can one up West, I’m assuming, no matter what West says, you get the final word here. Here we go. This is audio from ABC. They’re talking about the better business Bureau during one of their nightly reports. Wait,

We’re looking for, you know, consumer protection, meaning ways that we can protect consumers from those fraudulent businesses.

It’s my good name. It’s my company’s good name. It’s 30 years of hard work.

There are better business Bureau offices and 122 cities in the U S and Canada. Their national headquarters are in Arlington, Virginia, where the president is Steve Cox.

We’re looking for you know, consumer protection, meaning ways that we can protect consumers from those fraudulent businesses or from those scammers up

Value of accreditation. The better business Bureau is set up as a nonprofit group, but documents obtained by 2020 show that more than two of its top executives

Have six figure salaries. William Mitchell, the head of the Los Angeles better business Bureau makes more than $400,000 a year better business Bureau appears to be prospering with the money brought in by its grading system. Very, very troubling and it could be illegal because the failure to disclose to consumers could well be deceptive and misleading for years old Cox who makes $300,000 plus a year denies it’s all about the money. Do you have to join the better business Bureau to get a good grade these days?

Absolutely not. We have more than 500,000 non-accredited businesses who have a rating.

Better business Bureau accreditation is by invitation only. In fact, the better business Bureau says not just anyone can be an accredited member, only businesses which meet membership standards and agree to follow the highest principles of business ethics and volunteer. We go down. This is a good part, yet earlier this year that middies Tara group, Hamas was listed as a member and received an a minus rating. Of course, it wasn’t actually Hammas. It was the work of an anonymous blogger and a group of small business owners who pumped the better business Bureau to prove a point. Hamas was registered with a non-existent address in Santa Monica and its owner was listed as bill Mitchell that well-paid president of the Los Angeles better business Bureau.

They ran the credit card within 12 hours. They were an approved accredited member [inaudible] collect costs to get Hamas a an a minus. The same minus grade here was $425

How did Hamas become a BBB accredited business with an a

Great, well, you know, plain and simple. We made a mistake

Also registered by the logger and his friends, a skinhead white racist website called Stormfront received eight plus grade $425 it’s president listed as Arion Whiting. Okay. Here’s the deal. I [inaudible] I canceled my, when I’ve really researched him, I canceled all the BBD and guess what my rating went from an eight plus down to a D. Yeah. Down to a D. And I would call him and go and I’d have some people call me and somebody, they actually still looked at it. It’s just kind of kind of pre-Google, you know, ratings and Google reviews and all that. And so it was kind of the one thing out there that is the biggest sham mockery in the world from my opinion. But I want to get West is taking this legally because West, I’m sure you’ve had clients that called you who’ve had a bad online reputation as a result of the BBB.

Yeah. And then, you know, so they, a lot of times they get really worried. They want to know how do I get through the customer complaint resolution process and you know, do I need to pay my membership? And what happens? And you know, it’s essentially my understanding is the better business Bureau is a nonprofit, first of all. So it doesn’t pay income taxes. It collects its money. I think mostly from membership dues, like you mentioned Z. So you pay money to be a part of it to get a rating and then they’ll sell you plaques for your wall. And you know, they, they, they milk more money in. I’d be trying to upsell you for other services. And, and in the end, I mean it’s like any other organization, they’re really, you know, they are out there soliciting, selling, trying to get more memberships to make more money. So some of those hard sell tactics result in memberships for crazy work.

The BBB was hot in the 80s. Yeah, it was hot in the 90s he, the BBB was hot really in the late nineties. Now we’ve got a new group that showed up to fill the void that the BBB Dez cause over time Google reviews have kinda, you know social media reviews have now surpassed D the relevance of would you agree of of the BBB? Well yes and in most people’s minds but I mean still I was like I said earlier, it’s kind of like I went from an a to a D when I stopped paying them money. Yeah. And then I contacted them and they’re like, well do you have an unresolved, you know, non resolved Congress, we’ll look into it. What is it? Well you know, and then that’s been resolved for long. I remember one rep told me, she said, we only have the time to resolve issues of members.

And I said, so you’re telling me I’ll get a bad review and you won’t look into it unless I’m a member. She said, well exactly. We, we don’t have the time to resolve all issues between all consumers and all businesses. No, of course not. But we can resolve. We can look into it. Yes. If you are a member, pay me my money. Is a membership for 25 Oh, so you’re telling me if I don’t pay five based upon then revenue, you know, revenue or number of employees. That was the move that I encountered. Go as high as I think $10,000 no total shakedown. Now, totally. ABC news continues. Got another one minute and 10 seconds West. I’d like for you to break this down here. Okay, one minute and 10 seconds. This isn’t it. Another, another ABC. They had two different features about the BBB.

Z. The BBP has got to stop here, mom. Come on. Here we go. At the BV, the BBD. If you’re out there listening and you work at the BBD, you can eat my BBDS. The BBD can eat my BBDS. Here we go. Back in this country, one of America’s best known consumer watchdogs is under fire. Millions of people turned to the better business Bureau for reviews and ratings on everything from auto mechanics to insurance companies. People still do it. If you’re out there doing, I ask you why? Well, somewhere it’s expect impartial ratings, but tonight business owners say they have to pay to get better grades. Brian Ross investigated Brian well, Diane, the groups so well known as a consumer watch dog is now being accused by business men of running a shakedown rack. Come on, pay for play scheme, selling businesses a grades and punishing those who don’t pay today. The Connecticut attorney general called on them to end what he terms a deceptive practice in California on non-existent sushi restaurant and this orange County law office got an a minus. Oh, pranksters paid the better business Bureau, a $425 fee. There you go. Let celebrity chef Wolfgang puck got an F because he, he refused to

Pay, but you’ll have to join an organization to get a good grade, I think is wrong. Whereas we’ve had Wolf gang on the show here man. Stick up for our main man Wolf gang. Why is it, is it legal? Is it ethical? Is it cool? Is it not? Break it down and give us the league. We want the legal Eagle in the room to break it down for us. I think you have a pretty good care man. I think it would be different if you just did not rate nonmembers at all. Let’s say you have a directory and this just no rating, no stars whatsoever. I think that would be much more fair. Go ahead. Z. No, no, you’re right on point. I just, here’s what I did while you were talking, what clay was talking about before that. I’m at the BBB website. Yes.

I went in the category of optometrist. The first three pages list. My competitors list, my two, my two offices. Yeah, everybody has, most of them have an a plus plus rating. If you have a minus. Impressive. If you have A’s, there’s one C plus one C plus looking at them two ratings are F’s, F’s, so I went down from D because I would not pay them their money and this is, this is this, I mean this was, can I Sue them? Can I Sue them? Seriously? You can Sue anybody for anything. Right, but I mean you have a valid claim. I think you could think of a claim there. I mean I think this is, this is a shakedown. This is a company be interference with your business relationship. Thank you of the year. You should Sue them. It could be possibly defamation if it’s, if it’s false and they know it’s false and they do.

So yeah, I think you could. I mean really everybody else has an a plus. Everybody look at the first three pages. Look, go on to bbb.org plugin. Find put an optometrist. Got it. And your, you’re near broken arrow cause it lights up broken air cause the man cave, the recording studios in broken arrow Oklahoma, which is a suburb of Tulsa for those of you don’t know, plug it optometrist and go through page by page, by page. I’m the only one with an F. Both my offices, both of them have enough. Everybody else has an a plus. And you know why? Cause I said years ago, you guys are a scam. I’m not paying you money. And they have, do you know what they’ve done? They have punished me as best as they can. So I think we need to send them a letter West. I’m going to hire, I’m going to publicly hire you right now, right now in front of thrive nation.

Here we go. I’m going to whatever it costs, I want you to send them a letter telling them the cease and desist, this silliness that they’re doing right here. I mean this is crazy. Look at this and even got my wrong phone numbers. I’ve got the right addresses. Well they got one wrong phone number. The other one’s right. They got the same phone number on both locations, which is incorrect. Total jackass. Totally total jackass three but I’m looking at this eight plus eight plus eight plus. Did I even A’s or a pluses? I mean some of these places I don’t even think they’re in business anymore. You know, it’s just silly it then this is why. What can we do? I had someone that was actually going to come work for us years ago. Clay even knows this and says, you know, I’m concerned and I’m like, what? What’s wrong buddy? And he goes, well I’m just kind of concerned cause I went on better business Bureau and you have a D rating. This was what, four or five years ago? I remember coder, we were trying to hire us exactly and he was like, you have a D rating with the better business Bureau like that meant anything other than that. I didn’t pay them their money.

You know I liked that they, they’ve gone to your Facebook about page and that is part of what they base your F rating on and they don’t like what you say on your Facebook page. On my Facebook page, I’m looking right here. That a cool, they don’t like that you say that you have the best selection and prices on eyeglasses and Tulsa. Oh well and actually I do. That’s why we’re the busiest. And so they’re using a third party here. Scouring your Facebook page too, as one of the basis that appears for your, your logo.

How do you know that? How do you see that? This is fun. This is, this is the real stuff. You guys out there own a business, these little sham mockeries like the better business Bureau comes in and you think there’s some kind of they they deserve your respect or your money or anything. They don’t

There like a a a co. The BBB to me is like someone with an MBA is a general rule. There’s somebody who comes in with this MBA degree. All of a sudden they have this like puffery. They’re 26 27 24 whatever they are. They’ve been in college a long time. All of a sudden they try to tell the boss what to do cause they have this false prestige, this false platform, the BBB Z here. Let’s see, let’s role play the BBB real.

Yeah. Let me read this for you, dr Z because this is a good example of some of these oriented just stick form boilerplate stuff out there. You know, and then they’re not really looking into this closely. Due to numerous complaints against Ziller and associates. We have contacted them about the volume of complaints to determine what steps they would take to reduce the number of complaints. And then two lines below that. The business has not provided a response to two complaints. So you’re hiring

Volume of how many years have you been in business?

I’m almost 30 but I mean I’ll say I didn’t start at 91 we’re in, so yeah,

I responded to two complaints, which is high volume, high volume, high volume that requires on your plates for them. Yes. Yeah. So now we have a listener out there who’s a Yelp is kind of the new BBB now Yelp. I’ve got an audio clip. This is a little bit longer of a clip. So Z please feel free to take down notes or West card. I want to get your take on this. What kind of go line by line. Break this down here. All right, I’m going to cue it up. This is from the Washington post. This is audio from the Washington post or the Washington post has observed that recently. There’s a three phase process to Yelp. One, a guy like dr Z of a guy like West Carter, guy like myself. We start getting leads from Yelp and we’re like, man, I’m excited about these leads. That’s step one. Step two is I’m starting to get, you know calls from Yelp, wanting to know if I want to become a Yelp preferred vendor. Step three, I say maybe no, and all of a sudden all my positive reviews are kind of hard to find. But my bad reviews are the only ones that seem to show up.

And this is the, the Yelp move. Let me cue up the audio here. Here we go. This is the Yelp. This is a Washington post doing an investigative report on Yelp. It is the era of the internet rating. When you pick a spot to eat, a place to stay or just about anything else, there’s a good chance you first look at the number of stars.

Do you agree with that statement versus E? Do you agree with that?

Okay.

I don’t, but I mean some people do. Yes, yes. Maybe not yelled, but said Google reviews or Facebook somewhere. A lot of people do. I mean I, you know, anyway, I could talk about old school, but yes it is done. Okay.

Beck, when you buy a tube of toothpaste, you can find a rating for the pace of score for the specific pharmacy selling it. Even a measure of what it’s like, don’t look up and I buy two power. All these ratings determined in a lot of cases it’s not as simple or transparent as it seems. That’s what we discovered when we looked into Yelp, which is probably the Internet’s most influential rating site business owners who have been caught paying for favorable ratings. Yelp says they’ve developed an algorithm to screen out for interviews, but a lot of business owners say what Yelp is really doing is extorting them for advertising money.

Z. It sounds a lot like the BBB. No, this is the Washington post reporting. Do you agree up to this point, this might be possible that Yelp may be

Extorting business owners for positive reviews. Is it possible

In your mind? Well, I know BBD did and so I mean of course the possibilities out there, possibility. The rest of it. I want to get your take on this. Here we go.

All right. We devote our entire show to that Yelp filter, one of the invisible algorithms operating in the background of our online lives. First off, just how much do these ratings matter in the real world? Consider the fate of dr beauty and V lane per stores is electrolysis spa in Northern Virginia. Everybody take a second look that up real quick. I’m going to go back just a little bit. I want everybody to have a chance to look up her business. First off, just how much do these ratings matter in the real world? Considered the fate of dr beauty. N V lane for stores is electrolysis spot in Northern Virginia. Just a year ago, her offices and her scheduling chart were filled with 75 patients a day. 75 patients a day. They were. They were filled. Z things were going good. Wow, that’s, that’s slightly busy today. The calendar is mostly empty. Oh, so now this is what my work week this week looks like for stores says the falloff is easily traced to her Yelp page, which today gives her a dreaded one star reading. Wes,

Can you do anything if you have bad reviews on Yelp that are not a warranty? I have a lot of clients. I’ve worked with a lot, a lot of clients, I’ll have the clients in the fitness space

In the cosmetic surgery space or they’ve had a competitor form an account and leave a review. That is not true. Yes. What can they do? What can they call an attorney like you? Can they go to winners and kink and they call [email protected] and say, help me, could you use you? Could you, could you do anything to help them?

And in some cases, yes, I mean there is becoming more and more common for people to file defamation actions for false online reviews. But there’s, there’s, there’s a really hard claim because one, if it’s truthful and is your opinion, you have a first amendment protection there to express your opinion. Okay. But if it’s just completely fabricated, then you might have a potential claim against them.

Let’s continue with the story. Here we go.

One point she actually changed the name of the business. It was originally called envy, electrolysis and laser center, but the Yelp ratings followed her to the new name and it’s not just individual customers who might be scared off by the low rating deal. Companies like Groupon and living social that drove so much of per stores. This business will no longer work with her. I signed a contract with coop group on about a month ago to run a deal and they’re not running the deal because of the reviews. We were standing in one of the empty rooms she vacated as her staff shrank from eight to just her. Do you think your business can survive with a one star review?

No. Oh, see you. We’ll go with you first. This lady, he’s saying her whole business in her particular field, she has a one star review. She’s got bad reviews everywhere. She’s saying she can’t survive with a one star review. I’m going to say me personally, I’m going to say I disagree with you and I’m going to tell you the hack and then I’d like for you to maybe encourage a business woman, I’m sure. Okay. Tell her the hack. I want to hear the hat one. If you do a search right now, in a year you’re in front of your, your, your in front of your computer and West, you are to search for Joplin gyms. All the listeners search for Joplin gyms, and when you search for Joplin gyms, the first search result that comes up underneath the ads is who co LA fitness. How many reviews, how many reviews do they write?

1,259 what’s the second highest reviewed business underneath? There’s a planet. Fitness has 237 okay, so 3000 it looks to be a little bit higher than 200 how many? 237 37 if you scroll down, do you see those video reviews come in and if you scroll down and you see the video reviews all over the place? Yes. Right there. I mean colo fitness, we’re winning on [inaudible] fitness.com just search for Joplin Jim’s, we’re winning off of YouTube reviews cause you can’t fake video reviews and I know how to game the system that way. We’re also top and Google and we have the most reviews in Google and we have given up on Yelp and I would encourage our listener to give up on Yelp because eventually there’s a documentary that’s come out more and more consumers are stopping to use Yelp, but they have an agreement with Google that makes them top in the Google search results. And I’m telling you with colon fitness, this is a great company with thousands of great reviews West. They cannot

Seem to get their Yelp reviews to stick to show up. They just won’t show up unless they pay the money. Well, nothing. That’s a good

Question. I think one of the big questions I would have about a potential claim against, let’s say yell. Let’s say somebody decides I’m going to get a class action together and I’m just going to try and go after Yelp as a platform. I think the question I’d love to find out is are the positive reviews being taken down or are there just a whole bunch of one star reviews going up and you don’t feel like it’s [inaudible]?

Let me play the rest of this because what we Yelp does is if you’re not a on the Yelp, if you’re not like approved by team Yelp, your reviewsZ are going to show up in this little section that you can’t see unless you do the falling. Let me play play the rest of the rest of the story of the store. You’re basically closing your company because of these Yelp reviews. Yes, set aside for a minute whether doctor beauty is a good business or not, and just consider the power of that Yelp rating a couple hundred pixels on a webpage on which the fate of small businesses can rise and fall, and many of those business owners say Yelp wields that power unfairly. Here’s one small example. Look at this. In Chicago. The first review listed for norms automotive clinic isn’t for the shop but because norm doesn’t advertise with Yelp, it’s for a competitor who does. Same for subpoena pizzeria in Detroit is page highlights and ad for green zone pizza. When you go to green zone pizza’s page because they do pay Yelp. There are no competitor ads, but like we said, that’s just a small example. One Yelp doesn’t debate. It’s something else much harder to prove that gets business owners really upset with Yelp and this is what gets me fired up for colon fitness for my companies. Z for your business. This is the part that really irritates me. Here we go.

They are real dirt bags.

We were flooded with responses. When we ask the business owners to share their Yelp stories,

You’re not going to believe it. After 31 years of business what these cowards are doing, we had some very interesting and unpleasant experiences. It’s now that I have two other friends that were affected by Yelp

But over and over they all told basically the same story. A play in three acts. Andre hopper of Ava spawn. DC illustrates how the story goes.

We started having quite a few new clientele because of these reviews. Yelp brought you business. Y’all brought us a lot of business. That’s act one. Act two involves Yelp, reaching out to the business and then we started, I’m getting phone calls from Yelp to advertise with the company. We sort of were very hesitant of advertising with anybody at this point, being a small business and having limited funding, so we declined the invitation of help. How many times did you say they called? At first it was sort of infrequent and then they started calling on a daily basis, sometimes multiple

Times a day, multiple times a day. How long did that go on? That went on for many months. The annoyance of the calls is one thing, but in act three of the story, here we go. Invariably things start going badly on the company’s Yelp page. The positive reviews started disappearing and only negative or you know, sort of indifferent reviews staying on our website. Well, it helped me out with the sequence here though, you have good reviews. Yelp starts calling, and then in this time where they’re calling on a daily basis, you notice the reviews start to change. That’s correct. All of a sudden the reviews are changing and because we refused to appetize with them what you say, because you think there was a connection between those two things? I personally believe so today just 24 of Ava’s reviews show up. The rest, more than 80% of the reviews written have been filtered. They’re hidden. And unless you click on this small link at the bottom of the page and correctly type of capture code to access them.

So what they do is they hide your reviews West. And I’ve seen this with every client I’ve ever worked with. Every single time they hide your positive reviews and they only show certain reviews, marginal and different reviews, unless you’re like a super Yelp verified. Is that cool West? Is that okay?

Most likely it is. I mean, they as an independent platform, you know, I’ve seen some of this kind of logic against Apple, Amazon, where they’re preferring some of their own products, you know, but so it’s a similar case.

Well you’re trying to get, you’re saying it’s okay. I think

Legally speaking, do you hate America? You’d have to, you’d have to find a smoking gun for some quid pro quo there, but you’re typically entitled to prefer certain people over other people even though you’re professing to the public. I think it’s more of a consumer protection question as opposed to some sort of defamation or breach of contract.

And I’m going to put a link to these, a news pieces where you can go onto YouTube and watch the different pieces from ABC. You can watch the Washington post interview, you can see all these investigative reports. I’m going to put it so you can watch it in their totality, the whole, the whole situation. So you can see what’s going on. But these are the action steps. I want to give the listeners one, get Google reviews every single day. Z, you have a relatively new company. And how many reviews have you been able to gain very quickly over a thousand for real people. Right? Cause you’re on them, right? So one get Google reviews.

It is. When I go to the BBD, I mean the beginning, the PPD, the BBB here again, that company, everybody else’s A’s and we’re just not, we don’t have a writing and when I click on their a ratings, there’s no particular reason why they have an a, there’s nothing that says those are paying money. No, this business would not be BD accredited. They have no been, no reviews, no complaints. And so it’s kind of like water. They have an a minus when and then, and then for me, I don’t even know my business. Don’t even have a radio. It’s not like they’ve given me an app. It’s like there, there’s the holding back. It’s just like they’re just West. We gotta write them a letter. We got it ready.

No, I’ve actually done it before with one of the nonprofits I represent. There’s some sites out there that do these ratings for nonprofits and we send them a letter saying, I want my name off of it. You don’t have permission to use my name. And they complied. I think legally we would have had a pretty tough battle. But usually if you’re squeaky will but we might be able to get somewhere.

Yeah, I mean I, I just, it’s kinda like they, you the few people out, people out there and you know who you are listening right now that think the BBB is something other than what the scam ACRI that it is. It’s jackass. Raise it as president, VP, I want you to know what’s legit cater for. I purchase everything. I asked her have the PBB I want you to know it’s legit as flood chat and we don’t, as the son of the president of the BBB, it’s legit. As the grandson of the son, I asked a neighbor of the person who runs the BBB, but seriously the BBB. So if you’re out there today and you’re being hammered by the BBB or Yelp by the beat, beat beat harder. Let’s get a class action against them, you know, Oh, come on. So you down. Where’s the threshold for a class action by the way? And what, what does that mean? I just love, I don’t do any class actions, but

What it is, that’s the bottom of it is you’re getting a group of individual plaintiffs together instead of filing multiple lawsuits, court certifies them as a class and here’s, here’s the lawsuit all at once.

Just like with Yelp’s doing how many businesses out there have been in their mind, not fairly treated by company yet due to their own personal interest and much to the other businesses on the receiving ends detriment, right? They’re damaging a business because they didn’t want to play the game by their rules, the BBB, right. I don’t know if that’s a threshold for class action lawsuit West, you’re my expert.

You might be able to come up with an underlying claim there. I think personally your best chance of success to stop the practice like this is probably not through an underlying individual civil lawsuits is getting an attorney general in one of the States to go after him. Ooh, let’s do that. You know, we, we we we politic a little bit. Come on now convince I’ve attorney general and cause they’re the usual ones over consumer protection laws in the state. I’m on to get them on our side and habit.

You’re just wealthy and healthy enough to want to do this. I’m telling you, I might, you know what? I don’t often pick up a stick and bang a drum, but every now and then a company or a person, every dollar that a business or a company or a person does something and it just catches me on that day where I’m like, you know what, this may be a drum. I want to bang, you know, and I’m just like, I did the thing. So finished that big opioid trial. Maybe they need something else to take up. Yeah, there they go. They got five or less than 2 million are some practical action steps. So one is get a Google review everyday just like dr Z does to get a video review and put that beast on YouTube and title it as like dr Robert Zellner

And associates reviews or colon fitness reviews just like Cola fitness does. And that way people will see real people on video testifying about the services you provide. Get a Google review and then move, move three, move three here. Let’s get our reviews on our Google map on the Google map. Get three views there. And the consumers are going to realize, Hey, you know what? They got great reviews on video on YouTube, on their map, on their Google map. I mean, wow, these guys, I mean they more than likely everybody has some haters, but all because this is how people process reviews right now. And then we’ll wrap up today’s show. People always look for the worst reviews and the best reviews, the worst in the best. And they look for your overall star number. And if you’re listening right now and your overall rating is under 4.0 I have found it decreases your leads in half.

I have found this to be true. So if you are flirting today with the 3.1 Google review or a 3.2 or 3.3 get aggressive, get back up to a four 4.5 4.7 just like seeing movies. No one wants to go see a movie with a 3.1 rating or a 2.1 rating. So be very intentional. Every, every one of our listeners out there, if you do a good job, you owe it to yourself to get a 4.9 review average. Because right now, according to Forbes, over 90% of consumers read reviews before calling a phone number, whether they hear the ad on radio, TV, billboards, over 90% of people read reviews. So get those reviews. But Yelp is just a, it’s at this point in my mind, it’s irrelevant. [inaudible] Recently a documentary came out exposing Yelp for what it is. I think Yelp at this point is almost discredited to the point where people don’t even consider it to be serious.

I haven’t, I haven’t, I’ve never looked at a Yelp Yammer. Yep.

It’s almost dead. It’s almost dead my opinion. But it should be, if you’re out there, you want to team up withZ , Z, what’s the best way to get ahold of you if they want to team up with you to go head to head with the BBB,

What’s the best? Oh, Oh, there we go. Yes. There’s one to go, head to head to the table on a team up and they want us to hell. I’m in, you know, maybe I’m in 500 bucks. I’ll pay a $500 of legal fees or a a thousand dollars of legal fees. Call you just call clay clay. I’ll get you to Z. Oh, well they can just email us that to [email protected] at thrive time, show.com thrive time show.com FAU at thrive time. Show.Com info at thrive time, show.com and put how much money you’re willing to go in though. If we go to like the BBB, then I got five on it. Yeah, no, seriously, because it’s going to cost some money to fight this thing, but if you want to, yeah. Are you feeling froggy enough to go for this? If there’s enough money put in, I really do. I mean, what?

What is it? What is it? I mean, we got to kind of think about this. We’re going to do, I’m going to hire you to already fire off a thing to them because I look at my other businesses, I haven’t told sup and if they can’t give me an F, they just don’t even give me a raise. Fish on every, yes, this is official. I’ve looked on every other business there, the compete with me and they have the same, the same story. Yeah. You know like the one right here below me has an a, I click on it. It has the same boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Thrivers. You’re hearing a man hire an attorney right here on the show. This is what’s happening and I’m hot about this. I’m hot about this because, because what the problem is is that somebody cares. I hate that even anybody cares what the BBB is saying because it’s all just a shotgun mom out there reading these reviews, making decisions based upon the BBC.

They grew up old school and the BBB meant something to them, but it just an absolute shakedown to businesses and their shakedown as this, if you don’t pay me, I’m going to give you a bad rating, not cool. Or I’ll give you a non rating where I’m going to rate everybody else in a or an a plus or an a minus. And it’s unfair. It’s not right. And it’s, you know, I’m not, if everybody knew really what the BBB was and is, then I have no issue with it. But they don’t because they present themselves as something they’re not. They present themselves to be some authority am commercial, third party, right. Governing body that just cares. We’re not, we’re a nonprofit organization. Is anybody making money? They’re Wes.

Well you heard the news articles, there’s several people making six figure salaries

And the former head [inaudible]. How can it be not so defined a nonprofit because people out there here, nonprofit West and it kind of makes them get a little kind of Google eyed or kind of, they kind of go, Oh, they have a, their hope mindset changes when they hear that. But tell us really, wow, what nonprofits

Profit just means that your purpose is something other than making a profit. So you are charitable, educational, scientific, religious you don’t have a literary purpose. There’s certain charitable purposes and if you’re organized not for the private benefit of any specific individual, but for the public good and one of these areas, then you can get nonprofit status. Now you’re also as a nonprofit and titled to pay your executives a reasonable compensation. So if you’re paying someone four or $500,000, that means you have a lot of revenue coming in because you’re paying them on scale with similarly situated executives in the for profit.

Now here’s the deal. I don’t want to get an F rating from my wife because I’m supposed to be somewhere at five 30. Oh my goodness. We have to wrap up today’s show with going wrap up. Boom. We’ve to do before we end with a boom, can we just, we just, I think we should end with a Bubba Bubba, but can I be BBB, can have a Bubba, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you want to get involved with doctors to go after the thrive time show. Take down Yelp. Let’s take down BBB. Here we go. Three, two, Shanda Shunda.

[Inaudible] Shawnda Shirley’s shut. Shut up. No BP lease. [inaudible] Get you out. [inaudible].