Business owners in Hawaii are faced with a new challenge: What to do about negative reviews on Yelp.
Yelp is a website where ordinary folks, like you and me, can post comments and/or reviews about experiences you may have had with particular businesses.
Those can include mom-and-pop stores, larger multinational corporations operating here in the islands, doctor offices, small construction companies, auto repair shops and crafts fair sellers.
Some people use Yelp to post positive comments about such businesses, while others post negative comments. Positive comments are not a problem with most businesses; in fact, most businesses welcome them.
Negative comments on Yelp, on the other hand, have many worried. Some business owners are losing sleep over these comments — so much so that many are starting to fight back by turning to lawyers for help and/or advice about how to deal with Yelp and with people who post negative reviews.
My office has been receiving a steady stream of calls from small business owners about what their rights might be regarding such negative posted comments or reviews.
The issue, for many of them seeking advice, is: What are my rights?
The reply: The business model for Yelp involves the setting up of a place on the Internet for patrons of businesses to post positive or negative reviews about a business. Provided the information posted about your business is not false or an outright lie, then the person posting the comment, even a negative one, can do so.
The things that occur on Yelp, which essentially involves the making of positive and negative comments, concern and implicate areas of the law known as libel and slander. The individual circumstances of each case will determine how best to respond and what the rights might be against both the person making the false statement and Yelp, the business that allowed the person making the false statement to post that statement on its website.
There is no one-answer-fits-all answer to the above question. A business owner faced with a slew of negative comments that he or she knows or believes to be false, or to be lies, is advised to consult with a qualified attorney to learn what recourse, if any, there might be against the parties making the statements on Yelp, as well as with Yelp itself.
Yelp and similar entities are here to stay, it appears. Perhaps the best advice for business owners now grappling with these challenges, at least in the interim until the owner can speak with an attorney about the specifics of the case, is this: Instead of fighting the negative reviews and/or comments about your business, use them as a tool for improving the way you do business.
Of course, if the negative reviews are in fact outright lies, then savvy business owners should probably consult with their attorneys to investigate options and to decide an appropriate course of action.
