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Store Employee Ordered to Pay $34K for Fake Yelp Review
The employee, who is also the owner’s son, has to pay for the “emotional distress” inflicted upon his competitor by the post.
Quincy, Mass.--A jury has ordered a Massachusetts jeweler to pay $34,500 to a competitor for posting a fake review on the latter’s Yelp page.
Following the verdict reached late last month, Adam Jacobs, who works at his father’s store, Toodie’s Fine Jewelry in Quincy, will pay that amount to Stephen Leigh Jewelers owner Stephen Blumberg for the “emotional distress” caused by the false information, according to the Patriot Ledger.
The review, posted in August 2013, detailed a visit to Stephen Leigh Jewelers in which Jacobs was looking to buy a 1.5-carat diamond engagement ring and had a bad experience, advising other Yelp users to “go elsewhere.”
Blumberg said the interaction never happened.
He told National Jeweler on Thursday that a fellow employee first brought the review to his attention.
He figured out the identity of the viewer after two months of research. Blumberg looked at other businesses the user had reviewed, such as hotels, restaurants and other shops, and talked to those establishments to link the username to an identity.
“It’s always worth fighting to keep your good name,” Blumberg said.
He filed a lawsuit against Jacobs in the Norfolk County Superior Court in December 2013.
Blumberg said Jacobs removed the post in January 2014 but, by that time, the harm already had been done, especially since it was still up during the holiday season.
In addition to suing Jacobs, Blumberg also sued Toodie’s Fine Jewelry, claiming the store was also responsible and aimed to ruin his store’s reputation, but the jury rejected that assertion.
When National Jeweler called Toodie’s on Thursday, Jacobs wasn’t in and an employee said the store was declining to comment on the lawsuit and outcome.
Allen Levin, the attorney for both Jacobs and Toodie’s, didn’t return a call from National Jeweler, but told the Patriot Ledger they might file post-trial motions and was looking into the possibility of an appeal.
Issues surrounding Yelp and its user-created reviews are not new to jewelers.
Blumberg said since news outlets started picking up his story, he has received many calls from retailers around the country expressing frustration about Yelp in general and the effect its reviews can have on business.
And in 2015 National Jeweler reported that Prost Productions had started raising money via Kickstarter to fund an investigative documentary called Billion Dollar Bully that examines the practices and review system of Yelp.
According to the
film’s website, it’s currently in post-production and is scheduled to premiere at San Francisco’s SF DocFest in June.
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