• Article Here

Very short version is that Yelp was being accused (by many) of strong-arming small businesses into paying up to bury negative reviews and “favorite” positive ones to get a better overall review on the service.

Those are some pretty serious allegations for a site that is supposed to be user driven based on real experiences. Why bother having people post their reviews if you’re not going to post them or be bribed into deleting/removing bad and promoting good?

Anyway, on to why this is now a post on my site…

I’ve never found a need for Yelp. The first time I ever even looked at it was when I was in San Francisco a couple years ago for work. Figured it might have some good info on food and such. To be honest, I didn’t care for it. Didn’t really find it that helpful for my own experience. And then the story above broke and I figured I didn’t need to bother with it anyway! Even if the allegations were “untrue” … they had to come from somewhere, right?

Where was I… oh ya, so last month Jen and I tried a new restaurant in Corning called Effin Texas. Supposed to be a Texas BBQ place. We basically had a terrible experience (and I’ve talked to a few others who had very similar or worse!). When I have a crappy experience somewhere, I want to tell people… and in this case, Yelp came to mind based on how popular it is with other people.

So I added Effin Texas to the site and added my (2/5 star) review. I was the first one to review it (they had only been open a week). Since then, I’ve added a few other reviews to the site for various things – bowling alleys to pizza places. Some good, some not so good. All them have been legitimate and honest experiences.

On a whim today I decided to check my profile and see if anyone thought my reviews were “useful.” Well, in doing that, I saw the link to Effin Texas and wanted to read of some other experiences. See if they have improved. Shockingly, their review average was now 4.5 stars. And my review was no where to be seen. Turns out it had been “filtered.”

I wasn’t the only one. There are a total of 8 filtered reviews for this place. ALL of them are negative (most complain about them not allowing kids). There are only TWO visible reviews. Both positive. I don’t know about you people… but this looks to me to be EXACTLY like that first article described at the top of the page. I’m not saying anyone paid anyone for anything in this situation.

But how can it be possible that their filter system magically filters ONLY the negative reviews for this place and leaves the good ones? I don’t know. But I’m done with Yelp. Until someone can explain to me how the hell that works… I’m done.

Anything good or bad to say about a place, I’ll share on foursquare. If you have a smartphone, they have an app for you. Even if you don’t check in to places, the Explore feature is amazing – though it will be even more awesome if you do check in to places so it can learn what you like.

I wouldn’t say I buy and sell a lot… but I know where to look when I want something or have something to get rid of. I’ve applied a lot of common sense and logic to my auctions – both buying and selling.

Frankly, I only deal in Buy it Now offers – when both buying and selling. I don’t care too much about getting absolute top dollar for my sales so I will usually look up completed listings and see what things have been actually selling for and then compare those for current listings waiting to sell. Then I undercut all of them by a few $$. Bam, item sold.

I have a good example from yesterday. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I recently purchased a battery pack for my iPhone. IMO, it was crap. I just wasn’t satisfied. So I used it for my trip and planned to get rid of it when I got home. Got around to listing it last night.

I think I had the auction up around 6pm. They’re like $80 new… decided on $50 with free shipping (this is another thing I like using – include shipping – people like that).

Woke up this morning and it was sold already. Awesome. Since I keep a stash of padded bubble envelopes, I packed it up, printed a label, and dropped it in the outgoing mailbox at work. Done.

Listed to sold to mailed in about 14 hours. I’ll take it.

Sure, I could have probably squeezed out a few more $$ – but honestly when I sell on eBay it is more to get things out of the house than to make a huge profit. If I can give someone a good deal, while picking up a few $$ in the process, lucky them. Hopefully this guy likes his case more than I did.

First thing is first: Camber is not the devil.

When I put my adjustable camber bolts on the front of my car and requested alignment at -2° camber up front you could have sworn the guys at the shop (Kent Brown Toyota in this case) thought I was absolutely insane. “Are you sure?” Yes. “You’re going to get a lot of tire wear.” No, I’m not, just do it.

Look… a little camber never hurt anyone. Hell, even up to something like -3° is probably fine. As long as you’re not going crazy with it – your tires will be OK… one on condition.

The rest of your alignment needs to be in spec – and most importantly: toe.

Toe is which direction your wheel is pointing when the car is “straight” – towards the inside or outside of your car. Pointing to the inside is toe “in” – the outside is toe “out.” Any out of spec toe settings can destroy your tires in a relatively short period of time. This is ridiculously accelerated if you have some sort of “custom” camber setting.

Say you have -2° of camber and something like 1° of toe “in” (assuming spec is something like +/- .2°)… you will end up chewing up the inside of your tire pretty quick. Not in like a couple weeks or anything – but it will significantly shorten the life of your tires – especially along the inside edge – very uneven wear.

Your best friend in all of this is an alignment as close to factory specs as possible. Your tires will thank you. And if you’re into any sort of performance or modification – don’t be afraid of a little negative camber – no matter what the shop tells you.

If you want to know a bit more about alignment, check out this Tire Rack article.

Note: I’m not a mechanic. I just play one on the internet. I don’t guarantee this info is accurate – so you should also research stuff on your own. Hopefully it’s at least partially correct.

So in a minor bid to change that a little, here is a little positive feedback in terms of “word of mouth.”

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I recently had to deal with Progressive with regard to my insurance policy continuing to skyrocket (up to $1028 for 6 months if I renewed straight up – for 2 cars, 2 clean drivers – crazy). After an ordeal of calling up and essentially “complaining” about my policy continuing to climb, they worked with me to start essentially a new policy with all of the same info – which saved me something like $240/six months. And even beyond that – the payments are now every month (instead of 5 on and 1 off) so that’s spread out further, thus making the payment even lower. Suffice to say I’m going from what would have been about $212/mo to $130/mo.

Anyway… after the new policy started and I made the first deposit payment, my online policy kept reminding me to submit proof of my security system and such for the discount. Uh whaaa? The guy that setup my new policy assured me everything would transfer and I’d be good to go.

Well I emailed Progressive again and basically said “I was told this… and it says this.” That was last night.

Got a reply this morning confirming that I’m set. Nothing to mail/fax in or prove. The policy is ready to go and I’m all done with having to fight for a lower rate (for now).

So nothing big. But it’s nice to contact someone about something you think is a problem and then are assured that it is actually OK in the end and you don’t have to worry about it. So thank you, Progressive. You are still showing me that you’d like to keep my business (even though I had to essentially call and ask if you still wanted it after you kept jacking my rates up).