# Should i change my business name to escape bad yelp reviews? Need some opinions.



## ochoa_dean (Jul 30, 2009)

So im 22 years old, i started my company when i was 20 years old, its been now about 1 1/2 years of business here at my location. For the most part, i think i've done a decent job at running my business. Of coarse no one is perfect, there have been a couple times that i have messed up big time with some of my customers, but when your first starting out, natually your going to F*** some things up i mean how else are you going to learn from your mistakes and better yourself as a business owner and a person.

That being said,

I have had some pretty harsh reviews on yelp, 2 of them being legitament complaints and 1 they guy is just being difficult.

Should I change my business name legally and try to have a fresh start? or should i just face these harsh reviews at risk of losing business from people checking us out before hand? I just made some new flyers with my business name on there and i was planning on promoting heavily to other business's in the area. My concern is what if they decide to look me up and the first thing they see are the bad yelp reviews. I do not want my previous work when i first started to reflect on what I can do now.

In no way am i interested in doing business with yelp or advertising, i just want to get some opinions before i start promoting these flyers and buying my domain name for my website. 

From a business stand point, what do you guys suggest I do? what would you do?


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## livedog3030 (Jun 3, 2013)

I think it would just be how bad did you really mess up. I started at age 15 with 0 knowledge, probably the cheapest press you can think and didnt even know how to cure the ink, seriously. screwed up first two jobs and about half the shirts of an entire softball league. Gained a pretty bad rep. But luckilly I was able to invest good money and within six months I was producing good quality prints. It took some time to get those lost customers back but once they began seeing the work I am producing now, they have no choice but to come back and give me a 2nd try. I just gave a "GREAT returning customer deal". Just for those customers that ordered before and you have messed up on. Just a one time coming back deal. they love free stuff. Whatever it may be. One-two shirts or something.

Once you start making good prints. Word of mouth is your best friend. Post a link of those reviews


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## livedog3030 (Jun 3, 2013)

Look at it this way..... I live in a fairly small town. Most of the town with children enroll their girls in this softball league. You are talking maybe half of the town knew about the shirts, if not they talked about it. Everyone knows me and my family. My business name has my last name. No matter if I changed the name or not, they know me for me. Most my business is word of mouth so I had to change the customers mindset, rather than my business name.


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## Keysgeek (May 15, 2012)

Friends and family, friends and family. Get every person you know to post a positive review for you. Bury the bad ones with good reviews. Even offer a discount on their next order to current customers if they post a positive review. We will all get a bad one from time to time, wether legitimate or not. The trick is to have positive reviews out weigh the bad. Yelp is a game that must be played by a business now days. I come from the restaurant business originally, where the game of yelp and trip advisor are a daily battle.


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## decotools (Sep 14, 2012)

A business on Yelp (or others) that only has positive reviews looks fake. Everyone knows that you can't please everyone every time. Do your best to make it right with those customers. Encourage your other customers to post positive reviews.

Some of the review sites, like Google Local, let you respond to customers reviews. If you are able to do that you should post a humble reply offering to do everything within you power to fix the issue. People will see that and know you are a reasonable person.

It doesn't matter that bad things happen. It only matters how we choose to respond to them.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

Yelp gives you the option to respond to negatives. Do so. If it was your fault, admit so in your response.

If it's a jerk customer, write what you did to try to make them happy.

For a solid year I had more negatives than positives and I didn't experience any problems. If people asked about it, I mentioned our awesome refund policy.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using T-Shirt Forums


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## Louie2010 (Feb 26, 2010)

My instinct would be to roll up my sleeves and work that much harder to reverse the poor reputation.


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## mshaw (Jun 5, 2013)

If you change your business name, it will look like you're hiding and the feedback could be even worse if anyone connects you with the old identity. Like previously mentioned by others, just deal with the negative reviews in a professional manner and move on.

Regardless of whether the reviews are on Yelp, Amazon, or any other site that reviews products and services, nothing but glowing reviews looks fake because everybody knows you can't please everyone all the time.


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## Hegemone (Oct 18, 2011)

I am going to sound like an ***. If you didn't fix the problems at your loss then what did you expect. If you leave the customer with what they paid for they wouldnt leave a review that didnt show that you fixed it. If you argued, tried to cover your expenses or caused a major delay, or plain and simple didnt refund everything then they will have issue.

If you fixed it 100% then post that in the reply to the yelp. This is an issue with more then just messing up shirts and hopefully you learned. Changing your name looks sketch and looks like your hiding. So I say what everyone else says. roll up you sleave and work like your rep depends on it. 

Just my two cents. Toss them in a well and make a wish.


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## Mrwitmer (Apr 8, 2013)

Sometimes you just have to go back and correct mistakes - always take the mindset that this is just business, do not take things personally. I would try to attempt to contact the people and simply ask - what can I do to make things better? If their response is to costly way beyond the problem then try to make a compromise (do the next job with a big discount). A couple of hours printing is a lot easier that changing your business name.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> i just face these harsh reviews at risk of losing business from people checking us out before hand?


Yes. I would do what I could to make those customers happy and respond via yelp with what you did.

Changing business names sounds shady, and that shadiness will follow you as much as the bad reviews you're trying to escape.



> Friends and family, friends and family. Get every person you know to post a positive review for you. Bury the bad ones with good reviews. Even offer a discount on their next order to current customers if they post a positive review. We will all get a bad one from time to time, wether legitimate or not. The trick is to have positive reviews out weigh the bad. Yelp is a game that must be played by a business now days. I come from the restaurant business originally, where the game of yelp and trip advisor are a daily battle.


I would not suggest you follow this advice. Fake yelp reviews can be spotted a mile away by savvy customers and look worse than bad reviews. Plus Yelp can automatically filter fake reviews (including trying to bribe customers for a good review)

Be honest, be transparent, try to be awesome to your customers and that's really the best you can do 

As you said, everyone makes mistakes. What customers really care about is what you do when mistakes happen. Do you own up to them and try to make them better or do you try to hide by changing your business name?


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## luba (Nov 25, 2016)

Hi,
Your answer was them most reasonable. I have a retail and am trying to do the best for the previous reviews that were left when the ex manager was running the store. However yelp keeps hiding many of my positive reviews! Do you have more suggestions regarding obtaining + reviews. Also a couple of them r from the competition.
Thanks


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

luba said:


> Hi,
> Your answer was them most reasonable. I have a retail and am trying to do the best for the previous reviews that were left when the ex manager was running the store. However yelp keeps hiding many of my positive reviews! Do you have more suggestions regarding obtaining + reviews. Also a couple of them r from the competition.
> Thanks


You can file complaints with Yelp and they will take action. If you have bad reviews from competition then they will remove those. 

If you are in California there is a way to get all of the bad reviews off. You can find it here: http://yelp-sucks.com/ 

Good luck.


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## MidwestTees (Jan 28, 2015)

I've found people don't check Yelp reviews so much for this type of business. Encourage happy customers to leave positive feedback to offset it, and start on a different social media you control as well. We use instagram since our work is visual and have had luck with that.


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