{"id":176606,"date":"2020-05-07T18:56:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-07T23:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/05\/07\/this-is-flat-out-fraud\/"},"modified":"2020-05-07T18:56:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T23:56:00","slug":"this-is-flat-out-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/05\/07\/this-is-flat-out-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Flat Out Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yelp, which is in a partnership with Github, and hence shares a portion of the revenues, is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/wjwebw\/yelp-is-sneakily-replacing-restaurants-phone-numbers-so-grubhub-can-take-a-cut\">publishing false phone numbers for a restaurants in order to generate promotional fees with Github<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is flat out fraud.  They are generating false calls to make fees for their partner, who kicks the money back to them.<\/p>\n<p>It probably won&#8217;t result in criminal charges, but it really is Silicon Valley Douchebaggery in its truest form:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A few months ago, I opened the Yelp app, typed in the name of my favorite sushi restaurant, and clicked on the phone number. Two options popped up: \u201cDelivery or Takeout\u201d and \u201cGeneral Questions.&#8221;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">That\u2019s new, I thought. I dialed the number for \u201cDelivery or Takeout,\u201d which played a perky greeting\u2014\u201cThis call may be recorded to ensure awesomeness\u201d\u2014before a woman at the restaurant picked up. I asked why they were recording the call for awesomeness; she had no idea what I was referring to. I asked about the number I had just dialed; she didn\u2019t recognize it.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The Yelp app lists a restaurant\u2019s direct phone number on the actual listing. That\u2019s (212) 262-8300 in the case of Judge Roy Bean Public House. But when you click on the phone number, this dialogue shows up: Delivery or Takeout and General Questions. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">When a user clicks on the \u201cCall\u201d button labeled \u201cDelivery or Takeout,\u201d they are taken to a different number, (646) 394-9837, which is owned by Grubhub. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The \u201cCall\u201d button next to \u201cGeneral Questions\u201d leads to the restaurant\u2019s real number.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Even though restaurants are capable of taking orders directly\u2014after all, both numbers are routed to the same place\u2014Yelp is pushing customers to Grubhub-owned phone numbers in order to facilitate what Grubhub calls a \u201creferral fee\u201d of between 15 percent and 20 percent of the order total, I learned while researching an episode for the podcast Underunderstood.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Yelp has historically functioned like an enhanced Yellow Pages, listing direct phone numbers for restaurants along with photos, information about the space, menus, and user reviews. But Yelp began prompting customers to call Grubhub phone numbers in October 2018 after the two companies announced a \u201clong-term partnership.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is fraud.<\/p>\n<p>State Attorneys General should be proffering criminal charges under fraud statutes against Yelp and Grubhub, and federal prosecutors should be pursuing them under RICO statutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yelp, which is in a partnership with Github, and hence shares a portion of the revenues, is publishing false phone numbers for a restaurants in order to generate promotional fees with Github. This is flat out fraud. They are generating false calls to make fees for their partner, who kicks the money back to them. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,368,435,364,575,367],"class_list":["post-176606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-crimes","tag-evil","tag-fraud","tag-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}