Huh. We've never had these experiences with the BB...

Huh. We've never had these experiences with the BBB. We've been members for a long time, then we let our membership lapse, then we got back on board... but at no time during any of this were we pestered or coerced. I feel bad that this has happened to some people. It must be frustrating. Yelp, on the other hand, is a horrendous reviewing venue for most small businesses (other than restaurant s). Since they make it very difficult for known business owners to also write reviews about any other business, I deduce that most reviews one reads are written by people who have never built a business for themselves. Readers must use their common sense when reading reviews on sites that spend more effort to quality the businesses than they do the reviewers. As Mehrdad said, just because a review is good doesn t mean the business is run that well. Conversely, one should never take a bad review at face value either. Most people are more motivated to leave a review when they are angry than when they are happy. So a disproportionate number of negative reviews will tend to be emotional rather than thoughtful or even fair minded.