SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Multiple high-profile San Francisco restaurants have recently received a rash of one-star reviews, apparently from scammers in an extortion attempt, as first reported by SF Eater and later SFGATE.
The targeted restaurants, many of which are Michelin-starred, include Nightbird, Californios, Son & Daughters, Acquerello, Quince, Nari, Octavia and SPQR.
Both outlets spoke to many San Francisco restaurant owners and chefs who, over the past week, reportedly received a variety of the same email threatening to leave an outpouring of negative comments on Google about their establishments unless they send them a $75 Google Play gift card.
"Hello. Unfortunately, negative feedback about your establishment has been left by us. And will appear in the future, one review a day. We sincerely apologize for our actions, and would not want to harm your business, but we have no other choice," the email stated, in part, according to both publications.
Most of the restaurateurs have said they received more than 10 such reviews over the last week.
"It started, at least for us, over the Fourth of July weekend," Mat Schuster, board president of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and owner of Canela Bistro and Wine Bar in San Francisco, told KCBS Radio on Friday. "We all get bad reviews from time to time, but these were standing out because there were no comment, they were by people who only had one review and not a review history and they were just coming in a pattern for us about two per day over five or six days."
Eater reported the same scam has happened to top restaurants in other large cities like New York and Chicago. Restaurants had varying degrees of success reporting the fraudulent reviews to Google, however overall, Eater reported that the tech giants’ responses have been "quick enough to support businesses who reach out for aid."
KCBS Radio reached out to Google for comment and did not receive a reply prior to publication.
Schuster said that one of his friends who works at Google told him that "they know about (the issue) and are working on it. In the meantime have everyone you know respond to the review and mark them as spam." Schuster encouraged customers to do the same.
"As a customer you can go on and pull up those reviews and flag them as spam yourself and that will help get it into Google’s algorithm to get it taken down sooner," he explained. "(The reviews) mean business for us. Just like everyone else, I'm sure when you go to choose a place you look up the reviews, it's just what people do."
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