Yelp is Screwing Over Restaurants By Quietly Replacing Their Phone Numbers
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjwebw/yelp-is-sneakily-replacing-restaurants-phone-numbers-so-grubhub-can-take-a-cut [www.vice.com]
2019-08-06 16:38
The phone numbers add tracking before connecting to a restaurant so that Grubhub can bill for a marketing fee.
“There’s a button where you could hit play and so I was like, what is this?” he said. “I hit play, and the first call was me on the phone, which freaked me out because I didn’t know I was being recorded.” The call was a customer who had his restaurant confused with another restaurant. It took four minutes to figure this out before the customer hung up without placing an order. “I got charged almost $8 for that phone call.”
Also: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/SF-restaurant-Kin-Khao-doesn-t-offer-delivery-15005797.php
And still: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/venessawong/grubhub-phone-order-call-fee-coronavirus
Also: https://themargins.substack.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage
source: HN