Across the U.S., restaurants are being hit with a new scam: a barrage of one-star Google reviews unless they are paid to stop.
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On a Saturday afternoon in early July, something struck Amy Babic as "off."
Someone had left a review on Google for her New York restaurant, Copinette, with one star, and no text attached. Babic looked up the reviewer's name in the restaurant's payment system and didn't see it. Over the next few days, more and more one-star reviews started popping up, until she got an email last Wednesday asking for money to take them down.
"We are begging you to send us google play gift card worth $75 You can buy the card directly from PayPal," the email said, which Entrepreneur has reviewed.
Babic's restaurant has been hit by a new trend: Scammers targeting restaurants by leaving a large number of one-star Google reviews — and then asking for money to delete them, according to recent reports from multiple outlets.
In San Francisco, at least 10 restaurants have reportedly experienced this scam, per local news reports.
Kim Alter of Nightbird received similar messages in early July asking for a $75 Google Play gift card in return for a series of deleting one-star reviews on Google, she told Eater San Francisco. (Eater also reviewed the email, the outlet said.)
The asks have a strangely conciliatory tone, Eater added. "We sincerely apologize for our actions, and would not want to harm your business, but...
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