Island Wedding Memories RULES!!! Yelp SUCKS!!!

Getting hitched in Maui isn't easy when you live in Seattle.  Therefore, having a wedding coordinator on site is pretty essential. 

The coordinator Kim found, Leah Robb from Island Wedding Memories, was rad!  Here is the review I posted on Yelp:

I just got hitched in Maui last month.  The day was simply perfect.  In every way.

The main reason for the perfection was Leah Robb.

Obviously, planning a wedding from across an ocean is difficult, so we knew pretty early that we needed a coordinator.  My (now) wife found Leah through a referral.  Where we had previously been doing a ton of our own research and were going into a destination wedding knowing very little, Leah was quick to identify our needs and guide us through our process.

Her first, and easily her best, recommendation was the wedding site.  Had it not been for Leah, we would have never found our site.  And, it was amazing.  So amazing, that my wife barred me from posting pictures before the ceremony because she wanted a breathtaking experience for our guests when they arrived the day of.

Next, we gave her our budget and she gave us suggestions.  Instead of constant negotiating and adding/subtracting various different costs, she put together suggestions for catering, photography, decorations, floral, etc, all within the budget we gave her.  We simply had to pick our favorites.  And, again...all services on the day of were spot on.

We even had some quirky requests.  We didn't want cake.  So, she rented us a shave ice truck!  This was SUPER popular with the guests.  We wanted to have yard games for the kids.  Done!  Some of our guests had dietary restrictions.  Handled!!  Perfect, I tell you.  Perfect!

Leah was professional and fun. Seriously.  She made us laugh and she made the day 100% stress free.  Arriving in Maui was more stressful than the actual wedding day.  Guests arrived at 3 and there were still people hanging on until the last shuttle (arranged by Leah) left at 10.

Perfect!

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Now, for the complaining part.

Yelp sucks.  Like, really really sucks.

I never used it before now.  I would read reviews, but I wouldn't post.  I have been hearing a lot about how they may or may not play favorites with certain posts, but I didn't really care that much. 

Until now.  You see, Leah Robb was an amazing coordinator.  Like, super fantastic.  Our wedding day went off without a hitch.  It was as perfect as it possibly could have been.  If there were hiccups, we didn't see them.  In fact, the only thing I noticed that wasn't 100% on point was that the Shave Ice truck (yes, we had shave ice instead of cake!) parked in the wrong place.  But, the only reason I noticed was because, 2 days before during our walkthrough, Leah told us the truck would park somewhere else.  I can pretty much guarantee that nobody else noticed.

Let me back up a little.

Kim found Leah through a recommendation.  As with most of Kim's decisions with the wedding, my input was, "That sounds great, honey!"  Such was the case with Leah.

One day while I was bored, I decided to do a Yelp search on Leah.  I found that she was indeed listed.  And, she was ranked with only 1 star.  ONE STAR!  In case you're not familiar with Yelp, that means she sucks.  This made me nervous.  Did we just hire a crappy coordinator to run this important day?  I brought it up to Kim and she basically said, "Oh...well, we already gave her a deposit."  So...there we are.

Fast forward.  As I mentioned, the day was amazing!  We could not have been happier!  I was so happy, in fact, that I was inspired to create a Yelp account and post a review for Leah!  It was not fair that she was represented on Yelp by these 2 crappy reviews.  Especially when you read the review.  Seriously...one person was mad because the wedding party wasn't paired up properly.  Um...hey wedding party.  Maybe you could have pointed that out to her.  Regardless, not a reason to review someone with one star.

Kim and I both wrote 5 star reviews!  It boosted Leah's average to 3 stars.  Still not as good as she deserves, but whatever.  It's better than 1 star.

I popped back onto Yelp today, about 3 days after I posted.  Leah's score is once again 1 star.  Both my review as well as Kim's had disappeared.  What the hell?

It was then that I noticed a little drop down category called "Other reviews that aren't recommended."  You have to click to see these reviews and they don't factor into the final score.  Both of our reviews are in this category.  So, neither of our glowing reviews made it in to impact Leah. 

We are there with 9 other reviews that aren't "recommended."  Many of them Great reviews!  In fact, if these reviews are counted, Leah's average would be 4 STARS!!!

What the hell, Yelp?  This basically makes me conclude that your service is bullshit.  And, while I have watched your little video and understand the supposed logic, it is clearly proving to be bullshit in this circumstance.  Your algorithm is crap. I currently have zero trust in you as a referral service based on this.