That's too bad. Probably to drop the lawsuit and have a good explanation on their advertising. Making sure people recognize that these people were never their customers and had never paid anything for any type of service. You would think that Yelp or Google would drop those reviews just because of that. I was under the impression that only customers could leave reviews.
Well, the mental gymnastics have already begun and these people in the minds of many in genpop were customers because they were renters and ultimately footing the bill. Which is fn stupid but it's out there.
The only thought process I can kind of get on board with is that they did have an experience with the company and that should entitle them to share that experience.
the problem is they seem to have misrepresented the issue in their review (stops them from using the laws that protect reviewers) and left multiple one star reviews** doing so with what I feel can only be seen as intent to strongarm the company into getting something they weren't entitled to and in lieu of that hurt the company via the reviews.
as far as yelp I think they put a halt to reviews for a limited amount of time but don't remove reviews...I could be wrong on that but it seems to be the case for companies that got spotlighted by the news/internet in the past
** there are a few other 1 star reviews in that timeframe on a company that usually has very few. I bet those could be tied to this couple or their friends which would show their intent was to hurt the business rather than simply share their negative experience.
*** I'm sure there was some damage caused by the reviews. Especially if listed by most recent since there was a period when the last several reviews were negative which has more impact. I'm not sure that even with the intent to harm the biz that the reviews rise to the level of libel.