So are there any similar services which do offer business owners a chance to respond for free? If not, wouldn't this be a good opportunity for a startup? You could probably advertise yourself as the 'dont-be-evil' version of yelp.
The source of the negative sentiment may boil down to the cold calling. It seems to be one of those things that just hits a nerve, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could trace the anti-Yelp movement to this business practice. The other thing people complain about a lot is that their reviews aren't counted (presumably because of the anti-spam filter). If Yelp fixes those two major problems, it will be in much better shape.
you want a business with poor consumer reviews to be able to delist itself? Isn't that like being able to delete your case record with the Better Business Bureau?
This is basically the project I started working on a few weeks ago. If anyone is interested in getting together on this, feel free to get in touch (my email address is in my profile). I'm a programmer located in the Mission district of San Francisco.
It would be a nice to have a Craigslist or Wikipedia-style Yelp (fast, lightweight, and non-evil).
