beingCheryl

i am a good idea.

The Guy Who Wanted to Sue Me For a Five Star Yelp Review, part 2

Remember this story?

It continues.

I’m still not going to write the name of the business, because, once again, my intentiontion was never to hurt the business, which is why I did not publish the salon name in the last post. (Which, with the tens of thousands of views it got, would have easily outranked the famous Yelp review on Google.) I was happy to just let this rest.

But he had to try again. And it’s just too funny not to share. I look forward to getting slapped with another fake lawsuit for this post.

So I got this message on Yelp yesterday from Paula M:

Hi Cheryl,
I am writing you because I didn’t realize my residence was on yelp, and I was wondering why people have shown up at our door for haircuts. I asked the girl tonight where she found out about my address, and she said it was on yelp. I didn’t realize somebody was leasing my new place as a hair salon prior. I just moved in about 3 months ago, and there have been 2 people ringing my doorbell and asking if there is still a salon here. I said, “I’m sorry, but this is a residence”. They looked at me like I was crazy. So I just did some research tonight on the computer (I am not computer savvy at all..lol), and saw your had a review about the former place. There is no place to call yelp about this issue, and was wondering if you knew how to delete the information or what I can do. I apologize for the trouble. I am inquiring about [BUSINESS NAME REDACTED] at [BUSINESS ADDRESS REDACTED] I am not sure if I need to check back on here or if your response goes to my email. Anyways…my email is paulajmurphy1960@gmail… Can you please let me know what to do. Thank you-Paula

I started laughing at this point, because there was barely a .2% chance this was a legitimate person and not just this guy trying to get me to delete this review. I mean, this “not computer savvy” lady takes the time to fill out a full – and hilarious – Yelp profile.

SHE LOVES KNITTING AND JEOPARDY! Oh boy.

I’m also pretty positive if you do a Google image search of some variation of “fifty year old woman,” she’d be on the front page of results.

(UPDATE: @sarahisastalker has informed me that she is located on mobile page 13 for the query “middle aged woman”)

(UPDATE 2: @amyrosebrown has discovered that “Paula M.” is actually bestselling author Kris Radish.

So I decided to investigate. Obviously.

I have a fake Facebook account. I’ve had it for almost four years now. I created it so I could get the 25th “Like” on a business page I was administering to set a vanity URL. I forgot it existed until I had a brief and shameful Sims Social phase where I used it to cheat. I never send messages from the account – but since the profile picture is of an attractive young girl (some random blonde I found on Google), I’ve got a LOT of creepy messages from other users. Some of them I personally know (and know are married.) But I digress.

I sent the stylist a message from the fake account after I got the Yelp message. I just asked where the salon was located, because I was interested in getting a haircut. I got a quick and friendly reply – he gave me the address, directions, and a phone number so I could schedule an appointment.

Well wouldn’t you know. It’s at the same address.

Apparently my friend Paula from Yelp has a roommate.

UPDATE: Paula M has changed her name to Julie W and no longer likes knitting or Casablanca. Damn.

24 Responses to “The Guy Who Wanted to Sue Me For a Five Star Yelp Review, part 2”

  1. John Paul says:

    This story is epic!!!! I need this in my Bly ray player ASAP…,,..someone needs to turn this into a movie

  2. Wow. Apparently she has a drunk hair dresser roommate she doesn’t know about. Someone should warn her!! :)

  3. Cake Betch says:

    I’d say homeboy is cray cray.

  4. Amanda says:

    I can understand why he was upset. I mean, who wants to get their haircut from someone who is a social drinker? Disgusting. Way to completely ruin his reputation.

    PS I like the fake picture, but I personally would have chosen to steal a picture of Paula Dean. She looks much less internet savvy than Kris Radish.

  5. Michael Kent says:

    I love this shit. I remember you telling me about the haircut experience right after it happened.

  6. Tracey Byrnes says:

    OMG…move over, “Days of Our Lives” and other soap operas…this is too crazy not to beat them out!

    Seems to me like the stylist/Paula needs a glass belly button to help them out, since it certainly sounds like they’ve got a major case of “cranialrectumitis” going on ;)

  7. Libby says:

    This is a story that keeps on giving and is hilarious! I hope that there is another installment at some point in the future. Paula, Paula, Paula,,,,caught, caught, caught!!

  8. Natalie says:

    Bahahahaha! He left out “hoarding cats” as her hobby.

  9. Cheryl…I just read the back story and now this and WOW. I am utterly speechless at this. I’m waiting for him to start trolling your blog comments and harassing you.

  10. Absolutely. Freakin. Hysterical. Do tell us what Review ratings and comments this whacko has had recently. Apparently he has set an annual reminder in his phone to make an attempt to try to get you to remove the review. Or, maybe he was just embarrassed that you pointed out he was hanging out a bar like Shaugnessys and not (fill in a gay bar name here). I’m going to post on Facebook because I think the ultimate ironic outcome would be for this story to go viral.

  11. Nihar says:

    It’s possible that he had plastic surgery and sex change operation just to send you this mail…

  12. Allie says:

    When you first blogged about this, I stalked your Yelp account and found out which salon you’re talking about. I’m going to show up there this weekend and be like “OMG WHERE IS MY FRIEND PAULA. This is her house!!!!!”

  13. Amber says:

    I did the same as Allie because I was curious (Ie. nosey). I think what I love most is that your review is the ONLY review. He thinks making a fake Yelp profile to get you to remove your review is better than making several fake Yelp profiles to post fake reviews so that your’s doesn’t stand out quite so much. So bizarre.

  14. Amy says:

    Same as the above two commenters – now that I can see it’s the only review, it’s even more unbelievable to me. Maybe you covered it somewhere and I missed it, but are you going to update your review to reflect all this weirdness? I feel like it’s totally relevant – I’m definitely not going to go to this guy, no matter how nice he made your hair look!

  15. Cheryl says:

    Amy – I’ve thought about it. I didn’t do it in September when he was threatening me, but now that he’s back I almost feel like I do need to warn people that he’s, um, kind of crazy. I honestly haven’t decided yet though.

  16. Dude. Dude. People need to hold classes on how to manage your shit online without being creepy and/or damaging your reputation, and this guy should be the first person in line to take that class.

  17. Brewnas says:

    That is so unbelievably hilarious! What a bonehead. Just WOW!!! LMAO, I feel sorry for you having to put up with him, but still can’t stop laughing about what he tried to pull. Nice touch on grabbing the image of Paul M’s “profile”, by the way.

    I once gave a good review of a restaurant & bar once, giving props to the bar manager for stepping up their quality of beer & keeping very clean tap lines. I found his ticked of the owner. The owner felt things were great before this bar manager worked there, and because he was the owner, it was of course, consistent throughout. Apparently, he was furious & it almost cost the bar manager his job. He apparently wanted his staff to let him know the next time I showed up so he could scream at me. Angry meetings were held with his staff about my review. Never in my life could I of imagined this being the response to what I wrote. I thought this was ridiculous.

    My experience I just outlined doesn’t even begin to compare to the farce you described here. What a crazy dope! WOW!!!

  18. Heidi says:

    This is hilarious. This guy has some serious issues.

  19. Nate Riggs says:

    This makes me giggle. Here’s a thought … maybe if a business or service or product actually delivered quality, people wouldn’t have to be sneaky to try and get people to tell others that it was crappy.

    Nice moves, Cheryl…

  20. I enjoyed reading this…gave me a good laugh! I am truly amazed that people think in this information age that they can fool anyone.

  21. […] The Guy Who Wanted to Sue Me For a Five Star Yelp Review, part 2 […]

  22. Blake says:

    Well, in another great twist, my Mom is named Paula Murphy.

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