Come this October, my dad's construction company will have been in business for 26 years. It is an amazing accomplishment, particularly considering where my he came from. My dad is the epitome of a self-made man. Barely even adults, he and my mom moved across the country to California in 1983, with no money saved up and no financial help from their family. After working as a laborer for over a decade,from the time he was 15-years-old, my dad had learned enough about the construction industry as well as work ethic, to get his General Contractor's license and start his own company. A quarter of a century later, he has maintained a solid work ethic, amazing relations with his employees and a pride in the quality of his work that is appreciated by so many of his customers. He has had the pleasure of having return customers up to ten years after their initial work with him, and benefits greatly from word-of-mouth recommendations. Just two Christmases ago, my family made a stop at the home of one of his customers to thank them personally. They had provided my dad with all of his work through the brutally slow Winter months by vigorously recommending him to their neighbors and friends. As we are nearing the 26th anniversary of his company being in business, the entire foundation of his company as well as our personal lives are being shaken, by an entity who we have never met, who has no expertise in the construction industry, nor customer service and yet has completely taken over our public persona by having my dad's company represented on Yelp. In previous years, we didn't pay Yelp any mind, as the vast majority of his job referrals were through local signage and word-of-mouth. In the past few months though, Yelp has taken precedence over all other representations of us, through no intentions of our own. Even though our reviews are few, they have proven detrimental to our business, thereby affecting the lives of my family and that of my dad's employees. We came to the realization that in the case of small businesses, the vast majority of the people who post reviews are using it as an outlet to rant, oftentimes making false statements (which we can prove through documents and emails). As a response to this trend, we encouraged our customers who already verbally recommend us to their friends to also write a review so that there would be a more balanced, accurate representation of us. Many of them gladly wrote reviews, providing specific information about the work we performed and how positive the experience was. WITHOUT FAIL: Every single one of these positive reviews has been removed from the main page of our business, labeled as "Not Recommended." At the same time, every negative review, regardless of how clearly biased they may be, remains on the main page, one such review by an individual who my parents have never worked with, and yet Yelp has not removed the review. They claim that it is an algorithm that controls visibility of the reviews, and that paying for advertisement on Yelp has no affect on this. If this is true, then they should allow companies, such as my dad's company, to decide that Yelp's algorithm coincidentally has a bias against them, and opt-out of having a business page on Yelp. In the past few weeks my dad has gone from having eight estimates a week, to only one. As the construction industry normally does not slow down until late Fall, this is setting my dad up to be without work for several months through the Fall and Winter, thereby putting him out of business and leaving his employees, who jointly have twelve children to feed, UN-employed. What right does Yelp have to dictate our public persona, thereby affecting public opinion of us? If our positive reviews remain invisible and the negative ones are proudly displayed on the front page, then my dad's company will continue to lose more and more work, in spite of his 25 years of dedication to providing our home town with quality work. If Yelp CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman, speaks truthfully in saying that paying for your account does not affect the reviews being displayed and that he values small businesses, then he should have enough humanity in him, to allow us to opt-out. It would be a mutual transaction, as his company would no longer be providing free visibility for us, and we would be able to continue receiving work based on the same equation that has kept us running for decades: We provide quality work, and when passerby see our yard-sign and inquire about our work, happy customers gladly recommend us. Please Jeremy Stoppelman, don't run my dad's business and decades of hard work into the ground, by forcing us to have a business page that is not at all representative of the overall public opinion of us. Please SIGN THIS PETITION to help small businesses stay in business by opting out of their unauthorized Yelp pages.