What To Do About a Bad Yelp Review

I'm watching this story unfold and have a few thoughts. Firstly I admire many of the intelligent responses to the story and I learned a lot. My two cents:

1) Filing papers in court is a good way to avoid libel. That way the stipulations of fact and allegations can be quoted by a 3rd party: "Court papers filed today say that the defendant did __________, when in fact, it was the plaintiff who _________." It doesn't have to amount to "he said, she said...".

2) Whenever people are complaining they should organize their complaint into a) a summary of the complaint, b) a clear laundry list of facts, c) a synthesis for the facts which proves why d) is the best remedy for whomever to take. This begins to suss out the facts from the opinions, which is a huge problem in any conflict.

3) If a business has made a mistake in its business dealings, they should publicly invite the customer to find satisfaction (i.e. "We have a 30 day cash refund policy which Mr. X did not use/is able to use..."). Or clarify their own position: ("We served smith the french fries in a timely manner. Mr. X spoke with his colleagues and kept returning the fries complaining they were cold each time. Eventually after 4 baskets we refused to return Mr. X's fries basket.")

4) Reviewers should accept a moral responsibility to confirm whether the business has attempted to remedy the problem stated or to admit where the reviewer might be wrong, in retrospect.

If this tremendous opportunity for communication can be used as an opportunity for mutual growth (people might be surprised that businesses want them to be happy/businesses can grow from reviews around consistently bad areas of performance), the experience can be be a win/win for businesses and consumers.