[sologoub]

I've been seeing a good number of google maps listings hijacked by marketing companies. One restaurant a co-worker of mine advises in her spare time contracted a company that provides online food delivery lead gen. services (similar to grubhub, but not them). They take a cut of every order.

The restaurant owner is a friend of my co-worker and asked her to help with their website and local marketing to drive more business in addition to the lead gen company. When she dug into it, turns out the lead gen business conned the hostess into turning over the google maps account via the phone verification and everyone that looked up the restaurant in google to order went through the lead gen service, where they should have gone directly to the restaurant, saving the restaurant the lead gen commission.

While one might argue that this is legitimate, the owner of the restaurant had no idea and felt cheated.