“Rather mediocre,” one reviewer wrote on Yelp. Others were less kind.

“My friend saw this idiot tonight after a fight with her boyfriend,” a second reviewer, Tiffany B. of Savannah, Ga., wrote.

A third, Suz A. of Manhattan, warned, “STAY AWAY & DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY.”

The reviewers on Yelp — where everyone is a critic with up to five stars to bestow or withhold — were not complaining about the usual staples: an overcooked steak, or poor service, or a botched pedicure. They were writing about a woman named Samantha, whose business on East 59th Street is more personal in nature. She is a psychic.

Yelp reviews of psychics apply a modern lens to an age-old practice. People have claimed for centuries to have psychic powers, and their methods — and, for some, their schemes — have not changed appreciably over time. Nor has a business model that has gotten by on word of mouth and storefronts and signage that seem exotic.

But times have changed. A psychic on East 37th Street in Midtown Manhattan, one Yelp reviewer wrote last year, “begged me to write nice reviews so she can get more clients.” When the reviewer posted negative comments instead, she wrote, “she begged me to take them down.”