Title: I am posting this on behalf of another HN member with less karma.<p>Someone close to me operates a medical practice in a fairly densely populated area of a very large city. Over the last few months, very negative reviews started appearing on review sites (like Yelp and Yahoo reviews) from users with no review history. The negative reviews are interspersed with others, which are a mixed bag (but tend towards the very positive) and probably valid. Normally I'd assume she's just getting negative reviews and move on, but she's received a fax from someone saying they're aware of the problem and can help her fix it, with a return phone number and an address that's geographically on the other side of the country. I'm assuming as soon as she contacts them they'll ask for money (or worse) to take them down. In my opinion, this is a terrible precedent to set.<p>I remember hearing about Yelp doing this themselves, but never a third party. Googling for the problem also lead to few similar situations. Given that the practice has very few reviews as it is, it is tarnishing her image quite a bit and she has noticed a downturn in the number of patients she's been seeing.<p>So far, we've been advising, under no circumstances, to reach out to this person.<p>Does anyone have any experience with situations like this or can offer advice?
Upvote: