The review read like ad copy for a dentist that is not me
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The review gave two stars but spent most of its length praising a "state of the art office nearby with friendly staff and same-day crowns." It read like a brochure, complete with buzzwords no ordinary patient uses. It offered no concrete detail about a visit to me, just a soft complaint pivoting into a sales pitch. The cadence was too smooth, the adjectives too curated. It felt written to redirect traffic rather than to share an experience. I suspected a competitor immediately, but suspicion is not evidence. The two stars still count against my average all the same.
The office it praised had opened months earlier and advertised same-day crowns as its signature feature. The review's phrasing mirrored that campaign so closely it could have been copied from it. Nothing in the post corresponded to any appointment I could recognize, and it named no procedure I performed. I believe it was competitor marketing wearing the costume of a patient review. But I cannot prove authorship, and I cannot comb through records to disprove a visit that may be invented. HIPAA bars me from publicly declaring no such patient exists, because that implies I looked. So the ad copy stands as testimony against me.
As a newer solo practitioner, I feel every point of my rating, and this one hurt disproportionately. I worried that readers would take the polished praise of my rival at face value. My request volume softened after it posted, and I could not tell how many were steered elsewhere. The paranoia of scanning every review for the same manufactured tone crept into my routine. It is exhausting to compete against your own profile page. My assistant noticed I was on edge, refreshing the reviews tab too often. The helplessness of being marketed against, invisibly, gnawed at me.
I reported the review as suspected competitor advertising and pointed to the brochure-like language. The platform responded that it could not confirm authorship and would leave it up. I asked about their process for coordinated or fake reviews and got a generic policy link. My attorney told me that unmasking the writer would require legal action I could not realistically pursue. I could not reply substantively without implying I had searched for a nonexistent patient. I posted a short neutral acknowledgment and moved on. The review remains, quietly doing a competitor's advertising for them.