Over a few days our Facebook rating plummeted from 4.9 to 4.1
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Over a few days our Facebook rating plummeted from 4.9 to 4.3 and falling, as a wave of nasty one-star reviews — many with no comment — appeared.
I checked every reviewer name against our patient database. Only one was an actual patient: a mother with a poor show rate who had been warned per our no-show protocol and ultimately dismissed. The rest were names from her Facebook network, several living more than three hours away, none of whom had ever set foot in our practice.
A rapid, alarming drop in our public rating. My partner and I had to weigh carefully how to respond without provoking something worse.
Facebook's guidelines offered no recourse. I chose not to respond, fearing escalation. We eventually turned reviews off, which hid the ratings but didn't erase them and blocked new reviews. Google and other platforms can't be handled the same way, and there's no recourse for an innocent practice.