My negative review is being bombed by fake reviews from a business

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Hi all. I had a very bad experience with a skin clinic a year ago and left a negative review last week. It went live after a few hours, and then mine and another person’s negative review vanished. I was guessing the business flagged it to remove it.

This morning, my review went live again. Around lunchtime, the business tried to phone me (I didn’t pick up). Then, I noticed the reviews went from 831 to 844 within an hour. Positive reviews were being left literally seconds after each other.

Some of these reviews had people with the same surname, and some were mentioning they had such a great experience at the clinic with the names of people who were leaving these reviews. I Googled some of these names, and they’re showing in online magazines as “senior practitioners” for the business, are in YouTube videos for the business and on their website as having worked there for 7+ years.

I looked on social media and some of these names are in photos together for the business’ annual parties, they’re following other people who left reviews, and it’s become clear to me the business is trying to bury my negative review with positive ones from their staff.

As this was happening, I got a second call, which I didn’t pick up.

When the review bombing had stopped, I got an email from their clinic manager saying she had tried to call me about my review with the title: “RE: Urgent”

I’ve taken screenshots of all the evidence I’ve found and reported the reviews. Is there anything else I can do? It seems very difficult to report this to Google directly and send my evidence.

The business doesn’t usually get more than a few reviews a week or month. 13 in one hour is crazy. Judging by how much they were trying to contact me and how quickly these reviews came from those associated with the business, this is EXTREMELY shady.

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When I read your topic I was unsure what advice to give.
You should surely flag the reviews you find to be fake. But that is unlikely to have any effect.
As a consumer we cannot seek help in the Google Business Help Community as they only tend to business owners.
Maybe try here

Make sure you don’t get pushed to

The only alternative I can think of would be to have a Google Moderator to escalate this.
Let me tag @TsekoV on this.

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Thanks Morten.

Hi @TsekoV , hope you’re well and can help. I’ve put a document together showing the evidence I gathered. I think this is really important, because it’s not a diner making fake reviews to get more people in to have a mediocre burger that someone pointed out in a negative review.

This is a skin clinic where customers can be at risk. These positive reviews are what pushed me into going and being harmed in the past and I have the scars and trauma to prove it, unfortunately. I wanted to share that with people, but the clinic has got all these people to bury it and manipulate innocent people into not knowing the risks of being injected, cut and subjected to high power lasers.

The business has even replied to some of these staff members with things like, “we can’t wait to see you next time for your next treatment!” That’s completely dishonest and puts people in danger!