Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

nypost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 268 posts

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#221

Post by danso »

jessaustin wrote: post #208
titanomachy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost certainly the medical details were shared with the court, under seal, rather than posted to (for example) a public internet forum. At issue here is a disagreement over what services were performed, so it makes perfect sense that the court would require access to these documents. The reporting is incredibly one-sided here considering that the case is still unresolved. No doubt it will be damaging to the doctor'…

...which is why he is an idiot, with an idiot lawyer, for poking this hornets' nest. I say that even if we stipulate that his medical performance was exemplary. You don't fight with disgruntled customers. Spend a couple of minutes to see if you can easily satisfy them, and then forget the whole mess. Recover any products they received, give them their money back, and write off the service you performed. Period.

Perhaps this was not just a disgruntled customer. She's accused of posting multiple reviews that say allegedly libelous things. This was not, according to the complaint, a situation where someone just left a bad review.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#222

Post by danso »

confiscate wrote: post #189
ceejayoz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it happened. The story is in a tabloid, and that's such an insanely egregious breach of HIPAA that I'm a little skeptical that it played out exactly like that.

why do you blame the tabloid? The quote said "They posted my", so it looks likely that it was the woman who said it, no?

It's the responsibility of the journalist to ask follow-up questions that are necessary to resolve these kinds of ambiguity.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#223

Post by danieltillett »

mcguire wrote: post #58
dqv wrote: post #21

The case is available online through WebCivil Supreme [0] if you want to read more about the case. [0] https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASSearch?param=P

The case name is "GREAT WALL MEDICAL P.C. vs. LEVINE, MICHELLE". https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASCaseInfo?parm=...

Having read the case I suspect the defendant is going to lose big time.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#224

Post by jessaustin »

danso wrote: post #221
jessaustin wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is why he is an idiot, with an idiot lawyer, for poking this hornets' nest. I say that even if we stipulate that his medical performance was exemplary. You don't fight with disgruntled customers. Spend a couple of minutes to see if you can easily satisfy them, and then forget the whole mess. Recover any products they received, give them their money back, and write off the service you performed. Period.

Perhaps this was not just a disgruntled customer. She's accused of posting multiple reviews that say allegedly libelous things. This was not, according to the complaint, a situation where someone just left a bad review.

So she is "super-disgruntled". If anything that makes fighting with her even more foolish. Most of these sites (certainly yelp and google) allow service providers to respond to reviews. Leave a single note, "We're sorry this patient wasn't satisfied with our service, and have refunded all fees. Since most of our patients are happy, we rarely need to do this." [0] Actually even that note is too confrontational, but maybe there has to be a sort of compromise between one's emotions and one's business. There's no way a patient with a complaint about fees gets a lawyer on contingency or a guest column in the paper if she already has been offered a refund. This is different than a malpractice injury case, which would need to be handled more carefully. (Although even in those cases, getting the patient to accept a refund is golden.) Still, the attorney from your malpractice insurer would also advise against this scorched-earth bullshit. This physician must be on a bare-bones malpractice plan, that his dipshit attorney hasn't already been banished by competent legal representation.

[0] if the provider has to issue such refunds all the time, there are other problems to address...

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#225

Post by danieltillett »

jastanton wrote: post #6

I was nodding along until this: > They posted my entire medical record, including notes about my mental health, my bills, my insurance info, my driver’s license, birth date and home address,” she said. wow. That violates HIPAA law. The counter-sue is going to be huge. Also, I had a related issue where a doctor threatened to sue based on my yelp review. I cut the review back to verifiable facts instead of opinion and…

You are assuming this is true. I have read through the case records and I am not confident that anything the defendant says is true. If it is false then the defendant will have just increased their loss - judges tend not to look to favourably on running a PR campaign outside of the court process.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#226

Post by danans »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #196
danans wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can argue over the implementation method, but fundamentally a society must decide whether they believe health care - both routine/simple and unexpected/severe - is a right of all or a privilege for just some. If you say it's a right, everyone has to participate and those of means have to help pay for those who have none. The individual mandate was an admittedly roundabout way to achieve that. The old system of pa…

I agree with you. So I'm not sure what the argument is here. I was only describing how we got to the current morass and why it is so hard to extricate ourselves and do something not crazy.

Sorry, I'm not arguing with you. What I'm addressing is that the particular mechanisms only matter once the objective - affordable health care as right or a privilege - is broadly established and agreed upon. Until then, debating the mechanisms, whether taxes or mandates, or nothing at all if one believes health care is a privilege, doesn't address the root problem.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#227

Post by megy »

yani wrote: post #29

It is good to hear the other side of the story. I find it impossible for a lawyer company to post medical records of someone else publicly since they are supposed to know what they are doing. I am all for give power to the people but I have seen this being abused a lot nowadays.

> I find it impossible for a lawyer company to post medical records of someone else publicly

Where do people here think the medical records were posted? On yelp? On the lawyers website? It is so weird people are just thinking that this stuff is posted publicly.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#228

Post by DoreenMichele »

danans wrote: post #226
DoreenMichele wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. So I'm not sure what the argument is here. I was only describing how we got to the current morass and why it is so hard to extricate ourselves and do something not crazy.

Sorry, I'm not arguing with you. What I'm addressing is that the particular mechanisms only matter once the objective - affordable health care as right or a privilege - is broadly established and agreed upon. Until then, debating the mechanisms, whether taxes or mandates, or nothing at all if one believes health care is a privilege, doesn't address the root problem.

Ah. I generally find it helps to understand the problem space. With a sufficient understanding, sometimes one can come up with elegant solutions that can cut past the BS.

That approach of mine is frequently misunderstood and perceived to be things like making excuses or justifying the current status quo, etc.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#229

Post by fencepost »

dawnerd wrote: post #157
jastanton wrote: post #6

I was nodding along until this: > They posted my entire medical record, including notes about my mental health, my bills, my insurance info, my driver’s license, birth date and home address,” she said. wow. That violates HIPAA law. The counter-sue is going to be huge. Also, I had a related issue where a doctor threatened to sue based on my yelp review. I cut the review back to verifiable facts instead of opinion and…

I've been threatened with a lawsuit over a review before. Even though I know I'd be in the right, just the processes of going to court and defending yourself is a huge pain. Not sure why a company would risk trying to sue someone over a review when it would undoubtedly backfire and be really bad pr for them. Definitely recommend checking out libel insurance. Shouldn't cost much to get and will help protect against co…

Revision: "This review removed under threat of a lawsuit."

And to be scrupulously neutral, 3 stars if that's an option.

Re: I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare

#230

Post by jessaustin »

tomohawk wrote: post #182

Yelp is pretty bad with the negative reviews, and is sometimes used by groups to target businesses for non business reasons. Here's some examples of veterinarians who have have run ins with Yelp (leading to suicide in one case), and some of the mitigations they try: http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/negative-reviews-yelp-and-y...

Lots of good advice there. When in doubt, apologize.
Post reply on HN