Posts Tagged ‘France’

If you’re professional a doctor or a lawyer you’re probably wary of sites like RateMDs.com or LawyerRatingz.com, a bad review or comment there could make all the difference in your professional life. Reputation is all that matters to a doctor or lawyer their whole life, education and training all ride on this one factor through out their active years.

Good feedback from clients/patients on rating sites can double your value as a professional, you could be thinking of new offices and clinics with referrals from such sites. Much like hotel reviews on TripAdvisor can make or break your hotel’s reputation.  So what can you do if you have been maliciously slandered by someone out for a personal vendetta? Is there a way out?

When we read reviews online we tend to believe the person with a label similar to our own. For example: a review poster’s bio may be simply read – “50 year old man with arthritis” or “a mother of two toddlers” and the reader immediately connects with them. What follows in the review can make or break the reputation of the doctor being rated.

If all reputation management tricks fail to remove negative comments and reviews – law is the only way ahead. We could soon be having Reputation Management Law, wherein you could get the real identity of the poster revealed. You could actually find out if the malicious poster was actually your client or patient!!!

If you’re thinking ..”no way is this happening”, let me tell you that this has happened already – Lawiscool.com has reported exactly this …

The case of  Dr. Mohamed Foda of Leduc, Alberta, who forced RateMDs to provide information about a negative poster through the California Northern District Court in Foda et al v. RateMDs, Inc.  

Administrator of RateMDs, John Swapceinski, says that the site gets letters from lawyers once a month.  Not surprisingly, they do not comply with the requests.  The site does serve an important public function for consumers of healthcare.  But Swapceinski also said that Dr. Foda’s suit is the first time a lawyer has actually followed through and sued the site, and he indicated he would cooperate with a subpoena to release the information if one was provided.”

Here at Reputation Management For.com we welcome any such legislation and this could very well lead to a whole new branch in corporate reputation management. We are all for justice and this is reputation management at its most effective.

A grey area here could be the right to privacy and the big news today is that France is pondering on a Right To Forget Law to protect people from their own Tweets and Facebook posts!

These are very interesting times indeed for reputation management. Watch this space for updates on any legislation coming the reputation management way!