Private doctor's surgery agrees to not post fake reviews on Trustpilot

A private doctor's surgery headquarted in Nottingham has agreed in a legal order not to post fake reviews - or allow fake reviews to be posted - on Trustpilot, after an out-of-court settlement with the reviews company. National company Regent Street Clinic, which is run from Regent Street in Nottingham city centre, agreed to an undertaking in order to settle a claim first brought by Trustpilot in January.

Trustpilot claimed the company had been engaging in dishonest behaviour. A statement on the clinic's Trustpilot page says: "We’re suing this business following their repeated attempts to mislead consumers by using fake reviews.

"The fake reviews we detected have been removed from the Trustpilot platform. We take the integrity of our platform seriously, and the use of fake reviews to mislead consumers is not acceptable on Trustpilot."

When Trustpilot first filed a claim with the County Court, the clinic responded with a defence, stating that the parent company cited in the claim was not the company responsible for posting the reviews or for the clinic's page on Trustpilot. But the company that does own the clinic ultimately settled the claim with Trustpilot and agreed to not post fake reviews.

Regent Street Clinic maintains a good rating on Trustpilot, with 92% of 965 reviews being five stars out of five. The latest, by an anonymous user on October 22, says: "Lovely experience at Regent Street Clinic today, got seen immediately and got some brilliant travel tips from the doctor who had just come back from Asia himself. Very friendly clinic, knew exactly what I needed and offered sensible and balanced advice. Have recommended to family and friends."

In total, however, 5% of reviews are just one-star out of five. One, the latest, described a "deeply disappointing" experience at the clinic.

A spokesperson for Trustpilot said: "We take the integrity of our platform extremely seriously. When businesses sign up to use Trustpilot they agree to adhere to a strict set of guidelines, and if we find there has been any attempt to mislead consumers through reviews, our specialist teams enforce our Action We Take policy.

"We began legal action against Regent Street Clinic in January this year over fake reviews appearing on their Trustpilot profile. We won’t hesitate to take robust action against businesses who threaten the integrity of our platform. Over the past two years we’ve successfully brought 11 legal cases against businesses who continually abuse our rules in order to try to manipulate others."

Regent Street Clinic was contacted for comment but had not responded by the time of publication.