Dentist Who 'Invoiced' Patient For Negative Reviews, Getting Slammed On Yelp

from the these-things-have-a-way-of-coming-back dept

Fri, Dec 2nd 2011 6:21am — Mike Masnick

You may recall that, yesterday, we wrote about the class action lawsuit filed against dentist Stacy Makhnevich. Makhnevich used ethically and legally dubious forms from the organization Medical Justice, to demand the future copyrights on any reviews a patient might write about her. Then, she used the DMCA process to try to take down negative reviews on Yelp and DoctorBase. When that didn't work, she threatened the patient, Robert Lee, with a lawsuit, and started sending him invoices for infringement, at $100/day. None of this addressed Lee's original complaint -- that Makhnevich failed to submit the documents he needed to get reimbursed from his insurance company for an expensive procedure.

Of course, as with any typical Streisand Effect situation, all this ended up doing is leading to a hell of a lot more attention to the situation and the negative comments. But, these days, things can go even further than just driving more attention to content someone wanted disappeared. It can lead to even further backlash -- especially on sites involving reviews -- as we've seen with authors who get dinged for questionable actions. If you go take a look at Yelp's page for Stacy Makhnevich the one star reviews are flowing in... many of them calling her out for what she did. Oh, and Robert Lee's review, which kicked this whole mess off... is Yelp's "featured" review at the top of the page. Her current total review rating is at a star and a half. It used to be much, much better.

Some of the reviews are entertaining. I liked this one, which notes "I heard you have to bring your lawyer with you to the dentist's office."

For future reference, if you're that concerned with your online reviews, perhaps just do the best you can and respond to customer complaints promptly. Trying to whitewash complaints seems likely to backfire in big, bad way.

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Filed Under: class action, copyright, dentists, dmca, doctors, reviews, stacy makhnevich
Companies: medical justice

51 Comments

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Andrew (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 6:35am

Its actually dropping quite quickly...its down to like a star now.

I don't know if people get the whole "Streisand Effect" and more people are learning the hard way. I don't have anything against this dentist but if this is how you treat your customers then good luck getting customers.
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- the vulture, 2 Dec 2011 @ 8:55am
  
  Response to: Andrew on Dec 2nd, 2011 @ 6:35am
  I am strting to refuse to fill out medical forms. At one dr I gave a fake ss num and told them it was faked for privacy reasons. I was paying cash so no greedy parasite of an insurance company was involved. Hippa is a joke as far as protecting your privacy.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 9:01am
    
    Re: Response to: Andrew on Dec 2nd, 2011 @ 6:35am
    Has there ever been a regulation more typo'd than HIPAA?
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 6:52am

I really would like to hear what this is all about from Stacey or someone in her office. Is it a case of several independent forces within her business that lead to all of these things (the sloppy paper work on the insurance, the invoices afterward, DMCA takedown attempts)? It's like they have it in for this guy which just doesn't make any sense.
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- SomeGuy, 2 Dec 2011 @ 6:58am
  
  Re:
  My prediction is that she just didn't do the paperwork, and either didn't care or wasn't able to fix it afterward. Then, pretty much completely separate from that, she participates in this scheme to "protect" her reputation online by making sure she has "legal" weapons to use against people who give her bad reviews. She got a bad review for a legitimate reason and
  
  here's the real point of the issue
  
  instead of going to the disgruntle patient and trying to resolve the situation, she started swinging legal muscle, working to remove the legitimate review and trying to intimidate the disgruntled patient. This is just bad behavior, and it doesn't matter what series of steps lead to that, this was not the correct response for her to take.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - That Anonymous Coward (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:59am
    
    Re: Re:
    She also violated HIPAA by handing out info on him trying to get the things taken down.
    She is going to have no idea what hit her.
    
    Hopefully she is a decent singer, because I think she is most likely done as a doctor.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 6:40pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      +2
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- Trails (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:47am
  
  Re:
  Some have claimed on Yelp to be dental professionals and that the fee charged for the service was exorbitant in the extreme. I have no knowledge of such matters hence cannot comment on those allegations, but it does cast a suspicious pall over why the paperwork never got done.
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LumpyDog (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:03am

Release the Krake - er - Internet!
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LumpyDog (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:03am

Release the Krake - er - Internet!
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- gorehound (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:43am
  
  Re:
  +1
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fogbugzd (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:11am

I went to her Yelp page right after this story came out. At the time it looked like there were only three reviews on her. It looked like two of them were fake reviews written by someone on her staff as advertising fluff.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:16am

Well at least she was getting some 5 star reviews for her physical attributes. Perhaps she can move to a modeling job as a result.
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- :Lobo Santo (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:18am
  
  Re: Or...
  Or stripper, never discount stripping! Those gals make some good money.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 3 Dec 2011 @ 3:57pm
    
    Re: Re: Or...
    You are not making justice to your screen name.
    
    Lobo Santo = Saint Wolf
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    - Trails (profile), 4 Dec 2011 @ 3:46pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Or...
      I disagree, St. Wolf is a great stripper name.
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- Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 8:20am
  
  Re:
  That's kind of sad. The day my expectations get so low (for either dentistry or physical appearance) please kill me. She's just not that pretty. She may make a good stripper, but she'd probably try to sing during her performance which would kill the whole mood.
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Dr Evil, 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:25am

drill baby drill
I for one, welcome my discount stripping, luxury dentist overlords.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:26am

This is what happens, Larry, when you F*ck a Stranger is the A**!
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:26am

This is what happens, Larry, when you F*ck a Stranger in the A**!
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- lucidrenegade (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 9:10am
  
  Re:
  Looks like OotB went off his meds again AND forgot to log in!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:26am

She can stick her hands in my mouth, if that's what's she's into.
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lucidrenegade (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:35am

It gets better. From her practice's website:

"Dr. Makhnevich is the Classical Singer Dentist of New York, a professional who provides high quality dentistry for musicians as well as the general public. A professional opera singer (you can listen to the famous �La Boheme� aria by clicking on this link) as well as a renowned stomatologist, she combines her extensive training in dentistry with her musical experience to cater to the very delicate needs of musicians, especially wind instruments musicians and classical singers."

ROFLMAO
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- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 7:40am
  
  Re:
  To expand on my list of protips...
  Never use a Dentist who pimps her upcoming CD sales on her business website.
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Steerpike (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 8:11am

Go to the Yelp page, click on "Rating Details" and then look at the Ratings Over Time graph. It just looks hilarious.
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Keroberos (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 8:22am

This one seems a little strange on a level that no one seems to have noticed. Insurance companies have contracted service rates that are lower than the normal service rates charged to people that have no insurance, if he was charged the full rate his insurance company would only cover up to the contracted rate leaving him paying the rest out of pocket. If I were in that situation it would raise quite a few red flags, unless it was an out of network provider, where you would have to file the insurance claim yourself, which does not appear to be the case here.
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- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 8:38am
  
  Re:
  She made sure she was paid by him.
  Then she managed to not submit the paperwork to the right insurance company so he could be reimbursed.
  Then when he asked for records to do it himself, she referred him to a company that wanted nearly $300 for the records, which seems to be a violation of the NY law about records requests.
  
  I am guessing this his how she operates, and leaves the patient to deal with being out all of the cash and trying to get anything back for what should have been covered in the first place.
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  - Keroberos (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 9:06am
    
    Re: Re:
    I know, I have never heard of a 3rd party bookkeeping/billing company charging a percentage of the bill for a copy of the records. That just takes the term "scam" to a whole new level.
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    - That Anonymous Coward (profile), 3 Dec 2011 @ 12:17am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      She was using a form provided by a service to help her "protect" herself and never bothered to google the company name to see that they are a laughing stock.
      
      She doesn't strike me as someone who thinks things through and just likes to get paid.
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  - boblee52 (profile), 5 Dec 2011 @ 1:46pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Yup she broke about 10 laws according to what my lawyers listed in the court filing: http://www.citizen.org/documents/Lee-v-Makhnevich-complaint.pdf
    
    Excerpts from the NYSDA "Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct" Page 5:
    
    "1-B. Patient Records. Patients are entitled to copies of their records.
    On receipt of a patient�s written request, a
    dentist must provide her/him with copies of all pertinent
    records including radiographs, except as otherwise provided by state law.
    The confidentiality of patient records must be maintained."
    
    "4. A dentist shall not withhold copies of records from
    patients based on the patient owing any balance to the
    dentist or the patient not paying any copying charges. A
    dentist may charge a fee for copying patient records, but
    shall not charge more than the actual cost of copying, and
    shall never charge more than 75 cents per page for paper
    copies, in accordance with state law."
    
    http://www.nysdental.org/img/document_files/code_of_ethics2010.pdf
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    - boblee52 (profile), 5 Dec 2011 @ 1:55pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      forgot this one:
      
      "3. Copies of records shall be provided by dentists to patients
      within a reasonable time, not to exceed ten days from the
      date of a patient�s written request."
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- Robert Lee, 5 Dec 2011 @ 1:31pm
  
  Re:
  According to the insurance company she is a participating provider at a level which requires her to submit the claim on my behalf and accept what they give her as full payment.
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anonymous, 2 Dec 2011 @ 8:23am

'Trying to whitewash complaints seems likely to backfire in big, bad way.'

and suing customers will backfire in an even worse way. serves you right! you deserve to lose all customers with the attitude you have and the respect you dont have for your patients
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- Trails (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 9:17am
  
  Re:
  She didn't sue though. Public Citizen launched a class action, not her.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 10:27am
    
    Re: Re:
    That's correct. She didn't sue, she just awarded herself a judgment of $100 for every day the negative review stayed up and started printing invoices.
    
    Oddly enough, suing would have been a more honorable route.
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    - Trails (profile), 4 Dec 2011 @ 3:47pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      I'm not suggesting anything she did was honourable.
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lucidrenegade (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 9:15am

"This chick may be totally unethical but I give her 5 stars for her great set of tits."
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 10:16am

Honesty is the best policy.
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sumquy (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 10:33am

i actually feel really bad for this woman. undoubtedly she took some really questionable actions, but she is a dentist not a lawyer. when medical justice pitched her with this scam, it probably sounded like a really good idea. protect your reputation from those few nutjobs out there who are never satisfied no matter what you do. in hindsight it is easy to see how dumb this was, but you know the sales pitch for this service was intense. witness all the doctors who signed up with it. when you compound that, with the fact that her lawyer is an incompetent idiot who gave her the worst advice possible and this is what you get. But i ask you, honestly, is mob justice destroying her professional career really deserved?

posted on yelp.
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- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 3 Dec 2011 @ 12:21am
  
  Re:
  The fact the fee might have been hugely out of line, that she refused to take the bill to the insurance carrier, made him pay out of pocket, then failed to bill the right insurance carrier or provide the information for him to be reimbursed, then sent him to her representative who demanded even more money because she was unable to actually do the paperwork. This representative might be operating in violation of the law of the State of NY, the fact she packed up a bunch of HIPAA "protected" data with her demands for removal, and then sent him bills for the post being there...
  Yeah I think her Yelp rep being trashed is hardly enough.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 11:07am

Why doesn't she just pay Yelp to take down the reviews?
For a few hundred bucks a month Yelp will hide all the negative reviews. It seems she is leaving them up so she can invoice the $100 a day.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Dec 2011 @ 11:46am

Show the Graph
that one star pic is lame. Click ratings details. The graphs are where the lulz are at
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Bergman (profile), 2 Dec 2011 @ 11:51am

There are two ways to have a pristine reputation.

1) Always do the right thing, take proper care of your customers, provide a solid, reliable quality service and be friendly and professional.

2) Pitch a fit when people say anything even slightly bad about you, throw the full weight of the law at them in an attempt to bury both them and their freedom of expression, seek gag orders in court and spend enormous sums on lawsuits seeking judgments the target will never be able to pay you.

#1 is a lot cheaper and easier, but for some reason, most large companies go for #2 these days. More and more small businesses seem to be following the big companies lead. I get the distinct impression there was a run of very bad business model consultants somewhere, that somehow became viewed as the best in the business. So when the consultant(s) gave bad advice, every company followed it...and even though bad service has provable bad results, the companies are now in an Emperor's New Clothes situation, having spent fortunes for the bad advice.
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- Transbot9, 2 Dec 2011 @ 12:32pm
  
  Re:
  Never understood that about businesses - maybe it's ego that makes many businesses take the hard route. Or they consider it a "conflict of intrest."
  
  Happy customers make a company a LOT more money, especially in the long term, than unhappy ones.
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- Anonymous Coward, 3 Dec 2011 @ 4:10pm
  
  Re:
  Define pristine?
  
  Pristine as in 100% good, because that is impossible, you can get pass the 60% mark and call it pristine, the higher it goes the more difficult it becomes.
  
  There will always be something outside of the control of oneself that will make it hard to achieve a 100% point over the fourth dimension(aka time).
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Glenn T, 2 Dec 2011 @ 10:44pm

Yelp solution
ANNOUNCEMENT:�

We have recently implemented a system to outsmart yelp from hiding our filtered reviews.�

The technique below has worked VERY WELL for us and some of the other budinesses who have already done what we have.�

*** this works best for retailers, not restaurants***

Step 1- first of all, if you�re currently advertising with yelp, stop doing so and shift that money to optimize your own web site for keywords that people will search for instead.�

Step 2- Have a graphic designer make a yelp badge that is placed on your web site. It should say �we have �� filtered and unfiltered reviews on yelp�.�

Step 3- When a visitor clicks on the yelp badge, it will go to another page ON YOUR OWN WEB SITE (instead of going to yelp�s. (why help them get traffic and rank higher on google anyways)?�

Step 4- On this page have your graphic designer get a screen capture (picture) of all your filtered and unfiltered reviews and have them pasted together onto one page.

Now, all your reviews (filtered or not) will be visible to all your web site visitors.�

5- put a note on the top that says, �for your convenience we have placed all our filtered and unfiltered reviews on one page to see. If you�d like to go to our live yelp page, click here ��

Make the whole page clickable to your live yelp page �so no-one will think you�re trying hide something or to be dishonest�

Advantages of doing this:�

1- Your visitors will stay on your web site instead of being directed to yelp�s

2- Your visitors can�t click on your competitors�

3- No more being a slave to yelp�s algorithm/filtering�

4- Yelp would not benefit from getting traffic from you and higher rankings on google�

5- This whole process cost us less than $150 to implement�

This technique WILL NOT work for your business if your web site is not SEO optimized.�

Just be sure to shift that $300 per month on yelp advertising and put it into KEYWORDS that people will search for.�

Please pass this along
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- Margaret, 3 Dec 2011 @ 7:56am
  
  Re: Yelp solution
  Thank you for this post....I have seen it many times on many comments. I have taken your advice. I have 20 4-5 star reviews that have been filtered.... then let the few negative ones unfiltered (and a bogus negative one. Keep up the good work
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2011 @ 12:06am

"Weird Al"'s "Cavity Search" comes to mind for some reason. Numb me, drill me, floss me, bill me...
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boblee52 (profile), 5 Dec 2011 @ 1:53pm

And one major thing that was left out of the press release, the whole reason I had to go to a lawyer was that she had her lawyers threaten to sue me for over $120,000 plus expenses, on top of the $100/day invoices they were sending me.

If they had just submitted it to the insurance company, or sent me the records to do it myself, and I got reimbursed $200 or whatever I would have just said "Boy did I get screwed." and that would have been the end of it. I still can't comprehend what the hell they were thinking.
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dentists in burbank, 29 Jan 2012 @ 10:31am

Haha, funny yelp review!
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MD, 10 Oct 2014 @ 6:14am

This situation goes two ways... the patients are entitled to freedom of speech, and the doctors the right to refuse service. If you are concerned of poor reviews, a valuable opinion that is shared based on an individuals experience, and often taken into consideration by others seeking services, then now is a good time for you to have a self review and make honest attempts to address the concerns of your patients. Unfortunately, as intelligent as most of these doctors have to be to become doctors, they are too ignorant to see that prior to their unreasonable, unethical, and childish reactions, have exceeded their town to now be rated by non-patients. GROW UP DOC, either try to do better or go into another field. You can't please everybody, but if a majority of your reviews are complaints, then maybe there is substance to it.
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