Is it Safe to Choose an Elgin Dentist from Yelp?

I’m wondering if it’s safe to choose an Elgin dentist from Yelp. I justmoved to town and need to get established with an office. I know it sound odd,but I’ve never had to “shop” for a dentist before. I went to the same officefrom the time I was a child up until I moved. Now, I’m looking over the reviewsand I can’t make heads or tails of them. I mean, I use the site a lot forrestaurants and stuff, but looking for medical-type referrals on there seemsweird. I’m curious to know, from a dental office perspective, if the reviewscan be trusted. One really strange thing I see a lot of is reviews that aren’trecommended. What’s up with those? Why do they even exist?

Also, if I can’t trust the reviews, how do I go about findingsomeone who will be good? I don’t really know anyone locally, so gettingrecommendations from friends and family is out.

Thank you,

Devon

Dear Devon,

Generally speaking, Yelp is a good platform. It’s one of thefew that aggressively combats fake reviews, so most of the time what you see writtenthere is representative of what you can expect from a business.

As a caveat to that, any time the site picks up on anythingodd about a user or the review, it tosses the review in the “not recommended”bin and those don’t count toward the company’s rating. No doubt, many of thoseare fake reviews. It could be that the company paid someone to leave the reviewor that a competitor paid to have a fake review left as an act of sabotage. Unfortunately,those things do happen. Some are also probably real. Yelp doesn’t tell anyonewhat it’s looking for in reviewers or reviews, but it could be that someonedoesn’t have enough friends, hasn’t left enough reviews, or left the reviewwhile inside the business. These things could all potentially be triggers forYelp’s system. The reality is we really don’t know.

One important thing to note is that most offices havesomewhere between 1,500-2,500 patients per dentist. With that kind of exposureto the public, any office is bound to have a couple of negative reviews. Expectthere to be a mix of good and bad and read both types to find out what’s goingon. If you get a good feel for a place and most of the recent reviews arepositive, it’s probably worth checking out. Sure, you want to find a newforever home, but if you’re really not feeling like you belong after a visit,you can switch. Take the time to make sure you’re totally comfortable with thedentist and his staff before you jump into any kind of treatment. If the practice is agood fit for you, you should be able to move forward without any lingeringdoubts.

This blog is sponsored by Elgin dentist, Dr. Steve Sirin.