{"id":9076,"date":"2020-07-29T11:21:23","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T18:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/?p=9076"},"modified":"2020-07-29T15:45:05","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T22:45:05","slug":"smiledirectclub-squelching-negative-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/smiledirectclub-squelching-negative-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"SmileDirectClub squelching negative reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was suspecting this, and then I ran into this story from <em>The New York Times<\/em> published in late January, about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/01\/21\/technology\/smiledirectclub-smile-nda.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">SmileDirectClub<\/a> and how they are squelching negative reviews.<\/p>\n<p>What I had noticed was that when I looked for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/smile-direct-club-bad-idea\/\">online reviews about SmileDirectClub<\/a>, most of the sites seemed to be tied commercially to the SmileDirectClub company. But I did find a review site, highya.com, that appeared to have some unfiltered independent reviews, and they were overwhelmingly negative. That was in January. When I went back and looked last month, the reviews were overwhelmingly highly positive. Since they order their reviews by date, I drilled down into the reviews, and found that this change in tone happened January 10, the day after I published my post!<br \/>\n(Post continued below.)<\/p>\n<div class=\"responsive-post-content\">\n<div class=\"post-left-column\">\n<script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n(function(d, s, id) {\n  var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\n  if (d.getElementById(id)) return;\n  js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;\n  js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\";\n  fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\n}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">We thank our advertisers who help fund this site.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- Square for mns blog - 2020 --><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\n     style=\"display:block\"\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-4419877247826466\"\n     data-ad-slot=\"6484616093\"\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-right-column\">\n<p>The article in <em>The New York Times<\/em> confirms my suspicions that SmileDirectClub has been very aggressive in managing reviews and attempting to squelch any negative ones. When someone complains about their results, the company will offer them a pro-rated refund in exchange for a contract in which they agree to first, take down any negative reviews or comments they may have posted online, and further, &#8220;Releasor further covenants and agrees that he\/she will not make, publish, or communicate any statements or opinions that would disparage, create a negative impression of, or in any way be harmful to the business or business reputation of SDC or its affiliates or their respective employees, officers, directors, products, or services.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly, I don&#8217;t have any proof, but I know enough about what is going on in internet marketing and knowing the character of this company, I have reason to doubt that all the positive reviews I&#8217;m seeing on highya.com are genuine. I don&#8217;t think this site has a robust filtering mechanism for detecting fake reviews.<\/p>\n<p><em>The New York Times<\/em> article reports that SmileDirectClub has had over 1670 Better Business Bureau complaints since its founding in 2014. By comparison, Invisalign has had only five complaints in its over 20-year history.<\/p>\n<p>Do you have a comment or anything else to add? We&#8217;d love to hear from you. Enter your comment below. Or click here to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/askdr.htm\">ask Dr. Hall a question.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: currentColor; width: 450px; height: 80px; overflow: hidden;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mynewsmile.com&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=80\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was suspecting this, and then I ran into this story from The New York Times published in late January, about SmileDirectClub and how they are squelching negative reviews. What I had noticed was that when I looked for online reviews about SmileDirectClub, most of the sites seemed to be tied commercially to the SmileDirectClub [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1284,1282,1283,1212,1242],"class_list":["post-9076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-invisible-braces","tag-fake-reviews","tag-highya-com","tag-new-york-times","tag-online-reviews","tag-smile-direct-club","entry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>SmileDirectClub squelching negative reviews - Cosmetic Dentistry Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When a patient complains, SmileDirectClub has been squelching negative reviews with non-disclosure agreements.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/smiledirectclub-squelching-negative-reviews\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SmileDirectClub squelching negative reviews - Cosmetic Dentistry Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When a patient complains, SmileDirectClub has been squelching negative reviews with non-disclosure agreements.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/smiledirectclub-squelching-negative-reviews\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cosmetic Dentistry Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-07-29T18:21:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-07-29T22:45:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David A. 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Hall","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"David A. Hall","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/smiledirectclub-squelching-negative-reviews\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/smiledirectclub-squelching-negative-reviews\/"},"author":{"name":"David A. 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He is now president of Infinity Dental Web, a company in Mesa, Arizona that does advanced internet marketing for dentists.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.infinitydentalweb.com"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9076"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9119,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9076\/revisions\/9119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynewsmile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}