By Megan Harwood-Baynes
Publication Date: 2026-03-31 06:00:00
Warren Buffet said it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. That’s something Bespoke Smile dental practice knows all too well after it was targeted by a slew of fraudulent one-star reviews.
The private practice has two clinics, in London and Marlow, and a small team of staff. Anything less than a five-star review from a customer triggers an internal investigation. So when in March it got seven one-star Google reviews in the space of an hour, alarm bells rang.
“All the reviews sounded really convincing,” said Lydia Sharples, the clinical lead and a cosmetic dentist at the practice. Each was lengthy and each said the same thing: the customer had been kept waiting, they were disappointed and while they didn’t normally write reviews, they wanted to share their experiences.
When staff checked the names of the reviewers, none of them matched patients they had seen. The profile photo of each reviewer was the same: red text on a…
