I have a lot of friends with businesses and am sympathetic to their struggles. However, there are many businesses with owners, managers, or employees with bad attitudes that need to be brought to light.
I never post an overall negative review without first attempting to resolve things while I am there, and if nobody there is in a position of authority I will call or make a return visit. I don't silently nurse a grudge and then anonymously rant about it.
If somebody mistreats me, refuses to make things right, and is hostile or rude about it then they have harmed their own business. I have a right to speak about my experience, in my opinion it is an obligation.
I am a private person, and don't like for my ramblings to be linked to my identity forever, possibly to be used against me in business, healthcare, or personally. I don't even put my real name on slashdot, although you don't either.
I couldn't find black-and-white metrics such as number of times a specific procedure was performed.
There are lots of things that affect outcomes. I was shopping for foot surgery, and my research showed that smoking had such a large effect on the outcome I quit smoking for my surgery. Sadly I couldn't find useful data on the various surgeons, hospitals, surgery centers, etc. I found some spotty vague data that was intentionally meaningless, such as the outpatient-only surgical center bragging about its low mortality rate. Even litigation data is secretive and inconsistent.
It is sad that we have so much more data available for deciding what OS to use, what dishwasher to buy, what car to drive, what restaurant to eat at than where to have a life changing surgical procedure performed.
I ended up deciding on a surgical center largely because they have much lower rates of hospital-acquired infection. That was one big risk that I was able to determine for all my options. While dealing with terrible complications I heard rumors that my doctor lost his license in another state, but have no way to find out if that is true. The records are secret. I do know that he used to practice in another state and doesn't anymore, and that his old medical center won't talk about him.
Overhead and profit account for over 30% of US healthcare spending, so 5% is a relatively insignificant part of the total.
It bothers me when otherwise rational people rant about the skyrocketing costs of medical malpractice insurance and ignore the 6X as big specter of wasteful, frustrating bureaucratic overhead imposed by the insurance companies.
Most doctors don't spend a significant amount on malpractice insurance. Nationwide, malpractice insurance accounts for 2% of spending, and defensive medicine accounts for another 5%.
Kaiser doctors are employed by Kaiser. My gf had Kaiser for a while and talked to them about their model. She wasn't happy because it is difficult to change your primary doctor, and the ones she found were all overworked and complained about being unable to manage their workload.
I tend to write good reviews a lot more than bad reviews. I do enough research before going to a restaurant, event, or service provider that I rarely have a bad time. I always try to resolve things directly before writing a bad review. I will never silently endure a bad experience and anonymously vent about it, that is the worst way to improve things.
I used to post (and read) reviews on some doctor ranking website. They removed my negative reviews and left the positive ones up. I don't even remember the name of the website, and obviously it is not thriving.
I'm aware of Yelp's conflict of interest, and some of the controversy over reviews going missing, but they have never removed any of my negative reviews. If they ever did, they would lose my business. There are plenty of other review websites.
Yelp needs to remember that their users are their product. If they make their product feel unheard, they will stop speaking and go elsewhere.
I used to try this trick, but it seems that doctors have caught on to it. I made an 8:30 appointment, the first slot of the workday. I got there at 8:15 and watched 5 other 8:30s show up. I was seen towards the end of the group, probably because I was a newer patient. During my hour wait I saw a stream of patients show up, roughly at the same rate as they were being seen. The office had an hour backlog built in to their schedule, before anyone was seen.
That is because placebos are effective. They are so effective scientific studies have to be controlled to eliminate the placebo effect from affecting the outcome. Many drugs are not much more effective than placebo.
I personally believe that this explains the popularity of quack medicine. Crystals, magnets, prayer, etc. actually help if you believe that they will.
There is no way I am putting my medical care on the interwebs under my real name.
Besides, the doctors made their bed. They fought having meaningful rankings made public. They fought having outcomes measured. They don't deserve sympathy for people trying to review them despite their constant opposition.
I'd be more sympathetic if it wasn't a pattern. I spoke to other patients in the waiting area, and some of them were regulars. They lamented the wait, and said that it was always bad. First appointment slot of the day was often late because the office would schedule 10 of them.
There are lots of doctors that don't habitually overbook their schedule. Smart ones actually leave gaps for urgent matters, or to recover their schedule after an unexpectedly long appointment.
I don't care if they have loans or whatnot. This particular doctor was a dermatologist who makes more than 6X median wages for the area. I was seen by a PA and met the doctor for mere seconds. That is blatant greed and bad care.
Many contracts are not legally binding. Many legal contracts contain unenforceable clauses. Lots of them are done intentionally, not for legal reasons but to bully the signer.
If I get bad enough service anywhere, I will post a review somewhere. Mostly products and restaurants, but I've done it for a doctor that gave me an appointment 3 months out and then was hours late.
I almost never do this with my real name. It can be my pseudonymous yelp, google, etc. account. No doctor would be able to know that some nick is my real name. Unless they want to get a subpoena for every negative review (actually I can see some asshole doctors doing this) there is no way to enforce this policy.
There are plenty of satellites, but sometimes terrain can block reception. Trees are surprisingly effective at blocking GPS reception, and hills are completely effective.
When I go backpacking my GPS spends a lot of time complaining about satellites, but if I find a clearing on relatively high ground it will figure things out.
That reminds me of a friend who ripped all his CDs to mp3. Then he got the apple bug and converted everything to mp4 or whatever. Then someone told him ogg was better so he converted again. Then he didn't like the sound quality so he converted them back to mp3, wondering why it sounded even worse.
At my workplace, all our PLCs are on a process control network. It is isolated from the business network and internet completely. We assume that the PLCs are not secure and they are business critical. We can't take any chance a malware outbreak or hacker causes actual physical things to happen.
It makes doing work more difficult, and there are still some attack vectors.
What part of the country? I haven't found anywhere in the US that isn't super duper religious. The bay area is the least religious area I've been to, but it is very religious compared to much of the rest of the western world.
I like the idea. How does your store handle produce and bulk items? I typically buy a lot of items that are priced by weight. I suppose there could be networked scales in the produce section.
That is why we're starting to see malware on these devices. I feel compelled to root for the underdogs. We will have a more resilient computing infrastructure if it is heterogeneous. I'd like to see no OS have more than 10% market share.
Who cares. Users will always do stupid things. You can always blame users. They should have patched, they shouldn't have downloaded an executable, they shouldn't have entered their credentials to install some software or have smileys in their emails, etc.
I would expect as Apple becomes more popular it will become more of a target for malware. This is not very surprising. I just hope Linux never becomes popular!
I had the exact same experience. I found an area with 3 electronic stores in easy walking distance so I checked all 3. I was so angry about the unreasonable markup I bought one of the $60 cables and returned it when I got the mail order one. When they asked me why I was returning it I showed them the invoice for $4 including shipping. My cheap cable seemed to be higher quality than the $60 one.
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I have a lot of friends with businesses and am sympathetic to their struggles. However, there are many businesses with owners, managers, or employees with bad attitudes that need to be brought to light.
I never post an overall negative review without first attempting to resolve things while I am there, and if nobody there is in a position of authority I will call or make a return visit. I don't silently nurse a grudge and then anonymously rant about it.
If somebody mistreats me, refuses to make things right, and is hostile or rude about it then they have harmed their own business. I have a right to speak about my experience, in my opinion it is an obligation.
I am a private person, and don't like for my ramblings to be linked to my identity forever, possibly to be used against me in business, healthcare, or personally. I don't even put my real name on slashdot, although you don't either.
I couldn't find black-and-white metrics such as number of times a specific procedure was performed.
There are lots of things that affect outcomes. I was shopping for foot surgery, and my research showed that smoking had such a large effect on the outcome I quit smoking for my surgery. Sadly I couldn't find useful data on the various surgeons, hospitals, surgery centers, etc. I found some spotty vague data that was intentionally meaningless, such as the outpatient-only surgical center bragging about its low mortality rate. Even litigation data is secretive and inconsistent.
It is sad that we have so much more data available for deciding what OS to use, what dishwasher to buy, what car to drive, what restaurant to eat at than where to have a life changing surgical procedure performed.
I ended up deciding on a surgical center largely because they have much lower rates of hospital-acquired infection. That was one big risk that I was able to determine for all my options. While dealing with terrible complications I heard rumors that my doctor lost his license in another state, but have no way to find out if that is true. The records are secret. I do know that he used to practice in another state and doesn't anymore, and that his old medical center won't talk about him.
Overhead and profit account for over 30% of US healthcare spending, so 5% is a relatively insignificant part of the total.
It bothers me when otherwise rational people rant about the skyrocketing costs of medical malpractice insurance and ignore the 6X as big specter of wasteful, frustrating bureaucratic overhead imposed by the insurance companies.
Most doctors don't spend a significant amount on malpractice insurance. Nationwide, malpractice insurance accounts for 2% of spending, and defensive medicine accounts for another 5%.
Kaiser doctors are employed by Kaiser. My gf had Kaiser for a while and talked to them about their model. She wasn't happy because it is difficult to change your primary doctor, and the ones she found were all overworked and complained about being unable to manage their workload.
I tend to write good reviews a lot more than bad reviews. I do enough research before going to a restaurant, event, or service provider that I rarely have a bad time. I always try to resolve things directly before writing a bad review. I will never silently endure a bad experience and anonymously vent about it, that is the worst way to improve things.
You would see this with the Kaiser model.
I used to post (and read) reviews on some doctor ranking website. They removed my negative reviews and left the positive ones up. I don't even remember the name of the website, and obviously it is not thriving.
I'm aware of Yelp's conflict of interest, and some of the controversy over reviews going missing, but they have never removed any of my negative reviews. If they ever did, they would lose my business. There are plenty of other review websites.
Yelp needs to remember that their users are their product. If they make their product feel unheard, they will stop speaking and go elsewhere.
I used to try this trick, but it seems that doctors have caught on to it. I made an 8:30 appointment, the first slot of the workday. I got there at 8:15 and watched 5 other 8:30s show up. I was seen towards the end of the group, probably because I was a newer patient. During my hour wait I saw a stream of patients show up, roughly at the same rate as they were being seen. The office had an hour backlog built in to their schedule, before anyone was seen.
That is because placebos are effective. They are so effective scientific studies have to be controlled to eliminate the placebo effect from affecting the outcome. Many drugs are not much more effective than placebo.
I personally believe that this explains the popularity of quack medicine. Crystals, magnets, prayer, etc. actually help if you believe that they will.
There is no way I am putting my medical care on the interwebs under my real name.
Besides, the doctors made their bed. They fought having meaningful rankings made public. They fought having outcomes measured. They don't deserve sympathy for people trying to review them despite their constant opposition.
I'd be more sympathetic if it wasn't a pattern. I spoke to other patients in the waiting area, and some of them were regulars. They lamented the wait, and said that it was always bad. First appointment slot of the day was often late because the office would schedule 10 of them.
There are lots of doctors that don't habitually overbook their schedule. Smart ones actually leave gaps for urgent matters, or to recover their schedule after an unexpectedly long appointment.
I don't care if they have loans or whatnot. This particular doctor was a dermatologist who makes more than 6X median wages for the area. I was seen by a PA and met the doctor for mere seconds. That is blatant greed and bad care.
Many contracts are not legally binding. Many legal contracts contain unenforceable clauses. Lots of them are done intentionally, not for legal reasons but to bully the signer.
If I get bad enough service anywhere, I will post a review somewhere. Mostly products and restaurants, but I've done it for a doctor that gave me an appointment 3 months out and then was hours late.
I almost never do this with my real name. It can be my pseudonymous yelp, google, etc. account. No doctor would be able to know that some nick is my real name. Unless they want to get a subpoena for every negative review (actually I can see some asshole doctors doing this) there is no way to enforce this policy.
There are plenty of satellites, but sometimes terrain can block reception. Trees are surprisingly effective at blocking GPS reception, and hills are completely effective.
When I go backpacking my GPS spends a lot of time complaining about satellites, but if I find a clearing on relatively high ground it will figure things out.
That reminds me of a friend who ripped all his CDs to mp3. Then he got the apple bug and converted everything to mp4 or whatever. Then someone told him ogg was better so he converted again. Then he didn't like the sound quality so he converted them back to mp3, wondering why it sounded even worse.
That is a good idea. I don't see why it has to be expensive, though.
At my workplace, all our PLCs are on a process control network. It is isolated from the business network and internet completely. We assume that the PLCs are not secure and they are business critical. We can't take any chance a malware outbreak or hacker causes actual physical things to happen.
It makes doing work more difficult, and there are still some attack vectors.
What part of the country? I haven't found anywhere in the US that isn't super duper religious. The bay area is the least religious area I've been to, but it is very religious compared to much of the rest of the western world.
I am starting to dislike progress. I need a drink.
I like the idea. How does your store handle produce and bulk items? I typically buy a lot of items that are priced by weight. I suppose there could be networked scales in the produce section.
That is why we're starting to see malware on these devices. I feel compelled to root for the underdogs. We will have a more resilient computing infrastructure if it is heterogeneous. I'd like to see no OS have more than 10% market share.
Who cares. Users will always do stupid things. You can always blame users. They should have patched, they shouldn't have downloaded an executable, they shouldn't have entered their credentials to install some software or have smileys in their emails, etc.
I would expect as Apple becomes more popular it will become more of a target for malware. This is not very surprising. I just hope Linux never becomes popular!
I had the exact same experience. I found an area with 3 electronic stores in easy walking distance so I checked all 3. I was so angry about the unreasonable markup I bought one of the $60 cables and returned it when I got the mail order one. When they asked me why I was returning it I showed them the invoice for $4 including shipping. My cheap cable seemed to be higher quality than the $60 one.