Why are independent reviews so useful?

It’s Friday night, and instead of hitting the usual dinner spot you and your partner decide to try somewhere new.

But rather than strolling up and down the streets of Marylebone, casually browsing menus, peering through windows, and trying desperately not to start an argument, you reach for your phone.

You call one of your friends, the who shares similar tastes and reckons themselves a bit of a food critic (we all have one). Or, like most of us, you take the quicker and more reliable route and open TripAdvisor or Yelp or Zagat and put your faith in the opinions of 1000’s of people you don’t know.

We like guaranteed experiences. And when we have the option to do something that 300 other people say will be great or take a chance and potentially waste an evening and even cause a breakdown in our marriage, you can guess which one we’ll take.

Having a below average meal is one thing, but risking your health is a whole different matter. But luckily for us, no matter if we’re looking for a salad bar for lunch or a clinic to conduct major dental work, there’s always people who’ve done it before and wrote about their experience.

There’s no shortage of reviews, but which should I believe?

As one of the world’s most popular elective surgeries, you could spend weeks reading testimonials and reviews of people who’ve had Laser Eye Surgery. But who wants to do that? And what’s more, why spend all the time and effort when you can gather a more reliable consensus in a fraction of the time?

The purpose of independent review sites like Trustpilot are to filter out the masses of illegitimate and outdated reviews that can so easily taint our judgement. Some even go further than that. For instance, the ‘Verified Order’ mark on Trustpilot reviews indicates which writers followed a direct link provided by the company and therefore if they are genuine customers.

But what about me and my prescription?

By rounding up the words of real and recent customers, independent review sites make it easy to discover patients with similar prescriptions to you. Whether you’re long or short sighted, have astigmatism, thin corneas, dry eyes, or a high profile prescription, there’s no doubt someone who was in a similar position and has published a review.

This point can’t be stressed enough. The people writing independently verified reviews are not endorsed by companies or are not pushing some hidden agenda — they were once, like you, thinking about having Laser Eye Surgery. Understanding this can help put you in their shoes and relate to comments like this one, left recently on London Vision Clinic’s Trustpilot page:

“The first time I opened my eyes after surgery I cried, I couldn’t believe I could see without glasses, having worn them for 40 years.”

Head on over to TrustPilot to check out our reviews, or if you’d like to book a consultation, visit this page or call us on 020 7224 1005.