There are some professions that get a free pass from the whole “Word of Mouth” phenomenon.
For example, urologists. It’s pretty unlikely that I’m going to go asking a wide circle of friends about a urologist they like. Most people are unlikely to spontaneously start praising or denigrating their own urologist*.
*Yes, I realize I’m doing that, but one should never mistake one’s own behavior for the default behavior of a rational human. Besides, I need something to blog about.
It’s not even likely that if you do ask someone, they’ll have an opinion about one. Unlike, say, a dentist, many people might never have visited one. And frankly, I bet you don’t want to know much about urologists unless you happened to need to choose one at that exact moment.
All this, then, is to say that if you need a Vancouver urologist (that word now sounds really funny to me), don’t go to Dr. Howard Fenster at the VGH - Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre. I don’t like his bedside manner, nor his treatment methods.
(Of course, the other important fact about professions that don’t get much word of mouth… is that when someone decides to blog about one person in particular, that opinion makes a difference.)
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