2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Bobby Lewis)
A McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania is facing a torrent of negative online reviews after an employee informed police of a person of interest in a high-profile killing. On December 9, authorities responded to the tip and located 26 year-old Luigi Mangione in the dining room of the Pennsylvania McDonald's, charging him with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson five days earlier in New York City. UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurance provider in the United States, and the unusually open manner of its CEO's homicide — shot several times from behind in the early morning, on camera, in front of a Manhattan hotel — drew instant online attention.
As the news media reported on the suspect's apprehension, it was revealed that police were drawn to the McDonald's in the first place by a tip from an employee, who was acting on a customer's concern that they thought they saw the suspect in the dining room. The employee who made the call also noticed that Mangione's eyes and eyebrows resembled those in photos handed out by police. However, by the time of Mangione's arrest, online sympathy had already grown for the unknown suspect's assumed motive for the murder: anger at the health insurance industry — and now the Altoona, PA McDonald's has been hit by a deluge of non-food related bad reviews.
Why people are review-bombing the Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonald's CEO Thompson's death exposed deep anger in American society at health insurance providers, including UnitedHealthcare specifically. Denied claims, which UnitedHealthcare hands out more of than any other U.S.
health insurance company, can mean that patients delay or forgo necessary medical treatment because it is too expensive. Apparently in an attempt to express their frustrations with health insurance companies — and the suspect's capture — people began review-bombing the McDonald's with, among other things, allegations of rat infestations, believed to reference the employee's phone call to police. While McDonald's is no stranger to controversies , they usually involve products the company made , not phone calls to authorities.
It remains to be seen if the reviews and the apparent controversy will cost McDonald's millions of dollars , but Google has already removed the reviews from its platform. The company review policy notes that user reviews must be based on personal experience at an establishment, and a spokesperson for Google told USA Today it will continue to monitor and remove policy-violating reviews from the platform..
