LöscheuleYou read a review and the name means nothing to you. No appointment, no invoice, no booking. This is one of the few cases where you actually have something to work with, because Google requires a review to be based on a real experience.
What Google writes about this in its rules
Google’s policies require a contribution to reflect a real experience with the place. A contribution that describes a made-up experience falls under Fake Engagement. This is not an interpretation, it is how Google’s own description puts it.
The order matters: Google does not check whether you know the author, but whether the contribution plausibly comes from a visit. Google never sees your customer list. What counts is what the contribution and the account show.
What it can be pinned on
The most telling are contradictions within the contribution itself. Someone who names a dish that was never on the menu, describes opening hours that never existed or mentions a facility that the premises do not have is describing a different place, or none at all.
Then there is the account. Clicking the name shows all of this user’s contributions. Four reviews on one day spread across three federal states are not a day trip, but a pattern.
Timing counts too. A review that appears the day after a dispute, from an account with no other activity, speaks for itself.
What you should not write
Do not write that the author is lying, and do not name them. A report that attacks the person instead of the contribution becomes a complaint, not a report.
Do not claim anything you do not know, either. The sentence that holds up is not: this person was never here. It is: we have no record matching this account, and the contribution mentions circumstances that never existed here.
What you should gather first
Note the specific passages in the text that cannot be right, and next to each one, why. This side-by-side comparison is the report, everything else is extra.
Check your records calmly before reporting. If a matching record turns up after all, this is a dissatisfied customer, not a made-up review. Then a reply is the better tool, and a report would have used up the one attempt.
Key points
Of all the cases, this one has the best prospects, because it can be backed up by the contribution itself. But it requires you to really check first.
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These texts explain Google’s policies, not the legal situation. Löscheule is not a legal services provider within the meaning of § 2 RDG (German Legal Services Act). If your case is a legal dispute, you need a lawyer.