Business ProfileforZocdoc

ZocDoc is a company aimed at connecting patients with providers. Their business profits are based on charging the provider for initial appointments booked by interested patients. However, I believe the company knowingly, or at the very least, does not care about, the amount of fake appointments being scheduled, and based on other complaints, it appears I am not the only provider with this issue. Last month I had 7 bookings charging me $490, only one of those seven were an actual person. The overwhelming majority seem to be fake clients or bots that do not respond to initial emails from ZocDoc requesting their demographic and insurance information, but are allowed to book with providers. These fake clients or bots do not respond to any attempts at contact from the provider and no show appointments resulting in charges to providers who have no way of cancelling on our end to unresponsive fake clients or bots ahead of the appointment. This business model seems predatory and is either insidiously creating fake accounts for its own profits, or willfully benefiting from the existence of these fake clients/bots by not doing anything to prevent financial burden on providers such as allowing providers to cancel ahead of the appointment to "clients" who are unresponsive to all attempts at communication.