How To Remove Bad Reviews on Google Places (Google Maps)?

1) “Flag as inappropriate”
Below every review on Google+ Local pages, you can click the flag icon:

 

You can then “Report a policy violation” – i.e. whether it’s hateful, spam, off-topic, etc…

We did this first, but as there wasn’t an option for anything to do with slander in the list, I wasn’t convinced it would do the trick…

2) Respond to the review
In addition to the flag icon, if you’re the owner of the page, you should also have the option to “Respond” to each review:

Not a ‘removal’ technique per se, but we decided to do this just in case the review wasn’t removed straight away but seen by others in the meantime. We left a short message explaining that we considered the message to be slanderous and that we were taking steps to remove it.
 
3) Report the Google+ user profile
Given that “Charlotte” had a Google+ profile but it contained no info whatsoever (except for that review), my father decided to “Report / block” the user as well. This can be done by navigating to the person’s G+ profile and clicking on the “Report / block [name]” link found below their avatar:

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4) Report legal action
This was the winner though. After doing all of the above, I investigated a bit more and discovered this post, which brought to my attention something I should’ve spotted in #1 above – this:

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When you go the “flag as inappropriate” route, there’s a box that says:

If you have located one or more reviews that you believe warrant removal from Google’s services based on applicable laws, please follow the instructions detailed on this page to submit a legal request.

That link lets you “Report other legal removal issue” depending on your country and its laws. You have to give a bit of info (the content and its URL, plus why you think it breaks the law), leave a “digital signature” and tick a box that means you “swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that [you are] authorised to report this alleged violation.” Pretty serious stuff.

Thinking it might take a week or two, I thought to myself: “we’ve done all that we can…”
 
Success!
 
In less than 24 hours, Google had emailed my father saying that they had removed the offending review!