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One near us that I've been trying to fix for a few months now: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/place?cid=4953579680281476323

It's the best Sushi in West London, but when the owner entered into a deal with some other stores to create a common brand to help increase awareness and sales someone must have reported it as closed.

It's the same staff, same menu, same decor, same everything... except the name.

As I use Google Places a fair bit I felt that others might not go because of the listing, so I've been trying to fix their listing without a great deal of luck so far.

At least this conversation reminded me to click "Not true" yet again. Perhaps today a Googler will read this and 're-open' them.

Google needs a "Name changed to xxxx" option alongside "Permanently Closed" in this situation, with a pointer to the new place.
They have that (instead of report a problem, click "Edit this place"). They also let you change your own businesses name whenever you want. It's an easy process.
They should use the same mailed postcard / phone validation that they do when claiming your listing. If someone answers or replies, not closed.
That's probably a bit too much overhead for something like this. Imagine the number of businesses that close each year, then imagine Google sending a postcard to each.

I've been through the postcard validation, and it's pretty painless. I'd prefer some notification options that includes the ability to receive an email before my location is marked as closed. A thresholding algorithm could be used to detect abuse. If a location is repeatedly marked as closed, but the owner of the listing verifies that they're still open every time, a listing could be flagged for further inspection. Subsequent requests to close could be prompted for more information, which Google staff could then use to take action.

All of this requires more attention from Google, and I'd imagine that the Maps business already runs on pretty thin margins. Google's approach to most of these problems is to use an "85% solution" (I mean that 80% figuratively, not literally). That is, they choose a solution that works for "most" situations, but falls apart when abuse is present, but they don't really care, because those edge cases don't affect their bottom line.

Everything is expensive at scale, but so are the rewards. I would try phone first, then postcard which is the order they want to do them when claiming a business.

For claimed businesses they can more easily contact you in case of a closed notification (they have your email address even) and should not take someone's word unless they can't get ahold of you.

Let me guess, you got a call from an "SEO expert" but declined to use his services. Then you were listed on Google as closed.
Seriously Google? Why remain tightlipped about this? This is the way the end starts.
They've acknowledged the problem and said that they are working on fixing it. That's not enough? Nothing good can come from going into more detail than that - both in the PR sense of hoping that the story just dies quietly, but also in an engineering sense.

For example talking about the operational details on how exactly things are verified would just make gaming the system easier. They probably don't know the exact magnitude of the problem, it would take valuable engineering time to come up with even a rough approximation, and it should be obvious that it's better to not comment than to just guess. You probably couldn't give a coherent explanation of why the "not true" doesn't stick without going into very tedious details of the data pipeline and serving infrastructure.

Although it is annoying, a small coffee shop like that MAY have a couple of searches a week that would bring up that listing. Article makes it sound like they are losing out on thousands of $$$
I think the biggest concern is people passing by the interstate with their gps on. One can now imagine literally thousands of people just passing by, and seeing that the place is closed, or maybe not seeing anything at all in their gps screen.
Like any kind of spamming, I'm sure it will be stopped, especially if it's not even automated.
It's baffling that no one at Google is able to foresee obvious ways of abusing the features of their products. It really should be someone's job to try to anticipate these problems and prevent them before new products or features are released.