What’s Up with Merchant Circle?
This older post, “Merchant Circle: Zero Customer Acquisition Cost,” has been commented on many times. I received another comment this evening (below), which was critical of the company for allegedly misleading marketing and customer acquisition practices. In fairness there are also positive comments.
I think the company’s plan to become an online reputation management service is a good idea. But I’m struck by the persistence of these critical complaints.
Here’s an excerpt from the comment I received tonight verbatim:
Merchantcircle.com uses deceptive advertising and unethical marketing practices. Below is an excerpt from the letter I just sent to the Silicon Valley BBB:
“My business was just phone-spammed today by a company representing merchantcircle.com — the prerecorded voice message said “a customer has left negative feedback about your business” and to “visit merchantcircle.com to view this feedback.” There is no feedback on my business; it’s a bait-and-switch scam, baiting business owners with non-existent negative feedback and switching to a sales pitch for their services.”
I have no direct experience of these alleged facts nor have I sought to follow up and investigate them. But I’m just surprised that almost every time I post about MerchantCircle there’s some sort of negative response from someone.
I’m sure the Merchant Circle folks will respond — and I invite them to.
March 14, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Am I the only one who sees an opportunity in the chaos for MerchantCircle?
Reading the recent Business Week piece on MerchantCircle, which was quite positive, I was struck by how the negative comments from those they voice-spammed totally killed their credibility and overpowered any goodwill that the article generated (at least online)…
I immediately thought about how MC’s new reputation management spin (reptimization as I like to call it) could benefit from the bad PR their voice-spam campaign generated…
They could adopt the slogan ‘Trust us, we know how a bad reputation can affect business’… Or, they could pretend the entire thing was the ultimate case study and that it was done to validate their business model…
Either way, a new name is probably in order… The damage has been done on such a large scale that they will never overcome the ill will they have generated…
March 14, 2007 at 11:18 pm
i was browsing through Merchantcircle and clicked in the Phila area on a number of businesses. one was featured and had coupons. when i clicked on the site i saw the blog was just gibberish. i then called the business’s phone number and it was a non-working number. another featured business (mick’s gym) was also bogus. this lead me to question if they in fact have 100,000 busineses signed up or that’s just hype and there are fakes on there to have you believe a lot of people have signed up.
March 25, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Greg - bottom line is, to me as a consumer, what they’re doing is shady. They offer no added value and as I ranted about in a blog post today, they remind me of a bad scene in a mafia movie. Reputation management is a viable and actionable service. But what they’re doing is simply slimy. Additionally, as another blogger mentioned after seeing my post, if you’re going to dep reputation management, you may want to start with your own site. As an SEO, I’m able to see more vividly what is occuring with their business model and as a consumer, it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
March 25, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Rae - I don’t disagree with you (I’ve ranted about them many times on my blog), but when you suggest that they start their own site, you are losing a lot of small businesses. A LOT. They have to be *literally* hand-held to get anything done.
March 26, 2007 at 5:20 am
[...] did they start it up again? Two weeks ago, Greg Sterling shared a comment posted on his blog in which the business owner claims to have just received another such phone [...]
March 26, 2007 at 5:37 am
Agreed Ahmed… what really would be the best result would be companies like MC actually being reputable or online marketing firms catering to local businesses… aside from locallaunch.com, I haven’t seen many in my own personal travels doing so. It’s a rock and a hard place… do we tell them to do what may be done “ignorantly” themselves or to allow themselves to get into business with someone shady?
If someone could take the MC model, but provide value and instead of strongarming businesses into becoming advertisers, earn their business and teach them how to manage online complaints instead of simply erasing them. Or at the very least, being clear with consumers that the business owners control the pages and that all information that appears is at the sole discretion of the online business owner they are viewing.
tough spot no matter what…
March 28, 2007 at 5:56 pm
hello,
I feel as though there is allot of value to a website such as MC. i has signed up for MC about 2 months ago and have not had one phone call. I enjoy the fact that they track your information on multiple business directories and allow you to see whether your information is right or not. I have actually been looking to establish a circle inside MC for a chamber committee that I have started. i feel as though, if I started my own networking site, i will loss out on the other companies that will not be part of my small network group. if anyone has any thoughts on this I would love to hear them. you can e-mail me at urbanandrew@gmail.com
June 17, 2007 at 9:28 am
If anyone is interested http://www.urbanmelt.com will be available soon, hopefully by the end of July 2007. Totally free for local independent businesses and consumers. No gimmicks, no garbage.
October 25, 2007 at 6:12 am
Hi Friends,
Just wanted to let you know that the wait is over. UrbanMelt.com has launched. It’s totally FREE to join and browse. If you are a business owner, you can create a FREE listing. If you are a customer, you can create a FREE consumer profile. Keep a watchful eye, because we will continue to add FREE features and services. And, don’t forget…Shop Local Business.
Love,
UrbanMelt.com
December 6, 2007 at 8:24 pm
[...] marketing to get small businesses to sign up to its services (see John Batelle, Matt McGee & Greg Sterling). They claim that 250,000 small businesses signed up for their service. According to Peter [...]
April 21, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Today I received a spam voicemail come-on from merchantcircle stating someone had left a comment regarding our business. As others have found, it was a bait and switch and hurt their credibility with me as well.
May 16, 2008 at 12:26 am
These phishing scumbags, MerchantCircle are at it again. Just got a call saying they need my verification because someone saw my website and contacted them to see if I’m a legitimate business. This is an outright lie - I’m a professional photographer with a portfolio of over 500 photos online. No one is going to look at that and question whether I’m a real business.
Bottom line, this company’s tactics for phishing is based on a big lie, they lie in every one of their intrusive phone calls, and they’ve been doing it for over 3 years.
Why do some here still think that they may be a good company????
They still have no way to contact them via their website. What more do you need to see that these guys are 100% crooks?