More Trouble for Merchant Circle
By Matt McGee on Mar 25, 2007 in Local Search
A spot on the “Best Posts of the Month” list has been reserved for Rae’s rant on Merchant Circle today, and the goofy way Merchant Circle does business. Rae covers a lot — but not all — of the issues many have had with Merchant Circle for some time now.
Rae really lets them have it over the fact that Merchant Circle lets businesses delete user reviews it doesn’t like. And this isn’t new. Merchant Circle started bragging about this back in December. Crazy, isn’t it? I still think a small business should claim its listing on Merchant Circle’s site (because if you don’t, someone else might). But beyond that, nothing.
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you can probably name Merchant Circle’s biggest claim to fame: That really bad “marketing campaign” which involved Merchant Circle calling up small businesses with a warning that someone had just reviewed their business on Merchant Circle’s web site.
That was last September, and we reported a week later that Merchant Circle was putting an end to those phone calls.
But 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 call.
Kevin, MC’s “Community Relations” guy (who also writes on their blog), is registered and able to comment here on SBS. So I’ll invite him to let us know if that calling campaign has started up again, and if not, what is that business owner on Greg Sterling’s blog talking about? Kevin?
Technorati Tags: merchant circle, local search
- Merchant Circle calls off calling campaign
Merchant Circle, which has been beleaguered for the past week due to a really bad marketing campaign that involved cold-calling... - Strange goings-on with Merchant Circle
Let me tell you a story about a brief-but-strange part of my day today.... At about 4:30 pm, Kim from... - Merchant Circle intro’s “Web Identity Manager”
There are too many local search and directory sites on the web with business listings that need to be managed.... - Merchant Circle’s Cold-Calling Campaign Continues
Small business owners are upset (again) at Merchant Circle over what the business owners are calling "fishy" marketing tactics, "an...
14 Comment(s)
By chris_c on Mar 27, 2007 | Reply
Why claim a listing when you can remove it?
http://www.merchantcircle.com/optout/remove/
By Matt McGee on Mar 27, 2007 | Reply
That’s an option, true. But I’d prefer to have ownership of my business listings wherever they might be, rather than kill them off and start removing potential referral sources.
By scott schmidt on Jun 3, 2008 | Reply
merchant circle took my money and gave nothing in return.my company was unsearchable on the net.i told them to cancel my subscription and refund my money.never got my money and learned today they have been debiting my checking account monthly for the last four months.i am filing criminal charges today in california civil court.if i lived in california i would drag the president of this company outside for an old fashion ass kicking.discusted,scott schmidt.
By Alexis on Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
I can guarantee that they have started up the calling campaign again. After receiving a phone call from them and before entering any information into the MerchantCircle website, I figured I’d better do a little research. Don’t think I like what I hear about them …
By julie on Sep 9, 2008 | Reply
Yes, they’ve started again for certain - today I got a call saying there are pictures of my company on their site…. yeah, right. These guys are slime.
By Mike Blumenthal on Sep 9, 2008 | Reply
I am and have been a strong detester of their methods to attract and sting the small business market…it is a very short term view of dealing with customers. Too many small business people have no clue what they really do or don’t do and their “used car” selling tactics are truly objectionable.
That being said, having a site that is merchant centric and allows removal of reviews is not such a bad idea. If the idea came from a better source than MC it might actually be appealing if properly implemented.
The whole review universe seems broken to me and in the end just another vehicle for spam and competitor bashing.
Merchants definitely need a way to proactively respond to and manage reviews that is better than the Google method….they will scrape a review from who knows where and leave it up till the cows come home with virtually no recourse…
The reason that I wouldn’t remove a listing from Merchant Circle is that for whatever reason Google seems to love their search optimization work and it often shows up as a local citation.
Mike
By Tim Coleman on Sep 9, 2008 | Reply
They’ve started again… I received a call from them with the review thing… yesterday or Friday, can’t remember which.
Mike, that’s a good point about citations. For that I WILL check the listing. Thanks for the heads up.
By Matt McGee on Sep 9, 2008 | Reply
Well said, Mike. I’ve said before that I have no problem with the service they offer. I’ve had small biz owners tell me their MC pages rank well and get some traffic. But the marketing tactics they use are objectionable.
By Will Scott on Sep 9, 2008 | Reply
I second Mike’s SEO value mention. I’ve definitely seen MerchantCircle ranking for competitive local business phrases.
It’s an up and comer in the world of Barnacle SEO.
It’s unfortunate, just like the “I own thousands of sites to link at you” emails, businesses, especially mom & pop ain’t got no clue and tend to freak when someone says “you’ve got a bad review” or “your picture is online”.
Will
By Mike Blumenthal on Sep 9, 2008 | Reply
@ Matt
I don’t outright object to the service they offer but it is not clear to me that it is a good value. The one use I had for the service, a central place to manage all local listings, never really worked.
Mike
By Lia Kay Barrad on Sep 10, 2008 | Reply
Ok. I hate Merchant Circle. That is a very strong word. There is no real opt from their list. I started to subscribe but stopped in the middle, never got a login and yet I am still on their list. They sent me emails saying ‘ you are only 78% complete’ then I responded to a variety of emails to opt out. They keep sending me info. There is no phone number to call to opt out. You need to write them - which I am planning to do next. I do not recommend that anyone list with them. The leads that they are sending me are bogus and it does not stop…ok. That is my rant for the day. I have been doing sem for quite sometime and have not encountered anything like this - until now..
By Matt McGee on Sep 10, 2008 | Reply
Lia - I think you’ll find a phone number or two over in the comments on this other blog post:
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/strange-goings-on-with-merchant-circle/236/
Good luck.
By John on Sep 17, 2008 | Reply
Received a very strange e-mail from MC the other day and decided to just cancel my account. Have gone through the process half a dozen times and the listing is still there. Can’t find an actual phone number to call. I WANT OUT!
By Crasymaker on Sep 30, 2008 | Reply
Merchant Circle is now calling businesses and leaving the following message: “There is a picture of your business at MerchantCircle.com. Repeat, there is a picture of your business at MerchantCircle.com” What does that even mean?