Merchant Circle Is Not For Everyone

Merchant Circle is not for everyone.

MerchantCircle MAY cause serious side effects such as NAUSEA, Fatigue, Dizziness,

Mental Anguish, Anger, and feeling ripped off.

Ask your Doctor if MerchantCircle is right for you. Or you can just read any of my

blogs, and figure it out for yourself.

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Merchant Circle Member "Quotes"

This is a list of Quotes from MerchantCircle members after the NEW owners destroyed their very usable business friendly networking site.

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I just counted the number of advertising links to my competitors on my MC front page. There were ONLY 14! AND... They stick out like a sore thumb! I hope all our competetors appreciate how much we are promoting them. NOW add to that, the more than 50 links on the page that take the viewer away from my page.  It might be worth noting how Google looks at the pages that are saturated with ads. 

http://www.webpronews.com/googles-algorithm-change-when-too-many-ads-attack-2012-01 

For those of you who don't understand how it works, let me explain: Merchant Circle gets paid by Google for every time their Ads are shown or clicked on, Merchant Circle removed major components on our page, such as the "Mayor" status and replaced them with Ads only they can cash in on. Of course they offer a "paid" service to remove the Ads (WITH THEIR LATEST UPGRADE BEING A CLEAR EFFORT TO FORCE US TO PAY), but there is no point, as even if the ads are removed, all of our efforts were removed also and we cannot get back our "Mayor" status

.

This is a complete outrage! Merchant Circle's greed has cost us thousands of dollars, thousands of hours and they have deleted all of our efforts overnight replacing them with Google Ads!

 Hey MC! I am PAYING a fee to NOT have other advertising show on my page. The 'People Who Viewed This Page Also Viewed' IS AN ADVERTISEMENT for OTHER businesses. Either refund my money for this month or get it off of my page!

Put it back the way it was. It's now an ugly site and not user friendly and kinda creepy for its template look. I'm not sure about the stats but MC does seem to have dropped out of the picture. I, also, would not now recommend the new site to others though I have recommended MC to several of my business friends in the past. I was looking to do some upgrading and enhancement on this site but will wait until it reappears in a worthy format.

 In one day i lost my "Mayor" status on my public page, my "Community Leader" Banner and i can no longer find the number of answers i have answered 3174...........why don't you shoot my dog too!

Merchant circle came to me highly touted. I thought it was good, now I like the phone book at a phone booth

It sucks. I can't believe you put a "Request a Quote" button on our profiles - one not directed to us, but to anyone - like our competitors. Your new features, like the feed/ticker on the left take visitors away from our pages to someone elses.

Our blogs now get ZERO exposure on our business' main profile page.

We rely on MC for the bulk of all our new business. I have worked my butt off to make it a nice site with pictures and blogs for our clients to see our work. NOW it is a complete disaster.

We already took a hit from your Panda disaster - hoped that would have inspired you to focus on quality . . . silly me. I've been recommending you to my other networks thinking going forward it would be worth it. Wonder if there's some other service similar to MerchantCircle - one that cares as much for it's merchants as it does for users or itself?

Put it back, Put it back. I really don't like that i have all those photos but no one will ever see them now without specifically looking for the view gallery link. In my business a picture truly is worth a thousand words, and you have messed it up.

Directing people away from my page after I worked to get them to my page is wrong. You guys REALLY screwed this up. Get your heads out of your backsides!

MerchantCircle Staffers Using Fake Ass Names

MerchantCircle staffers used fake names when dealing with merchants.

 For instance, MerchantCircles consumer page says Jennifer Roberts runs the page. I don't ever remember meeting Jennifer when I visited MerchantCircle headquarters.

 Wait a minute I did meet her, but her name wasn't Jennifer, or Roberts. hmmm

Another example is MerchantCircle Advisor Meagan Kennedy. Again there is no such person working at MerchantCircle.  I met who claims to be Meagan but her name's not Meagan. Is it Meagan? ;)

We can't forget all the anonymous postings in the old forums. Many of the more active members know who anonymous was. His initials were C.E.O.

Merchant Circle has many fake faces. And behind those fake faces are FAKE people. As in Fakers!!!!!

MerchantCircle.com Touts 1.2 Million Active and Highly-Connected Members Merchants

Reply! Inc., the leading marketplace for the acquisition of locally-targeted consumer traffic, today announced that its MerchantCircle.com property now has over 1.2 million active member merchants.


To someone not familiar with Merchant Circle, It sounds like they have a butt load of engaged Merchants on their site. 


To someone familiar with Merchant Circle like I am, It sounds like Merchant Circle is S T R E T C H I N G the truth. They can define active merchant anyway they want, and therefore increase the number of SO CALLED active members. 


Back here in reality, most people perceive "ACTIVE MERCHANT" as current activity. We don't  go back years to pad the numbers.


From my experience, Merchant Circle has always loved to exaggerate, and toot their own horns. Many times prematurely.     


How many of these 1.2 million "ACTIVE merchants" are really duplicate pages?  A LOT????  Do 10's of thousands of HIV listings ring a bell? 

How many of these 1.2 million "ACTIVE merchants" are FAKE, or Hijacked pages? I'm sure these are included in your numbers?
 

How many of these 1.2 million "ACTIVE merchants" have CLAIMED their listing just to delete it? Are these included in the Stats?  Probably.

Active members are defined as merchants who have directly created an account on MerchantCircle.com and have engaged in activities on the site, including updating their information, using the site to reach local consumers and networking with other merchants on the site. 

So if a merchant claims their listing, updates their info, and then logs out to NEVER return again


they are considered ACTIVE according to Merchant Circle. lol........... Help I can't stop laughing.

"We are thrilled with the increased level of engagement we have seen since we began integrating MerchantCircle.com into the Reply! family," said Payam Zamani, founder and CEO of Reply!, Inc   

Dude you just  destroyed one of the better business friendly networking sites and Turned it into an ad infested pile of crap, that serves nobody but yourself. Many of your TOP merchants have either abandoned your site. many outspoken members have come to your new forum and slammed you. The ONLY increased engagement I see, is a Forum full of pissed off merchants that don't like the new Merchant Circle. 

I know of several Very Active merchants that are no longer active.  I don't see the activity that Mr. Zamani speaks of.  I'll bet a whole lot of Consumers are clicking on a whole lot of ADS on MerchantCircle.com though.


       

         

Merchant Circle Feedback & Questions on recent changes

Here's a topic from the New Merchant Circle forum titled

"Other Feedback & Questions on recent changes"

In this topic a merchant by the name Peter asks Merchant Circle why they are censoring the new forum. This is his post.

 "I've noticed a lot of topics have been removed by an MC administrator. What's the deal with that? Are all unflattering remarks about the new changes being removed for the purposes of public relations?"


A merchant Circle staffer by the name of Andy Halliday responds with this:

Peter, no censorship....we haven't removed any content from the Forums, but we have moved some items into their appropriate threads. 


               This is an OUTRIGHT LIE.


 David Gwynn (Former MC Program Manager) has deleted several posts in the new forum. What in the world could the Boy Wonder have needed to hide from the community???  Anyway Here's the proof.


This reply was removed on 2011-12-27.  Click on "see the change log"

Here are 2 more replies that were deleted by Program Manager David Gwynn.


This proves Merchant Circle, (REGARDLESS of what Halliday says) IS removing content from the Forums.


Yes Andy I believe every single word you say. It's when you put them together to form a sentence that I have a problem!!! 

Why I Think MerchantCircle Is The Best!..Why I think I might PUKE!!

Here is another Topic I found in the New Merchant Circle forum.

        Why I Think MerchantCircle Is The Best!

Listen as Merchant Circle staffers STROKE each other on what a great job they THINK  they did revamping their site and forum.


              Why I think I might PUKE!

 The revamping has wiped out a lot of hard work, and the simplicity of networking. It has wiped out the Mayors public exposure. Many Merchant Circle members HATE it. 

So when David and Andy are done stroking each other, I hope they pay attention to what the merchants are saying. There are huge concerns that need to be looked into ASAP so...... CHOP CHOP 

Merchant Circle Support Requests... Just Kidding

I visited the New Merchant Circle forum today and saw a topic that made me laugh so hard, I almost pissed my pants.

                                           Here it is

 MC Support Requests - Post em' here and we'll at least set you in the right direction :)

                                 This is what it says

Please post support requests here. 


Support requests include: listings edits, content removal requests, login/password issues, and paid service issues. 


The Right Direction? I thought these requests were things a Community Manager could take care of. I was wrong.


 I guess the right direction is to go to their YouTube channel. Here, hold the dumb end of my tape measure. DUH




Please know, the BEST place to find information for support-related requests is the Help Center: http://merchantcircle.assistly.com/ 


NO, the BEST place to find customer support is from a LIVE person that KNOWS what the hell they are talking about. At least that's how MOST honest businesses do it.


We'll try to answer your question as quickly as we can, but please know we are a very small team. So we really appreciate your patience.


WOW this is like Deja Vu This is the excuse MC used on everyone a few years back. 


When a business owner is strapped for cash and there is a billing error, they don't have much patience.


When a business owner is paying for something, and it isn't working because of something on the Merchant Circle side, and they get sent to a stupid website with no LIVE support  they won't have much patience either.


  If Payam laid down a Whopping 60 million dollars on Ben's Masterpiece of a business directory, you would think he could afford to hire, and train a few good CS reps. 



Best, 
Trish Burnside 
Community Manager



How can you tell when a Merchant Circle staffer is full of BS?    Here's a clue... BEST!!!!