Who Sucks? - MerchantCircle Sucks

It looks to me like merchantcircle.com is a website dedicated to scamming people into posting reviews so that they can then get the businesses to pay for the ability to remove negative reviews.I think it is nothing short of fraud to offer consumers a place to write reviews about companies and then offer the companies the ability to delete any post they wish for a fee.

What is the point of asking people to post the review in the first place? MerchantCircle sucks, and so does their entire corporate board. What a crappy way to make money.

It would appear that what MerchantCircle does is wait until someone posts a positive or negative review, and then they contact the company that the review is about, offering them their 'services' to help clean up the company's negative internet image or to correct company information that appears incorrectly on their website. That is a scam no matter how you dress it up, tantamount to ransom in some cases I am sure. Here's an actual excerpt from the www.merchantcircle.com website,

'we also want to make you aware that customers are writing reviews about your business on the web. We want to show them to you and many times those reviews aren't flattering. Don't take it personal with us. We just want to let you know so that you can manage your online reputation'

I guess they leave out the part that you can only delete the reviews posted on their website. It has been my experience that most people post a complaint in more than one site. MerchantCircle can't help anyone who's review is posted on another website.

I wouldn't post any review on merchantcircle.com, unless it was a review about how MerchantCircle sucks. If I was a business I'd rather have some negative reviews than pay some prick to screw me out of my hard earned money. Besides, any company that engages in cell phone marketing should be shut down by the government. Cell phone spam is not funny at all.