Why pirates love MerchantCircle.com
MerchantCircle.com is shopping review site that focuses on connecting people with local businesses in their own neighbourhood. But I’ve seen how it can be used by an illicit internet based business to present an image of a legitimate buisness with satisfied customers. I discovered the problem after writing a negative review for The Violent Squirrel on the site. The review appeared right away but within a short time it had dissappeared. So I tried writing another review and same thing happened – it showed up and stayed for awhile and then was gone. After a few more attempts I had a look at their policies and discovered why pirates love MerchantCircle.com – The merchants on MerchantCircle can delete any reviews they want!! What a sham! Consumers beware – all positive reviews on MerchantCircle means absolutely nothing!
I think the main reason for that is that people create/use Merchant Circle accounts to push down negative websites. This is online reputation management.