Merchant Circle Cheeses Me Off!

My apologies fellow trout hunters, but this entry has nothing to do with trout fishing. It has to do with unethical business practices, and I just had to sound off.

Yesterday (9/26/06) I recieved an automated phone call on my Ozark Taxidermy phone line which basically said, "this phone call is to alert you that a customer has logged on at Merchant Cirle dot com and left you negative feedback. Please log on to www.merchantcircle.com to review your feedback." Of course, that's not an exact quote, but it's fairly close. I absolutely rely on word-of-mouth advertising for my taxidermy business to flourish, so I jumped online immediately to check it out. I found absolutely no feedback, positive or negative, associated with my business at all. So, in other words, they lied to me to get me to visit their website.

I did a google search for "Merchant Circle" and found a blog apparently run by a consultation company working on behalf of Merchant Circle. Click HERE to visit their blog. There was a comment that there was no security to make sure only the business owner laid claim to his company's listing, so I quickly went back to Merchant Circle to "claim my listing" to make sure no one else did anything goofy with it. I then returned to the blog and posted my own complaint regarding the "negative feeback" phone call I received.

I went back to their blog late last evening to see if there was a response. There was no response from the company, but there were about a dozen more complaints just like mine. I guess that means they had just started this little tricky marketing campaign of theirs. I went back to visit their site this afternoon (9/27/06), and discovered three things which just blew me away. First, they deleted every comment that mentioned the "negative feedback" spam phone calls. Second, I am now blocked from placing additional comments -- I'm assuming the others are, as well. Third, they posted their own article implying that I and the other complaintants were either lying or fictional characters. They even mentioned me by name (I'm so proud).

This article is linked from "comment 12" on their blog, which is where my comment originally appeared. You can read the complete text of the article by clicking HERE and it's titled "I Smell a Rat: Fake ‘Complaints’ Re Merchant Circle". In the article, the author writes

"The commenters typically have return email addresses that have different ISPs and domain names, and have different IP addresses. They are good spoofers, but most tend to be “too interesting.” None responded to my requests for verification. Moreover, few have phone numbers or websites attached to them. Most of the comments also have the same “voice” in them.

I can't speak for the others, of course, but this guy never tried to contact me to verify anything. And my comment had my name, phone, website and email address attached -- I actually LIKE publicity, after all. They deleted the comments and authored and posted their article less than 24 hours after I posted my comment, which is pretty fast to draw the kind of conclusions he's apparently made. Or, I suppose the other possibility is that he's simply not telling the truth.

In a nutshell, I'm amazed at this company and their client. I sent them an email that pretty much mirrors what I've written here. I ask that you pass this on to any interested parties that these two companies should not receive our business. It's like living with a two-year old. If he throws a fit and you give him a cookie, you're training him to throw more fits. Please, don't give these people any cookies.

Again, my apologies. I promise the next post will be about trout fishing!

Walt

We're Calling You Out!

WE NEED YOUR HELP!!

If you've ever reviewed the fishing reports on Missouri Trout Hunter before hitting the river, but you've never submitted a fishing report of your own, WE'RE CALLING YOU OUT! Our counter program enables us to see not only how many visitors we have, but also which cities and states they're from. So, it's easy to see that while we have a bunch of visitors from Kansas City, Springfield, Columbia, and also from Kansas and Oklahoma, 90% of our fishing reports come from the Eastern half of the state and Illinois. What gives guys? We rely on all of our visitors to help us keep our fishing report pages up to date with current information.

If you visit us looking for a recent fishing report and don't find it, you could be helping the situation by submitting a fishing report as soon as you get home! You'd be amazed how quickly this improves the situation. When one report is filed, it prompts more people to file reports on that stream after their fishing trip, and suddenly I'm pulling my hair out trying to find the time to update the site! So, if you've gotten bent out of shape, because there haven't been very many reports from Hickory Creek, Capps Creek, Crane Creek, Lake Taneycomo, Bennett, Niangua, Roaring River, etc., we're calling you out to help us fix the problem! Stop being so shy! Even if you got skunked, we still want to hear from you, and so do the rest of our visitors. A report that the fishing's been tough is just as valuable as a fishing report that boasts of fantastic results.

And, if you're a business owner, here's a little perk for you. Every time you file a legitimate fishing report for an actual fishing trip you've taken, we'll include a link and contact information so our visitors can reach you. Please note I said "legitimate". We have had some problems with folks filing false reports trying to increase traffic to their rivers (i.e. campground operators saying things like "we caught 50 trout in 3 hours, including 10 fish that went over 20 inches!"), and obviously, we can't have that. But, if you own a restaurant, motel, campground, canoe rental, flyshop, bed & breakfast, flyfishing school, guide service, or WHATEVER, go fishing, send us reports, and see your business exposure increase. If you'll help out our visitors, we'll be more than happy to return the favor.

Many thanks in advance.