Firstly, whoever moderates and approves AppSumo comments could have maybe prevented this 1 taco review. I was trying to ask a question to Merlin about why Im having so many activation issues, and I stated that if I couldnt get my issue fixed after that final attempt in the Q&A section, then I would be forced to leave a 1-taco review. Well, someone from AppSumo decided to decline letting me post my question, so here is my 1-taco review...justly deserved by Merlin at this point.

I have now had 7 separate back and forth requests with Merlin support so far via email, and the Merlin support team still doesnt comprehend the issue, and/or they cannot explain to me what's going wrong. Add insult to injury, my very first email that I sent to Merkin support, I included everything they needed to solve my license activation issue (my name, license key, appsumo invoice ID, the email I wanted to activated, the details, etc, and a day later Merlin Support replied to the me asking me for the same info that I had already sent them...so clearly they didnt read my request and they sent me a canned reponse and wasted a whole day of my waiting for help...not a good start. I also reached out to AppSumo support who rightfully told me that the license activation issues are directly with Merlin and AppSumo obviously cant get into Merlin's back-end to play with licenses (this makes sense from AppSumo's side of things).

Here's the TLDR: If you want to purchase multiple Merlin licenses like I did and activate them for you business partners, staff, friends, family, etc...then watch out, I have to assume that you'll probably have license activation issues like me. If you're buying a Merlin license and you activate the license using the same email address that you use with your AppSumo account, it will activate fine Im sure.

Here's what happened: I purchased multiple Merlin AppSumo licenses. I wanted to activate a single Tier 1 license for starters, so I clicked to activate the license within my AppSumo Products page, and I was taken to a Merlin activation and signup page, I created my new Merlin account using the email address that I wanted to use with Merlin for my business partner, and I verified my email that Merlin sent to this email address...and the activation never worked...and now its been days later, and Im still waiting for Merlin to resolve the issue. It sounds like Merlin support is stating that this AppSumo license somehow activated under a Merlin account that uses the same email as my AppSumo account email address (automatically, and regardless of the fact that I specified the email address that I wanted to use during my activation process). It also sounds like Merlin is unable to move the license from the wrong Merlin account over to this new Merlin account that I created during my license activation process... THEN, Merlin support suggests that I login to the Merlin account that is associated with my primary AppSumo email address, and then I need to update the email address within that account to whatever new email I want to use and then give that account to my business partner. Well guess what, that doesnt work for me, because my primary AppSumo email address already has a Merlin account with all of my personal chat history in it, and I wanted to activate a separate Merlin Tier 3 license for that account. As to why Merlin's license activation process completely ignored activating the correct email address that I supplied during my sign-up process/license activation process, I dont know (and no, I wasnt akready logged into Merlin with an alternate email address while going through the license activation process, and I definitely created a totally new Merlin account with a unique email address to activate)... Im not going to jump through hoops with account creation and license activations though. It shouldn't be that hard for Merlin Support to just move the license from Account A over to Account B at this point.

I purchased multiple Merlin licenses to give to my staff and friends, and this is turning into a nightmare and Im about to refund all of it, I dont have this much time to waste.

Ive made MANY AppSumo purchases in my time here (over 200 purchases now I think), and this is by far the worst license activation process that Ive ever had from all products that Ive purchased with AppSumo.

This is such a simple part of the sales process to go so wrong.

In general, I love Merlin as a tool, and I was using the free version for a while and had recommended it to friends in the past. I was hoping to gift all of those same people with a Merlin license. I was REALLY excited to see Merlin come to AppSumo. This has been a super painful process so far though, just trying to activate my first license!!! This could have easily been a 5-taco review if Merlin's support and their license activation wasnt such a nightmare for me. I recommend Merlin as a product, but good luck if you need support and get stuck like me.