I’m not sure why you tagged me. If you expect a reply please elaborate.
I can confirm that merging places can be very challenging and time-consuming. Currently, I’m on week 6 or 8 trying to merge two POIs so far without success. But until now I cracked them all after working hard matching everything in the listings.
But user-generated content including edits can be blocked in some areas. I’m not saying your observations are incorrect, just that it takes a lot of work also in places where User-generated content is not blocked.
Cheers