I'll be honest when I say that I'm not sure. This can very well be a situation of someone finding useful information. I don't see any pattern in merit trading (if there is any) and it's not that xtraelv's posts are complete nonsense. Also, since they're both in customer support, I do not think that post like these should deserve merit in any way, since they're just doing their job and should be receiving "merit" from their employers.

Now the same thing goes for [ANN] threads.

So my opinion is:  They probably aren't doing merit trading on purpose or that those two alts are connected. But I do think that they're using merit as it is not intended to be used. Tho, I just as well may be wrong,