This is a normal practice, but I think the policy against the merit abuse has changed a bit the last few weeks.
I got this message deleted /my comment in green/ I know it was for off-topic but I just archived the request for merit.
Yeah, my post in the same thread was deleted as well. I figured it might be for not being strictly on-topic, but if merit-beggars aren't publicly humiliated then they won't stop begging.
BTW - After Coin-1 posted that list of people "most generous to newbies" I received a couple of PMs surreptitiously asking for merits. Because they weren't outright asking me for merits I just warned them that if they were any more direct in their requests they could expect to receive red trust from a DT member, but if I received a PM like the OP showed from argio I would definitely report that for spam and try to get a DT member on the case.