Thrive Market Thrive Deceptive billing tactics and hidden membership fees Culver City California

I had learned about this company through Facebook advertisements. They show adds providing free trials of healthy organic foods where the sample is free but you pay $1.99 shipping. That part is fine and I didn't have a problem with that. The problem started once I received an email from the company regarding their intent to charge me %59.99 for an "annual membership fee." At no time do they warn of this when signing up for the samples and once I was aware of this I went to their page to try and cancel the membership but couldn't find the option. A Google search on the topic pointed me to a FAQ's page of theirs. It listed an email address to contact regarding the cancellation. I emailed them and received a response stating that further action was required. It is here where they try to cut the "annual membership fee" in half to around $29.95 and ask if you still want to cancel. It then takes another two or three response before they finally tell you that it is cancelled but I have read reports online stating that they still bill the membership fee even after you cancel. I use debit cards to pay bills online so if they take this fee out randomly, then I can no longer afford to pay my obligations.

I have filed an FTC complaint and I may end up filing with the BBB. In the process of the FTC complaint the form asked for the company phone number. I found it and tried to call it to verify that it was the proper number. I got an automated message stating that they were having "technical difficulties." Some of the complaints that I read about in my Google search were from 2015 stating this exact problem of not being able to talk to a live person. They responded by saying that their business growth was faster than intended by that they had doubled their member services help team. Here it is in 2016 and it seems they still have that same problem.