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luckypuppy3217
Forums Member
Joined: 11 Nov 2010
Posts: 2
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#21 · Posted: 11 Nov 2010 19:18
I worked for Thrive for a year. The coaches and most of the people at Thrive truly do sympathize with the clients. I will say that I don't believe Thrive is a scam. In order for it to be a scam, there has to be intent to deceive. Nobody at Thrive has a clue about search engine optimization or online business, they really do think what they do works. They don't know any better. It starts at the top and just filters its way down. On another forum and individual named Herome posted a lot of sensitive information. You can find the original post here: http://www.work-at-home-forum.com/reviews-14/has-anyone-heard-of-thrive-learning-institute-con tinued-16308-2.html#msg127543
Let me start by saying that when Herome posted that post, Thrive went into an uproar. Todd Nuttal, who is largely to blame for the coaching joke known as Thrive, started calling up old employees and trying to discover the identity of Herome. This lets us know two things. Todd sits at his computer and checks these boards on a daily basis. Hi Todd! The second thing this tells us is, what Herome said is pretty accurate. What problems Herome caused are pale in comparison to what this post should cause. I have separated this post into numerous categories each one will explain the problems with Thrive and how they come about. This post will also explain how you can possibly put Thrive out of business and now that Thrive is struggling, now is the perfect time to act.
Management
This is one of the most poorly managed companies you can imagine. I can't place any blame on Matt and Dave because I don't know how much influence they actually have on the company. I never saw Dave and Matt only showed up to brag about how much money he made and threaten to fire people. I will place the bulk of the blame on Todd Nuttall. If Todd has a degree he should contact the Cracker Jack company and send it back. Every stupid policy that Thrive has that shafts the client, the coach or the sales floor (Yes Thrive is intentionallly screwing the sales floors out of thousands of dollars a month), comes out of the southwest corner office.
Favoritism rolls down from Todd into positions of management. More often than not the soon to be promotee is not really qualified. Serious questions that coaches had were often directed to other coaches, very little faith lies in the managers who don't know much about website construction or search engine optimization. They ascended to positions of authority by comraderie and fitting a profile of who would be easiest to control and who will act unethically to protect the company. Qualifications or integrity had nothing to do with it. The people most likely to shaft "YOU" the customer, were the people who were promoted. The managers were the most inept and lazy people in the building. When voicemails or proactive calls were way behind the managers preferred to talk and hang out with each other instead of leading the way and helping. Numerous occasions I watched as they gave bad advice and encouraged the coaches to lie in order to hide unethical activity. This will be expanded on later.
Nothing speaks louder for the Management issues than the amount of unhappy employees that Thrive currently has. The last check approximately 80 percent of employees were looking elsewhere for jobs. Some coaches took an 6 dollar an hour pay cut just to get away from Thrive. There are always going to be unhappy employees. However 8 out of every 10 employees being unhappy is pretty epic.
Quality vs Quantity
Every business has to draw a fine line between quality and quantity, Thrive has ignored this line and pushed strictly for quantity. The game now becomes get as many people through the program as fast as possible with as few complaints as possible.
Here is how Thrive hopes to achieve that. Originally it used to be that thrive would work with customers until they made their money back. This is part of the "money back guarantee" that numerous clients are sold on. When questioned about or mentioned by upset clients thrive will say, we will work with you until you make your money back, that is our money back guarantee. Even clients who had completed the program would get responses from coaches. This would be costly for Thrive who had to work with completed clients whose initial investment had long since been spent. Now if you are completed you aren't going to get a response from the coaches. Thrive now cuts you off from coach assistance once your time is up, so much for the "We will work with you until you make your money back"
Get people into marketing as soon as possible. The marketing phase gives people hope and is the never ending phase. You have to redo this phase over and over until you start to see results. This is a true statement but once people are in marketing they are generally more hopeful and willing to waste the remainder of their time in a hopeful state. The big problem with this is the sites aren't ready. It used to be that sites had to be almost perfect in order to go to the marketing phase. Sites were rejected over and over until they were right. Now the site review checklist is approxiamately 1/3 the size of the original checklist, and guess who does the site reviews? The inept managers I mentioned before. The new site review checklist even has a note on it that says, "If the customer complains send them to marketing". Many of the sites that are sent to marketing shouldn't even be there.
Thrive has created many successful clients, however, most of them are early Todd or pre-Todd era, and most of the coaches who got them there are working for other more successful coaching companies or internet marketing firms. The coaches who are still left are great people and do their best but Thrive makes it impossible for them to do an adequate job.
The Process.
Thrive is only one half of the process that led you to check out this site. It starts with the Sales Floors. An Article published in the Salt Lake Tribune listed the top ten scams in Utah. The first one was the sales floors, the second was coaching companies. There are several coaching floors out there and there are about 20 times the amount of sales floors. The coaching floors try to win the business of the sales floors. If a coaching center goes out of business it is no big deal the sales floors will simply send their clients to another coaching center. The sales floor puts the ads out there and collect the information when people click on their ads. Then they have someone call and convince you to sign up with their program. The sales floors then send the client to the coaching floor. The coaching floor only gets a small percentage of your original investment. This is very important to understand because if you want "ALL" of your money back you need to attack and harass both the coaching center and the sales floor. Once the client is transferred to the coaching floor, the sales floor doesn't want to have any contact with the customer. If you call the sales floor they will pass a note to the coaching center and usually a team lead or manager will call you. The team leads and managers have no authority to give you any type of refund. They are there to tell you no you can't have one so that you will eventually give up.
The sales floor also has other contacts such as tax professionals that they give your information to. The sales floor gets a percentage of the money that you pay to the tax people for the referral. The coaches will warm you up to this by saying you will receive a "free consultation" from a tax professional. In reality you are receiving another sales call. The coaches don't like this arrangement at all but they can't tell you not to sign up with the tax professional. If they do they will get fired. If the sales floor loses some of their kickback money from the tax professional referral, they will pull the business from Thrive.
Upsells
There are several legitimate companies that Thrive does work with. Coaches are expected to make upsells of products all of the time. Here is a list of companies that Thrive currently gets paid for when a client signs up with them.
GoGo Dropship
Doba
Invisus
Branding Basix
Bright Builders aka Lightwave builder (this is not a company that pays Thrive for referrals)
There were several others in the past but the working relationship between Thrive and those companies were no longer present at the time of my departure from the company.
This next section is about the other upsells that Thrive does. These upsells are all about screwing the sales floors out of money. First of all lets list the sales floors that I can remember that Thrive works for.
Internet Sales Institue
Internet Income Solutions
Recession Cures/ Jeff Paul / Mentoring of America (these are the same companies)
Professional Learning Institute
Summit Group
International Business Mentoring
Maverick Marketing
Eventure Eventure
Adam Ginsberg
Money By Web
Advertising Fidelity Systems
There are a few more however, I can't remember them all.
Here is how Thrive is screwing the sales floors out of money. The customers actually belong to the sales floors. The sales floors sell them packages and if the customer wants any additional add ons such as extended phone coaching, they need to go back to the sales floor. Now when a client is almost finished with their proactive coaching weeks, Thrive has someone named Clint or Paul call them and sell them extra weeks. The sales floor does not get a cut of this money. This money goes straight to Thrive. On more than one occasion did I hear management tell the coaches to not put the upsell of extra weeks in the notes. I have even heard a manager tell the coaches to not put the sales floor in the CRM (customer resource management) database so that they couldn't pull up the notes and see. Thrive made it perfectly clear that they know the sales floors would not appreciate this, but yet Todd insisted that it gets d
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luckypuppy3217
Forums Member
Joined: 11 Nov 2010
Posts: 2
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#22 · Posted: 12 Nov 2010 07:40
One of the more recent "add-on" services is building the website for the clients. This is another service that Thrive does not make available for the sales floors to include in the packages. However Thrive sells this service to clients for anywhere from $400-$700 dollars. When talking about it in the meeting Todd stated "It is best that the sales floor doesn't get involved so we can keep the price cheaper."
The Many Faces of Thrive
In Heromes post they mention that Thrive operates under a couple different names. This is true Thrive, Spectrum and Focus are the exact same company. I have read and heard rumors that Thrive is not allowed to operate in some states. I do not know if this is true. However I am sure Spectrum and Focus operate in any states that Thrive is banned in. Since Heromes post Thrive has rolled out another name. Paragon. At this point in time Todd is flipping out in his office and I am sure he is flipping through the list of old employees ready to start making telephone calls. I am also sure that he is calling the IT department to have them create another name.
Testimonials
The coaches get money for each testimonial they acquire. This is why coaches are always asking for them. I worked with numerous clients who one week after they gave the testimonial wanted their money back. Contact almost anyone who gave a testimonial and they will not give Thrive a good recommendation. Numerous times content was deleted or the testimonial was taken out of context just to make Thrive look like they were doing a good job.
I was let go from Thrive for apparently giving bad advice. I wasn't sticking to the Thrive curriculum. Less than a month after I was let go I had found a job working in the marketing department for a multi-million dollar company that only deals with online sales. In my interview I was specifically asked about working for Thrive and the interviewer expressed numerous concerns. When I told them I was fired for bad advice, I was hired on the spot. I have no problems with the new company and my products I am assigned to promote are netting over a million dollars a year. The "bad advice" I was giving at Thrive, I utilize every day in my new job. I have run into numerous other people who were let go from Thrive who are now working in the online marketing industry. Many people have had the same experience with interviewers concerned about people who worked for Thrive. Several people found more success when they left Thrive off of their resume.
How To Get Your Money Back.
The team leads and managers can't help you get your money back at all. Just tell them that a hold agreement is not going to work and keep sending you up the chain of command. File a lawsuit. Thrive is scared of lawsuits and they will go to extreme measures to prevent it from going there. You also have to harass the original sales floor. They will keep pushing it over to the coaching center but that is ok because you can keep calling. Forget the BBB. Thrive management laughs at most requests from the BBB. Call consumer affairs and the Attorney General of your State and the State of Utah. Rumor has it that the Utah AG has about had it with Thrive. Get an attorney involved. Just keep in mind that Thrive is on its way out so if you wait you probably won't stand a chance at anything.
How to Finish Thrive Off?
Thrive is on its death bed. Latest estimates have Thrive with less than 20 coaches, at one time they had 70. Now is the time to actually put the nail in the coffin and put Thrive management back where they belong, in the Mcdonalds drive thru. Until you get your refund continue to call the sales floors and Thrive. Insist on your money back guarantee. Make them help you. Utilize live chat, phone and email as much as possible. Thrive has to pay the coaches for helping old customers with the money they currently have coming in. There are thousands upon thousands of old customers who are unhappy with Thrive. With only 20 coaches working and so many disgruntled clients, if 200 of them sent one email, utilized chat once a day, and phoned in once, Thrive would have serious problems. They would have to fold, or hire new people on a very limited budget and income. If you have the number for the original sales floor call them and tell them about this post. If the sales floors find out about Thrive stealing from them by their upsell program, several of them will pull their business from Thrive.
Think Thrive Treats Their Customers Bad? Check Out How They Treat Their Employees.
Earlier this year Thrive decided to do away with health care because of increasing prices. They replaced their health care plan with Thrives very own health care program. For single people their rates increased by 3x. The way the plan was set up was that everyone pays into a pool and the money comes out as needed for medical care. What happens to the money in the pool when these employees are terminated or laid off? It remains in the pool for the benefit of the Thrive employees. Once the company goes under only a couple people will have access to this huge pool of money.
In my time of being there, I have heard allegations of sexism (there are no females in positions of authority or management), I witnessed females who were better qualified passed over for promotions in favor of males who did a better job of brown nosing. I have witnessed coaches break down and start crying. I have witnessed employees walk out. I have witnessed employees being fired for Thrive Management mistakes. I understand that things like this happen in every business but they are a way of doing business for Thrive.
I sympathize with each and every one of you who was taken by the sales floors and by Thrive. Thrive counts on you giving up and not actively pursuing getting your money back. The BBB is a joke and can't help you with Thrive. Get attorneys involved and continually write your Attorney General. Thrive has a bad rap, if you continually complain about Thrive someone will take action.
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Jim Dayton
Forums Member
Joined: 19 Dec 2010
Posts: 2
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#23 · Posted: 5 Jan 2011 22:39
I found this thread by doing a search for Platinum Training- that is the company that charged $200 to my card.
My story is not as bad as others I have read. The deal they offered me was $200 down, $2000 financed. I did not realize immediately that the $2000 was a loan that would have to be paid back. This was made clear to me when I was reviewing the contract (exactly as posted two posts above), at that point I said hold everything. Upon being transferred back to the original sales person, he got angry with me for wasting his time (your time? You called me!) The $200 had already been charged, I had the bank reverse it.
Today someone from there called me again with the same pitch. He denied being associated with Platinum Training, but gave me the exact same phone number. Don't these people keep a record of who they have called already?
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Paige
Forums Member
Joined: 17 Jan 2011
Posts: 2
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#24 · Posted: 18 Jan 2011 17:15
spode
Oh My God!! How is this company still in business. I'm so sorry to hear that they are still taking people for a ride. I went through the same nightmare as all of you, a few years ago. I would have thought by now, they would be shut down. I hope all of your are successful at getting a refund. My best advice is, be very persistent don't quit trying. It may take some time. Trust me, persistance will pay off. Good Luck to all of you.
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formykids
Forums Member
Joined: 21 Jan 2011
Posts: 1
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#25 · Posted: 21 Jan 2011 10:27
I am trying to find Todd Nuttall, he is behind $32,000 in child support. Can anyone give me any more information on this company or him?
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Jim Dayton
Forums Member
Joined: 19 Dec 2010
Posts: 2
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#26 · Posted: 22 Mar 2011 08:43
Can anone tell me if Vensure International is associated with this group?
Vensure Int'l. is a coaching company, apparently also based in Utah. I purchased the Shoemoney system for $97, this is about affiliate marketing. Shoemoney has apparently contracted with Vensure to provide coaching. There has been no high pressure sales pitch- basically f I just want to "get my feet wet", I should just try working Shoemoney on my own. If I am really serious about starting a business, I should invest in this.
If this is just another incarnation of Thrive, I think I should stay away. If anyone has information, please post it. Thanks.
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herome
Forums Member
Joined: 28 Feb 2010
Posts: 2
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#27 · Posted: 22 Mar 2011 18:35
ForMyKids 504 west 800 north orem Utah. It is on the second floor of the Exit realty building. If you don't know what Todd looks like, he looks like a younger version of Lurch from the Adamms Family.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1297637127
Jim: When I worked there, Vensure was not contracted or associated with Thrive. However Thrive operates under several different names. I am sure with the revelation of the names, "Focus" "Spectrum" "Paragon" being another name for Thrive, the could have easily created a new name.
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rochellekirk
Forums Member
Joined: 9 Apr 2011
Posts: 1
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#28 · Posted: 9 Apr 2011 01:40
I know this is a long running post, but I found you guys while researching numerous charges I have had on my credit card over the past year. (minor charges, anywhere from $7.72-$39.99, multiple times a month) In case any of you would like to know, through my research I have found that Thrive also operates the "drop shipping" site Doba. Thats where they got me. I signed up for their 7 day free trial, and immediately canceled 20 minutes later once I accessed their site. Just like with you guys and Thrive, there are thousands and thousands of complaints about Doba all saying they were ripped off. The sad part to me in all this is that whoever is behind Doba, Thrive, Focus, Spectrum, Paragon, etc, etc (I'm sure the list goes on and on) is STILL able to have their businesses on the web and and are STILL being allowed to rip people off. I know that Doba is still up and running strong, its a shame. They prey on stay at home moms, the unemployed, and others who dream of having a home based business. My word of advice: When it comes to wholesalers, distributors, drop shippers, etc if they don't ask you for a resell license, tax ID, tax exempt certificate or whatever it is called in the state you live in, they are in no way possible a legit B2B company. In fact almost all wholesalers and ALL distributors will require a more lengthy approval process including trade reference checks, appointments with their local representatives, minimum orders (not always, but usually). But the biggest hint that whoever your dealing with is an ACTUAL WHOLESALER, is that they will never, ever, ever, EVER charge you in order to sell their products or access their site. I am what is known in this trade as an "authorized distributor" for many, many manufacturers, and I can tell you first hand that it is more common to reject applications from retailers or wholesalers then it is to approve them as dealers. I'm sorry everyone went through this. I was taken too, and all I was looking for was additional manufacturers that were looking for a distribution company to represent their products, which is what the sales person told me when I called. Well like I said before I cancelled my free trial not even 20 minutes later. Be careful out there everyone.
__________________
Rochelle Kirk
Owner
Posh Distribution Company
"Online Distribution Warehouse"
http://www.PoshDistribution.com
http://www.RMZDist.com
http://www.iWholesaleInc.com
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dupped
Forums Member
Joined: 3 Dec 2011
Posts: 2
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#29 · Posted: 3 Dec 2011 22:31
5 Dec 2011 00:32 - Attached on merging:
The Tax Club and Focuslc and Thrive
DO NOT SIGN UP WITH "THE TAX CLUB" and FOCUSLC/THRIVE! Stay as far away from them as you can. I have been scammed out of thousands of dollars after signing up with Success Team/ Excel aka. Focuslc and The Tax Club.... and many more names. I should have known and I wish I would have done research before signing up with them, but I was anxious to start up a home based business to supplement our income. The sales person was so convincing telling me he would help me with what I need to successfully operate a business, work at home, earn a lot of money. I started the program working many hours trying to find a niche and find suppliers and products to sell on my website. They never taught me how to work on a website, the coach never got past the E-bay stage. I told her, if I wanted to learn how to sell on E-bay I would never have signed up with the program. I didn't know I was signing up to learn about E-bay. My 20 weeks ~ which didn't add up to 20 training sessions ~ were up and they dropped me like a hot potato. I didn't quite understand that because I was expecting to be half way through the training sessions. I didn't get past 15%. I overpaid for this training and didn't receive all that was promised and some of the services were duplicated. Like I paid for someone to set up my website, but later realized that I already paid to set up the website myself. The Tax Club seems to have completely disappeared because I paid for services, but they didn't follow through with what they offered. I have called to inquire and continue to be sent to customer service voicemail and they do not return any phone calls.
This site came up while I was looking for information on The Tax Club and Focuslc/Thrive. The thread was from a few years ago and it is hard to find recent information of complaints about these companies. But they are still out here scamming people. I would like to know if any of the posters from the previous thread "Has anyone heard of Thrive Learning Institute" had any luck in getting ALL their money back from these many named companies? As I am writing my complaints to several agencies and my cc companies, it is amazing how many names they are going by. Success Planning Group, Success Online, Excel, My Essential Plans, Strategic Business Solutions, The Tax Club, FocusLC....... How do they keep up with all the names? If you have been scammed by these companies, lets work together to get our money back and put these people who continue to scam us out of our hard earned money, behind bars and unable to close a company and start up with another one.
What is your story with this company?
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