New plan to help with refunds
Well, it seems that all predictions seem to be off with Thrive. Yea, they’re still within their first five years that it takes to really make a business operate (but still will probably end up failing). Utah’s Department of Consumer Protection don’t seem to care about the way, we the people, were hung out to dry by Thrive and their lying sales floors. Glen Minson, so called investigator for DCP knows who they are and what they do, but apparently having to contact and deal with Thrive’s Page Ranking person over and over again for so long, seems to have struck up quite a friendly relationship. Anyone who’s had to deal with this Glen character knows what’s being said here. Thanks Glen, for bending over, stringing along and throwing these innocent people under the bus while you were supposed be getting paid to protect them. The most recent news is that they've gotten out from under that Utah Business Opportunities Act by simply changing their contract and cutting a deal with the state (called "settling out of court"…Oh yea, that's right, the Utah Attorney General already took his donations, didn't he?)
Which means, outside of some embarrassment, Thrive gets to skate…and get back to the business of scamming people as usual. Of course, they can pay the best designers they can find to hawk their wares and a marketing division which does nothing but game the search engines…and top it all off with a complete lack of customer service(weak videos and worse coaching). They don't understand how real commerce works, only how to scam - so their promotion, marketing and delivery sucks because their customer service sucks (what a vicious circle).
What really sucks is that they seem to get away with it. Of course, this really means that when you get right down to it, it's only you and me and other people we know that can shut these crooks down - either they get out of the business (unlikely) or they have the sales floor and learning under the same roof where they have to take more responsibility for what they deliver. Customer service is number one in keeping a business alive…and they don’t have any of it.
In case you didn’t notice most all the people who had personal blogs have mostly disappeared from the scene. After some research it turns out they were made to sign a little note which probably doesn't have any real legal weight behind it - but no one has the money to take it to a real lawyer to check it out. If you go to antifraudintl dot com and do a search containing, "The Utah telemarketing scam ring - Thrive Learning Institute, Colton Moody", you can find a refund release agreement at the end of the thread.
What are people doing to get back at Thrive(who don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to this) ? Simple, They just dig up the poop Thrive left lying around in public areas(forums and blogs) and then copy and post it to their blog. A lot of this information is actually in the forums. More can be found by simply looking up Google's cached copies (or checking with other people in the various forums to see if they downloaded those pages.)
Dave Rasumussen has tried to go nearly invisible by hiding his wife's blog. Eric Largin has similarly locked down his LinkedIn pages so that no one can actually network with him (so why does he have a LinkedIn page then?) Colton Moody still has his picture up on facebook with his wife. Zach Bradshaw has been either too busy or too embarrassed to put his real face or info up anywhere - and he'll never want to do this, unless he moves out of Utah or even the country (way to go, Zach - you just blew any chance to enjoy the Internet like the rest of us...)
But a lot of stuff has been exposed on these guys and there is still a lot more out there.
The reason these blogs disappeared is that they tied the personal lives of those scammers. Their actual family, friends, community (as well as the local Chamber of Commerce) don't know what they do. Just like sneaky politicians, they can't stand the spotlight. So, they easily buy off those complaining customers by refunding them - and think nothing about infringing on their First Amendment Rights and getting them to sign them away. Again, it was hard not to notice all the blogs and comments removed from forums and the rest of the internet in the last five months.
Now with this being an election year, we can actually have some fun with the candidates by asking them the real questions about what their stand on the Utah scams are. Then post any response to the forums, where others can see, comment, and do their own emails and calls to these offices. Then ask their own questions like, “how they are going to act (or not) on the illegal activities that Utah is becoming known for. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is running against Bob Bennett in the primary. Be sure to give Bennett all the info you have about Shurtleff's campaign contributions...
These forums have been the most effective work in forcing Thrive to reform. These posts don't go away (except where they made taking down forum posts as part of their paper agreement/payoff deal) as long as they are factual. As long as they are true they won't be taken down by the moderators or administrators.
These forums are an open invitation to recover and post the data from those now-missing blogs. And so, people would then be able to simply have all the real, publicly-available information to quote and post on their own blogs.
The simplicity of setting up a blog is nearly as easy as creating a forum post. So it's a no-brainer that if we could simply get in touch with all these people who have given up on their refund and then had them scrape, copy, and post the information found (making sure to link back to where they got it, of course) - these people could get their refunds a lot faster.
Of course, nobody is saying we should organize or anything like that – (we don't want to stoop to racketeering like Colton Moody, Eric Largin, and Matt and Dave Rasmussen). This post is only bringing up ideas that should be made known to anyone who is posting in these forums.
If you want your money back fast, you start a blog and spill the beans. That's just a fact.
Now, what we on this forum and those few who still have blogs out there are really doing is trying to educate the public on how to use the Internet.
(Same thing the scammers are doing, but they cost a lot more for that education...)
So the suggestion here to anyone interested in stopping Thrive and getting their refund, is:
• Copy this post and repost on the forums from time to time(especially if it was removed)
• Contact everyone they can on the forums to see if they are interested in setting up blogs.
• Find people who have the publicly-accessible information on these individuals (which had been posted on blogs and forums before and now have disappeared)
• Get that info recovered and posted to the forums (all of them, if possible) so that this data will always be publicly-known and readily available.
That would mean that everyone has to get several other people blogging before they put up their own blog. Thrive didn't just get those informative blogs removed, they also made that data disappear on the forums. Their strategy was to pick off the hardest working and most dedicated, pay them, and force them to take down all their hard work…all vital public information.
Saundrak is still around and so is Kona - both of whom are willing to work with anyone on getting started with their refund cycles. (And if you want to help these two, visit their blogs and post comments there - it starts ranking them above Thriveli.com.
Thrive Learning Institute is set to go under if they have to start paying off too many refunds (they only make 10% out of every sale), and would have to pay back the rest (which they can’t get back from the sales floors). They've probably already spent the money they did get ...serves you right.
Their other option is to declare bankruptcy and start over. However, the same truthful yet negative information will still be in those forums when they surface again.
I'm asking everyone on this forum:
What do you think of that plan? Do you think it’s possible? Do you think the people in this forum (and others) will get behind this and get everyone blogging to get their refunds?
Personally, hopes are high…but, I don't think that it will actually get rid of scammers totally. PMI Inc and some others like Pacific Webworks have been around for some ten years. Nobody has ever shut them down and their scamming ways still continue. They are only a little better than Thrive…but only because they have a better business plan (mostly because they generate their own leads and cut out the middleman).
But… what we can do is start picking up people who have been discouraged into quitting and getting these guys to simply put up a blog so they can get their money back.
So, what do you think?!?
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