A Simple Account Change Shouldn’t Require a Sales Pitch
I generally like Thrive Market and have used them for quite a while. They offer a large selection of specialty and hard-to-find foods, and having so many products in one place is convenient. That said, there are two recurring issues that have left me disappointed. First, packaging. In many shipments, heavy items such as cans are packed alongside bags of chips and other fragile items. As a result, I frequently receive crushed snacks. To their credit, customer service has usually provided credits when this happens, but it has occurred often enough that it feels like an ongoing problem rather than an occasional mistake. My bigger concern is the membership renewal process. I was not trying to cancel my membership. I simply wanted to turn off auto-renew because I wasn't using the service enough to justify paying for another year. I still had months remaining on my current membership and specifically told customer service that there was nothing wrong with the company. Instead of simply disabling auto-renew, I was put through multiple rounds of retention offers. I was asked why I didn't like the service, offered coupons, offered discounted renewal rates, and repeatedly given sales pitches despite clearly stating that I only wanted auto-renew turned off. At one point I explicitly asked them to stop trying to upsell me and simply process my request. Even then, I received additional offers and pricing options instead of assistance. What should have been a simple account setting took far longer than necessary because Thrive does not appear to allow customers to disable auto-renew themselves and instead routes them through a retention script. The most frustrating part is that the issue was resolved immediately once I became firm and threatened to escalate the matter. That suggests the request could have been handled from the beginning. I don't have a problem with companies offering a retention discount once. What I do have a problem with is having to repeatedly decline sales offers in order to make a basic change to my account. If Thrive allowed customers to manage auto-renewal directly from their account settings, I would have had no complaint at all.