Trial membership status

I am using my trial membership to see how this website works.  Every time that I try to get into a group and see what is going on or try to friend people, who have reached out to friend me, I get routed back to the page that tells me my options for payment.  If I am unable to interact with the others who use the system how am I to know if this system is going to work for me?  Is this like this purposely?  Am I experiencing some sort of glitch? Please inform me, because from what I am seeing here I still do not see the hands on sort of information that I need to move forward.  Thank you, Gail