Tom G.

I have exhausted myself trying to respond to these postings and have no response at all on several of those and to the one's I got some feedback — they were equally annoying. Firstly, the scope of the project is never correctly represented. The wild $#*! guess way of working does not apply to my line of work where a lot of the tools of my trade have to be rented based on the demands of the project. As a video production and creative agency, we cannot always staff the experts needed for the wide variety of jobs we are capable of handling. So for each job we scope out the requirement and then go about tailoring a budget that including hiring the right professionals at varying levels of skill and renting out equipment for the length of time required to complete the gig. Thumbtack posts do not provide enough information to help assess any of these parameters to be able to quote a reasonable and fair price that will be in the ballpark of what the final cost should be. Also, as the review below states, I am very suspicious that the site is engaging in fake posts just to have its subscribers spend all their coins and become desperate to buy more coins because just as you end up low, they'll send you gigs that look like a perfect match and will require you to purchase more coins, usually 10 times the value [coins required to respond] of the post you are looking to respond to.

I have had no success with this service and highly recommend saving your time, energy, and money – so you may wisely invest it in the real work on real relationship that are always the only way to get good and lasting clients through personal referrals.

Here's a review I found elsewhere that says it all:

We did not submit our company for membership. From our "profile" it is obvious that they just called our office and used the first name of the person that answered the phone.
She must have given them our email address also. We are a licensed contractor, but they do not check that out at all, so it is a bad service for the consumer. They have almost 250 Better Business complaints. From a company standpoint, here is how it works.
You pay them money upfront and get "coins" to spend. They send out a request for service to all companies in your specialty. The request just says from Mark L. In (town) to paint a 2500 sq ft house.
Up to 5 companies can pay "coins" to bid on the job. You have no idea what to really charge for the job, because you have no chance to go see it. So 5 companies have paid Thumbtack for the opportunity to bid sight unseen. The consumer is sent all the bids, and maybe or maybe not chooses one of them, even though all 5 have paid for the lead.
And best of all, if you read complaints from service providers, they say that a lot of the "leads" seem to be worded exactly the same and seem to come from Thumbtack employees.
One provider said he paid in excess of $1,300 for leads over about 3 months and got one job for $400. Both service providers and consumers should stay away from this company!