Corporate greed for maximum profits and control have both ruined thumbtack services for pros. I called it a few years ago, knew it was only a matter of time. Oh well on to the next. I've along with many have outgrown them. They will sell their company or go under within next couple years.
To many people just wanting prices and have no intention of building. At $50,00 plus per lead plus time and money spent driving to meet people that don't know what they need. Also as a Pro you are NOT supposed to be charged for leads when your calendar is blocked! Guess what not so, then this company hides behind do no reply e mails instead of answering phone calls. Save time and money, go to Home Adviser or some other reputable business.
I'm disgusted at how this company treats their pros. Specially when we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for leads. They are greedy and they treat their professionals very poorly this is not a business model I will ever want to be associated with again
Thumbtack was a good solid way to get leads. Now that the market is flooded with so called contractors there are not enough work to go around.so to keep thumbtack going someone thought up a great idea lets create virtual customers and let the poor saps bid on them. This might be a job for the Attorney Generals office.
It took me 42 tries to get one job on Thumbtack. The system doesn't allow you to weed out people that are just fishing for a price. Too many leads with no phone number available. Gigmasters requires a phone number and so does Eventective. I did everything asked. Been verified, submitted reviews, pictures and videos of the band. Website links. It doesn't make sense to put any more money into this site. When my credits run out so do I.
My wife and I run a mobile photo booth for weddings and other events in our area. We thought this would be a good way to get our name out beyond regular advertising which we do. A ton of leads have come in but nothing has ever come through! PLUS, I put in our description before I send the quote that "please contact us via phone or email to discuss any details personally".
It would save "credits, right? Why can't we just pay for the lead and then deal with the people directly? Something tells me this whole thing is a scam
The main issue with Thumbtack is that it makes you sign up for a "generous" spending plan each week. Once your credits are up because people even accidentally clicked on your profile (and yes, be ready to spend $25-40 on a lead) your profile disappears from the site. The lead that contacted me cost me $23 and then it turned out the budget for the job was about 1/4th of what I charge. When Ireached out to Thumbtack after numerous calls on multiple days I received a message: "thumbtack is training employees and there's no one to answer the call, goodbye". I was trying to get my "one time courtesy refund" This place is pathetic and I gotta say I am in better place with bark.com now. At Bark I would purchase credits and use them only when I wish.
This so called business should not exist. These are people who figured out a way to make money by promoting people who call themselves professionals. However their listings are not vetted. Customer service is extremely poor. There's no value added here - it's actually better to use the yellow pages. Most concerning to me is Thumbtack apparent lack of ethics.
I thought this was going to be a good site but after I figured out that I have to set a weekly budget for every service, and the minimum was $30 which would buy just one response to my quotes, my jaw dropped. I offer about 10 services through graphic design so I'm supposed to fork over $300 a week to get leads that may go nowhere? Forget about it!
But of course as I was reading these outrageous terms after submitting my first quote on a job, I started seeing no less than 12 new quote requests pop up in email. All time and date stamped within minutes. I've been on freelance job sites for years and this just smacks of fraud. Even horrible, phony sites like UpWork don't have this kind of traffic. Fake, fake, fake.
Been on thumbtack 1 month. Have spent more on "leads" than made off them. Charge outrageous amounts for absolutely nothing. I believe they are bots. Most have no response, no answer when you call, no text and never call you back.I asked for refunds. None! If the "lead" is "real" why absolutely nothing? Example: Today. Paid $63 for a "lead" which was sent to 6 different pros. If all paid $63, Thumbtack made $378 in total off one "lead" but say they limit competition. How so? Scam and hiding my business. Will not waste anymore money. Robbing small businesses owners!
I've set appointments with 2 different people to paint the interior of my house and put down new flooring so it's not like it's a little nothing job. Both times they never never showed. Will never use thumbtack again.
As far as I can tell they do no research on who they let list as pros. I'm all for second chances, but I hired a personal trainer, and like an idiot didn't do a simple google search before hiring him because I trusted Thumbtack had done that. After he ripped me off for 150 bucks I searched him and found his mug shot, then criminal history. He had just gotten out of jail for threatening to kill someone, gun charges, CDS, etc. I'm afraid to changing my rating of him and I can't delete it. I let this man into my home with two kids as a single mom.
Be careful of this site. They are purposely vague in their pricing explanations because they don't want you to know your costs. They are only interested in getting your referral money, even if it means charging you more than the contract worth. I quoted a client a very low fee for a quick question and Thumbtack charged me $46 over the quote... yes I just LOST $$ on a Thumbtack engagement. Also, their customer service is useless. They only send canned answers and really don't try and resolve anything. No customer focus at this organization. Businesses Beware!
My husband had a company singed up with thumbtack for almost 3 years.
At initial sign they made everything look legitimate but slowly and now very greedily they have their own people who create fake leads and involve every other company possible that is turned on to show up in search results therefore charging everybody for the same job, after they come up with all kinda of excuses to either cancelling the call, saying they went with someone else already, or lie that they didnt know they supposedly have a insurance company to do the repair for free.
Unfortunately that is the world we are in right now!
Their greed shall be their downfall to an end.
We're sorry to hear your feedback, and that the platform didn't end up working for your husband's business. It's important to us that we provide quality leads to pros on the platform, we take this very seriously and have processes in place to remove any leads that are illegitimate. While that doesn't mean every lead will always result in a job, you shouldn't have to pay for leads that aren't interested in starting a project. Please report these suspicious leads here: https://help.thumbtack.com/report-a-concern so that our team can look further into them and issue a refund if they are in fact illegitimate leads.
They advertise no fees until a client responds to your bid. Then fake clients respond, they probably work for thumbtack and ask a question which means $25 is billed to your credit card. Never heard from again! Money grabbing rip off! Do not fall for this scam!
Chef Wayne
I have been a member of thumbtack for 2 weeks. I received 6 calls gave them a price quote nothing happen. For a week now I received no calls.no e-mails. I called the company and they claim is a slow time there has to be a better site that will give me more customers. Keep you money in your own wallet.And find some one else.
I would highly recommend putting money elsewhere - either advertisement or improving tools you already have instead of giving thumbtack money. It cost me $30 to simply have someone ask me a question. I look at the insights to see that this customer spoke with SEVEN people to get some more "info" from other businesses. Which means that they made a couple hundred dollars off this one customer looking for business.
Thumbtack has lost me and a few others to their terrible platform. There are other companies (bark.com) that do the same thing for less money. Either way, I'll be spending money on advertisements and word-of-mouth to get my business out there.
And honestly if you are a customer just find a local contractor and hire direct. These companies rip off contractors so bad they have no choice but to charge a whole lot more money for the same work because this company charges a very large sum of money just to even get a bid and most never pan out.
If you are a contractor just run local ads or find a local company to help you advertise. These companies rip off contractors badly. Each bid that comes out makes them hundreds of dollars and they don't even have to guarantee a customer replies. They got me for enough before I realized how useless they really are. If all good contractors dumped them and all they had left were the conmen (like the people running Thumbtack) then their days will be numbered.
I'm done with their scam.
Worst business I have ever dealt with in in my lifetime about (50) years. They don't know how to communicate. The thing is they give little info so you don't make money. Fraudulent.com should be there Name. -5 deflated Stars ---5 below 0 Status
Too bad experience with Devon at Thumbtack. She basically forced us to accept a claim made by a lier customer. We sent proof of the service and she didn't care. Closed our account and didn't check how many people were being serviced that day nor the paid leads that just got through.
I dont recommend using thumbtack for PROS if they are not transparent or set up a committee who can take a decision of such caliper as to shutting down an account with a year of history and hundreds of people served. With 4+ stars
Overview
Thumbtack has a rating of 1.8 stars from 1,569 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers dissatisfied with Thumbtack most frequently mention customer service, credit card and phone number. Thumbtack ranks 100th among Local Reviews sites.
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- San Francisco, CA, United States
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Company Representative
- Sitejabber’s sole mission is to increase online transparency for buyers and businesses
- Sitejabber has helped over 200M buyers make better purchasing decisions online
- Suspicious reviews are flagged by our algorithms, moderators, and community members
- Sitejabber’s sole mission is to increase online transparency for buyers and businesses
- Sitejabber has helped over 200M buyers make better purchasing decisions online
- Suspicious reviews are flagged by our algorithms, moderators, and community members
Thank you for taking the time to share your honest feedback, we're sorry to see you go. Lead pricing varies depending on size of the job, location, type, etc. If you receive leads that didn't intend to communicate with you, please submit refund requests here: https://help.thumbtack.com/article/how-to-request-a-refund. You're always welcome to email support@thumbtack.com with questions about pricing, refunds, leads, or the platform in general. If there's anything we can do to turn around your experience, please let us know.