Thumbtack

I come at it from the professional service provider side. I used thumbtack for a year or so and in that time the policies have DRAMATICALLY changed. It used to be that if a "client" didnt respond within 48 hours, you would get a refund on the fee you paid for that lead. Now you don't worse yet is that they have multiplied the cost of leads to about 10X! It is insane!

The worst part... are you ready for this?: is that now, if you read their terms an conditions, they monitor your email and text messages for "quality" - now i am not just talking about emails you send via their app - i am talking about YOUR EMAIL and YOUR PHONE. Basically they are invading your privacy and you must allow them to do it if you want to use their "service"

Terrible experience - tons of wasted money.

STAY AWAY!

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I started using Thumbtack as a professional in August 2017, shortly after I'd started my own business as a freelance and contract writer and editor.

Initially, this was a great place to start out my business. The transparency was great, and I could easily see what I would be spending any time I put in a bid. Because I was cautious and bid carefully, I tended to land half the jobs I bid on, or better. It was a good balance.

The compatibility of Thumbtack with my business (and many small businesses like mine) ended abruptly in June. The new model pitched that we would be paying for leads, not bids, so we'd only pay if we were contacted. Since different leads had different value, the prices could vary. The algorithm for determining value was never clear, and the prices were exorbitant. Most of my jobs run 1-3 hours, and most of my clients aren't likely to bring repeat business (because my most frequent service has to do with higher education personal statements), but I could expect to pay an hour's worth of work for a lead that could easily be someone just price shopping (which the new system hasn't eliminated, despite that being pitched as a primary goal).

The changes to Thumbtack have apparently impacted the customer end as well, because the jobs I used to see posted aren't coming up anymore. I was initially told that these jobs must not exist anymore (like they somehow went extinct), but I've found plenty of them with networking and Fiverr, so it's more likely that my clients have ditched the system.

I would NOT recommend any pro use Thumbtack to generate leads.

I've used thumbtack for several years, in the beginning, leads were affordable, and based on the type of photography the client was looking for. Over the years, thumbtack has changed their pricing structure, sometimes multiple times in a 6 month period. You also used to be able to submit a question to the potential client for further clarification before placing a bid. This was a great feature to weed out people just fishing. It's now extremely expensive to purchase leads (7 credits at $1.66 each) for a wedding no matter the budget ($400 through to $3000). And there is no way to clarify or ask for more verifications before purchasing the lead. I've also found that leads come in quite heavily during the day during the week, and it's rather quiet on the week-ends. However, the week-end clients are much more responsive than the week day ones. If thumbtack could be more aggressive with the potential clients to filter out the 'tire kickers' it would be a great service. As it stands - us pros are the ones paying Thumbtack to stay in business. I feel like we are the real client and the system is definitely not set up in our favor.

Well let me tell my story with thumbtack, I had been using them for about a year and half, had great reviews, I can honestly say I've never encountered a problem with any of my clients prior to Ms Nancy, I was trying to help her out by letting her pay when she sold her flip house, which she never planned on paying in the first place, I hired an attorney and we are legal battles now, in the meantime I try signing into thumbtack and none of passwords worked, nor did my wife's, so I finally get in touch with thumbtack and they refuse to talk to me about anything, just tell me someone called and made a report against me, they refused to listen to my side, said they couldn't discuss anything with me... the end! They have yet to do so! This lady made a false complaint with the ms board of contractors against my dad, whom she has never met, she made a lot of false allegations against me and my fathers company who's never had a complaint made our whole entire life, and has been in business for 40+ years! She has ran this scam before I came along, prior contractors have had to sue her to get their money! I think it was very unprofessional the way they handled my situation, and I have a lot more work with home advisor, and they have treated me and my dad fairly, I feel they are more professional and know how to handle situations like this versus Thumbtack who would never listened, or let me tell my side of the story! I feel they have discriminated against me from the beginning, she hasn't paid them a dime, I did ever week!

Paying nearly $7 for each property management lead is rather expensive, especially when it's obvious that some of the requests for proposals are fake or from competitors shopping the competition, but I was able to land my firm a new client thanks to Thumbtack. This client did not make contact in any of the other standard lead generation platforms, so I'm glad I had an account with Thumbtack. The only caveat I have is that there is no way to tell who is sending the request, and you are not provided any contact information to a real person directly after paying for the lead. That means you can spend a lot of money on unverifiable leads, and that makes me somewhat uncomfortable. If I had not signed a new client in the time frame that I did, I would probably have stopped using Thumbtack, simply because of the uncertainty of authenticity. I also wish that they would add property management to the list of services that a user can browse.

Jonathan A. Matthews, Broker/Realtor, CPM Candidate
*******@RDUBROKER
*******@rdubroker.com

I hired a so called "pro", Charles "Charlie" Lavoie of CJ Office and Home Repair for what was a small project. He upsold me on repairs I didn't need, damaged some electrical that was working fine before he messed with it, started small parts of each project, then after only coming to the house that 1 time he asked for more money. When I asked him to complete at least half of the work for half of the money he didn't respond. 2 days later he texted saying he was in the hospital and would continue work 2 days later. In 1 week he had did less than a day of work on my projects, that initially was a small $300 job. He then reported to Thumbtack that he completed work and I did not pay him (this was a lie). Thumbtack disabled my account without hearing one word from me regarding the matter (I was out of town when Charlie told them I didn't pay him). I sent pictures of the incomplete work, proof of $300 payment the day before he reported that I didn't pay him, and screenshots of his text messages. Thumbtack then reactivated my account without so much as an apology saying they would review Charles's status with Thumbtack. This lying contractor is still active on their site. There was another review where he took money and never returned. Charles claims to be a man of God, and that he takes his work personally. He is a liar, do not hire him or use Thumbtack for contractors. How can Thumbtack, in good conscience, provide a platform for contractors that they've seen proof of lying and stealing from customers?

Thumbtack charges me $180 for 2 jobs I didn't even get told them I didn't make any money didn't offer me a refund as a struggling American this saddens my heart that I trusted thumbtack with my card info for them to keep charging me and still want trying to charge me before I Locked my card I had to call my bank to report them but thumbtack doesn't refund you like they say for jobs you do not get I THINK THEY SHOULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS THEY ARE REALLY SCAMMERS READ REVIEWS……. Because I wished I would have before using the app to make money as an at home mom which they take advantage of you.

If you see a "pro" with their phone number be very wary of using that professional. First of all, it's against Thumbtack policy to do include a phone number on any pro's picture. You're supposed to contact the pro through either the Thumbtack website, or through their app. Don't fall prey to shady professionals. If you contact them directly, like I did, you have no recourse to leave a review of their shoddy work on the Thumbtack website, allowing the pro the opportunity to continue deceptive practices and cheat Thumbtack out of their fees as well, and leaving you the paying customer no recourse to warn others. Thumbtack DOES NOT screen their picture postings of their professionals, so you'll be amazed at how many of them post pictures with phone numbers so you are "duped" into a direct contact scenario. DON'T FALL FOR IT. Thumback DOES NOT HAVE YOUR BACK HERE! Here's a picture of the painting job I paid over $ 2,000 for, plus the contractor has threatend to lien my house.

Hello to all,

I'm actually a service provider who utilizes "Thumbtack" for the majority of my business. I would like to point out that there are always scammers out there trying to take advantage of people, and this is true on both sides of the fence. I've bid on jobs only to show up and find 5 times the amount of work described in the request, I've also had a customer scam me out of close to $1800 on a minor home improvement issue.

However, after all that being said, I have no one to blame but myself. I didn't get ANYTHING in writing, it was all verbal/hand-shake...

1.) Contracts are but ONE way to avoid scammers
2.) ALWAYS check to see if they are Licensed, Bonded and Insured!
3.) Take a look at the companies profile, read it... How many grammatical errors are there? How many people have hired them? How many reviews? Are the reviews good or bad? What is the ratio of Hired/Reviewed? Does the profile have photos? Does the company have a website? Does the website have photos?

These are just steps one might take to make sure that who you hire are who they claim to be.

Thank you very much for your time!

How can you Blind Bid a Major Contracting Project. Signed up, Paid the Money to help grow the Business. Received Leads. Minimal information (Most was Bad or Incorrect) Submitted Blind Bids. Person would open the Bid to review. You were charged MONEY without a contact or conversation with the potential customer. Thumbtack is SELLING LEADS. This is a LEAD SELLING COMPANY. You WILL SPEND MONEY. Thumbtack will also SELL your Contact Information. My phone and emails have been non stop with Telemarketers. SAVE YOUR MONEY. Thumbtack, Home Advisor or Angie's List NOT WORTH THE TIME OR MONEY>

In theory, their business model sounds good. You sign up your business. Clients looking for your service will put in a request for a bid. You receive that request and it's up to you if you want to bid on that job.

There are several big issues with Thumbtack's business model though. First, YOU have to pay THEM for the privilege of bidding. Well, it's a service, after all and they should get paid. My problem is that you are paying them whether you get the bid or not. Unfortunately all too often you just simply never hear back about your bid. No, "thank you very much but I chose someone else," message. Nothing. There is no flat bid rate either. I haven't figured their algorithm for pricing, but it's steep.

My biggest point of contention is that you are asked to bid on jobs with ridiculously vague and uninformative descriptions. "Client needs a [job] for [$XXX]" and a few generic lines half describing what they need. No business person in their right mind would ever quote a job without a full description outlining what they are required to do. And there is no way to get that information since everything is funneled through their idiotic system.

Word of mouth and pavement pounding are way more effective than this 'service'.

I have been trying to make a payment on my account since 03/15/18. I owe $22.97. I have made 3 payments prior to this charge.
I have called my bank and the specialist there told me there is no block on the account and that Thumbtack has been charging me $0.00
I have been trying to speak to someone there about how much they are charging per customer reached, and no one will provide that information. There are no set prices for their service. They can literally charge what every they want and won't break it down for you.
Now, since they can't figure out how to charge me properly, they have blocked my access to my customers and to send quotes.
I have tried the customer service chat room, calling (on hold for over 30 min each time), emailing, and now texting. The people I interact will don't seem to understand English and have a copy-paste response to everything. This month I have already spent $40 for a $100 customer. So far that's 40% of my profits.
Save your time, your money, and most importantly, your sanity.

I work with Thumbtack app almost around a year, They send me different customer and because I have a small business and I just try to grow up my business I had a minimum price for every project but it wasn't matter the customer say no tanks or they just say I need the estimate! Because when they send me a customer I already sent a price for the job it means the customer know the estimate for the job they charge me for a fake customer and this is a robbery. I'm license electrician and I am owner of K&N Electric llc.

So thumbtack was helpful in getting me in contact with tradesmen I was looking for, but what I didn't know was that their privacy policy is garbage. They state our information is only for them and they even state that they value my privacy. I have received 15-20 scam calls a day for a week now since signing up. It took only about an hour or two after signing up with thumbtack, that the calls started rolling in- from all over the United States.
And they aren't tradesmen that accidentally got my project inquiry. No, it's people asking me to donate to some cause I've never heard of, or people hanging up on me when I pick up. They will be calls from a #*******000 or a regular number… I get them all. I'm super disappointed and annoyed by this and im really not sure it was worth it. Also, when I call some of the numbers back because they say they're from my area, thinking maybe I missed a call from someone I may know. The phone says "this number is not in service"… complete scam. I called thumbtack to remove my number but it's too late.

I hired a cleaning lady through Thumbtack last year. She kept pushing me to give her a good review on Thumbtack. I told her I would after she worked for me for awhile. She did a great job cleaning so I gave her a great review on Thumbtack. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of leaving her alone in my house one time. She stole jewelry and blank checks that were cashed. I wanted to prevent anyone else from experiencing what I did so I went to change my review on Thumbtack. My plan was to just say "I will never allow this woman in my house again". Unfortunately, I wrote the review and it was rejected by Thumbtack because I had already reviewed this person once. I called Thumbtack and explained the circumstances and told them I wanted to change my review. Their policy is to not allow a change in review once it's been made. I strongly disagreed and was transferred to a supervisor who was very sympathetic and assured me that Thumbtack would review it's policy and would get back to me once it was reviewed. It's been over two month now and I've never heard back from anyone and you still can not change a review. In my opinion, I would not trust any reviews posted on Thumbtack as you have no opportunity to find out the truth about who you are contracting with through Thumbtack. I will never use them again.