Thumbtack

I am a handyman on thumbtack, they changed there pricing structure so you are forced to take bookings at the customer request, but i believe that they trick the customers into booking so they charge you triple the cost of your past lead fees. Before if you miss a lead you can absorb the cost, now your average cost is $36 per lead, no more $9, $10 leads, they tripled the cost. Today alone they gouge me for $283 in leads, one person only booked me, yet she would not even answer the phone, nor text, nor any response, that lead cost $69, now i have to beg for my refund which takes 2-3 days, but they take 5.
Today alone i paid in fees $283 with no sales to show for it.
In the beginning it was great, the lead prices were fair, you can absorb losing leads, but not anymore, in the last two weeks they stole money, overbooked when i would get a lead for a full day, they would still book within the time frame, be it so i could have shut the service down, but sometimes your so busy with trying to help customers that you might not turn off phone. God forbid you leave it on at night, then the customers never respond but you pay for it.
I don't understand why these lead companys get so greedy, shut out the little guy and force them to work for nothing.
Leads work, its nice when a company provides them, its unfortunate when they change to force you to do a service that does not work for you in regards to the booking service.

I was told I had 4 free leads if I advertised my Buisness with them. I was them charged over 300$ in a week for extremely small jobs that I couldn't get to because of the weather. They charged me 75$ FOR ME TO RE-LIGHT A WATEE HEATER! Meaning I make 0 profit. Then I ask customer service what the heck and Mr YAS (that's his name) says I shouldn't have set my limits as high as I did hahahah! I've been in this business for 16 years buddy. I'm furious.

I hired marcos reyes construction charged $1,100 pain and put up Dryealll. Forgot the insulation said it be extra was in the contract. I wanted the bedroom closet painted he left the closet doors not painted I asked him numerous times was he going to paint them yes. Left door trim unpainted was in contract and window trim. I was charged an extra $100. For what I don't know. Now I left painting the doors. I have a lung disease I can inhale the paint

I joined as a thumbtack Pro almost 10 years ago with my personal training business and for several years it was an unbelievably great platform for my business, quality leads, good clients, and an unbelievable ROI. I referred many other Pros to the platform as well. That being said the last 2 years it is a completely different company and genuinely feels like a complete scam. I went from converting almost 95% of leads to clients to literally less than 3% in the last 2 years. I've changed nothing with my business and the only thing that's changed is there unbelievable price increase and what feels like fake leads to generate their company money. For anyone looking to sign up for thumbtack now I would highly recommend you run in the other direction, they used to be great for me but but since 2021 or so they have cost me way more money than I have made from them and I do believe a class action suit might be on the horizon for this company.

It used to be kind of good. Now it is in clear decline.
For a long time I've been asking them fo add the category "Latin" to music entertainment, to be able to receive more specific leads, but they haven't. It's been months whithout being hired through them.
On top of that, the way they charge you is not well designed and doesn't work properly. Many times you end up paying for leads that don't turn into hiring.
I don't recommend them.

Thumbtack will provide you with leads. But I even if you cannot take the job, they charge you. If you try to reach a living body by phone, expect 0 response. If you email with questions expect NO response. You'd be better off tacking you resume to telephone poles at least you know your bank account is safe. Their business model is self enrichment not customer or client support.

I was told they only speak to gold and platinum members on the phone. In other words I'm not important because I don't spend that kind of money that golden platinum members do. However they also allow people to write reviews based on lies and unfounded information. Tried to provide proof that the review was false and they still refuse to remove the bad review. I am very highly rated and reviewed, I rarely get any bad reviews if any at all. Not to mention that I feel like I'm texting with a robot instead of a real person. They also charge multiple pros for the same leads. They'll give the same leads to different pros and charge them almost $13 for each lead. If hindsight Was 2020 I would have gone with Angie's list since I have so many great reviews on Thumbtack I didn't want to
Switch. But I'm working on switching now and having my clients review me on Angie's list. Once I do that I will shut down my Thumbtack account. Don't sign up with them whatever you do! Now let's see how they feel about getting a bad review and nothing they can do about it!

I started with Thumbtack as a pro dog trainer over 4 years ago. The cost of leads were about $7 per lead and refunded if there was zero response from potential lead. Here we are 4 years later, cost is now $14- 17.50 per lead! Lots of non serious leads, some shopping for a friend or even shopping for dog trainers before they acquire a dog. Many don't want to spend $$. No responses is common. You pay equal amounts for leads with zero contact info, so you are forced to use the Thumbtack platform- no phone or email. Competition sites. Bark.com per lead around $11-13 and you get a phone number and email address. Advertising and lead referral costs money, but seems throwing nearly $20 per lead is crazy! The people don't know they charge the pros... so they will even relist and keep costing pros money. Basic idea good but vast improvements could help this lead platform have better value.

I was looking for a laptop screen repair and a number of vendors came up, listed as "Serves [name of my town in Pennsylvania]. I selected a callback option for the top-rated one, and after no response for a couple hours, I googled the vendor company name and found it was in Arizona. Called their number and the owner answered -- he said the only way to service the laptop would be if I shipped it to him. So Thumbtack returns results for vendors located anywhere, and there's no way to drill down to local vendors. Ridiculous! You're coming after Angie's List, are you Thumbtack? Good luck with that, you dilettantes.

I have used thumbtack as a pro for two different home improvement companies i manage.

I have a good reputation and get plenty of jobs on other jobs websites but thumbtack is run by people who dont know how to generate leads. In fact they suck at it. Much of their revenue is made from reselling leads. No joke. Thumbtack buys a lead on facebook, then presents that lead on their news feed showing that the lead has contacted multiple contractors, often 3 or 4 at once which seems hard to believe. Multiple contractors will pay just to have a conversation with that one lead and try to win their business. I suspect many of the leads are fake, as I have offered them insanely cheap rates and not even got responses.

They allow you to take down your profile and remove it from the internet which is fair and why I respect Thumbtack.

It seems these days tech companies have low morals. What happened to the moral high ground we used to walk in the 80s and 90s. Nowhere to be seen these days as tech companies are blindly data driven and practice "get away with whatever you can" at all times.

That said, I will continue to use their service while hoping they fire the employee in charge of buying facebook ads and get a new guy or gal who can generate more leads for contractors and stop re-selling leads as their main stream of revenue.

Tried to schedule services and entered all information to register for what purpose I don't know cause the seem to tease the same questions then get BS-ed by the person blaming the network for incompetence!

This seems to be a collection of seedy, uninsured and unprofessional business people.
The one person I hired to do my driveway cut corners and lied to me. Doing a sub standard job.
The painter I contacted through this service seemed to just be some guy that painted on the side.
None of the contractors I contacted had a website or anything to reccomend or warn against except THUMBTACK.
Find your own contractors would be my suggestion. THUMBTACK seems to be a collection of hacks

Do not use this service! They are not reliable and do NOT screen their contractors. We spent over $1K to have a shower kit installed. It was done incorrectly and we now have to take it out and fix it. He did not follow instructions that were provided for back wall support and used liquid nails and sheet-rocked over the flange. We have not been able to reach him and we cannot even install our new shower door because he did not square and true the wall. Measurements are 55 inches at bottom and 56 at the top. The name of the contractor is Oliver Construction. I am disappointed that Thumbtack did not screen this unbonded and unlicensed contractor.

I bought a thumbtack account from the salesperson but as a healthcare professional advertising wellness services, apparently that doesn't do so well, at least not yet. I've had this platform for about 4 months now and I don't have a single hit and my platform according to the thumbtack app is very excellent. I simply didn't get any views on it and I have tried reaching out to people myself and I still get nothing. Again I think the platform is a really good concept and I'm sure once it matures and grows a little more it will help people push their businesses, I just believe they also need to expand their options on the UI for the professionals to use a little more like myself (IE personal training, massage therapy, coaching, etc), especially for those with dual practice licenses. What I would like to see is more customizable options in the app itself so the profession can narrow their focus a little more and personalize the account in greater depth so they have the option to cater to more of a niche market.

For the price they charged I didn't receive any normal feedback. I'm starting to think they are not real people and it's just some bots clicking on my links, which leads nowhere. I am mad at myself for trusting this scam. Do not invest your money here, it just doesn't work.

Here's the thing about Thumbtack: You cast your request to the winds and you could get just about anything in reply. I've found some terrific contractors through the site, which has been occasionally helpful as I've relocated to two new cities in the past 4 years. But I've also found a greater number of poor tradesmen, and at least two unqualified disasters. QUALITY CONTROL IS A MAJOR ISSUE, and as a result it is an exercise in random chance to hire anybody with fewer than, say, 25 strong reviews.

If Thumbtack is ever going to improve its value proposition from the customer side, it needs to do something to set the bar higher for the trade side. Without that, this is just the Wild West.

Do not use thumbtack. They are one sided to favor their pockets. I'm an electrician and I see what customers select out of all the services they are offered. Most of the time they select the wrong service which increases the price of the lead. If you dispute the charge they deny you just like that. They have no idea what they are doing when it come to charging leads. It's a $#*!ty company. I deleted mine. I hope you do too.

I would rather shoot myself in the head or set myself on fire then use Thumbtack again. In the last three days, one of their employees did not call me back. The guy that was supposed to give me a price on painting my deck was a no-show on Sunday. It was great to sit on my $#*! for two hours, waiting for snow when you show up as I write this I was going to get some tack warmer chance in this guy supposed to be fixing my cement wall you're supposed to be here at eight that is currently almost 1030 My Pl. Is it spend the extra money on Angie's list and to have somebody that knows what time is show up. My feeling is the people that post that are looking for work and wanna be paid well but they do not want to show up.

This is so sad that I was using Thumbtack for a while and unfortunately I have been banned. No one could explain why they did so. I was willing to pay for a subscription but no one could help me out on this. I really don't know how are you going to keep your business like this.

They need to review all of the "data mining" some of their pros are doing. That is my biggest issue with it but overall it was a bad experience. There were some positives but it's not worth it.
Sorry gotta start with the Bad:
1. I had my project listed with photos attached and explained in detail but I got constant requests for way too much data before they would even get a quote. There were several others that response was automated and directed you to a site to fill in all of your information and then some.
2. A lot of these pros must be on this site as a last minute resort because their follow up is awful.
3. A lot are not insured
4. They know how to get around being rated for response time because they will respond saying they will call or meet and then just don't show up.
Good
1. They try to let you rate for responsiveness, etc. unfortunately, pros seem to know how to get around these, they may automatically respond just so it shows they replied but they don't show up or call or they claim they did.
2. If they could get it running smoothly and find a better way to monitor "true response time" and "accountability" and prevent their pros from "data mining" or automatically just sending you to "yet another site", it would be huge.

I love the app and the ability to get jobs. But if you need ANY support you might as well not bother. They NEVER answer the phone they NEVER pick up on chat and I don't think they even have email. And as for a refund good luck. I have been billed for "direct leads" that are so far from my job types and for crazy amounts. Sent refund requests and not even the common courtesy to say sorry no refund. Just total ignore. I am not to the point of simply spending my money with Angi, Tasker or one of the other sites. Can't be worse than this. Yesterday I called support on my second phone and was on hold for 4 hours yes 4 and no one ever picked up. I have tried A half dozen times with the same result. Chat is an even bigger joke. Senior leadership must be focused on driving new account set up and can car less about keeping Pros. Sad as a little work on this side and they would win much more in the long run.

Thumbtack has been charging my debit card for quotes I'm not sending stealing my money. There quality of customer are horrible they deal with low quality. I'm a licensed contractor and the pricing Thumbtack customer expect are horrific thumb tack was OK until the unauthorized charges its bad enough they don't screen there customer the steal ya money to stay away tradesmen run go to home advisor if you wanna get $#*!ed

I have used thumbtack twice and been so disappointed.
We hired movers from here. On the day of my move i confirmed with the mover if he is coming and he confirmed. 30 min before the schedule time also he confirmed but did not show up and switched off his phone... thumbtack does not filter scammers or verify the businesses... its an unreliable source. Do not recommend using it ever