Graham W.

I don't even know where to start. I believe I have been using thumbtack pro for 5 to 6 years now. At first it was great, before home advisor bought the company, sometime in 2019, or possibly late 2018 (I can't say that statement is completely timely accurate, as I heard it threw the grapevine but with the massive changes they made to the company I believe it).

At first leads would go to a handful of people in the area and those targeted could bid on the job, which was fair. The leads at that time, were at most, $7 per lead. Now I've been billed automatically up to $80 per lead without even agreeing to speak with the customer and I have been billed upwards of $80 for a job that realistically cost $150 to have done which ends up costing my company money. I've spoken with the CSR's and I've made the multiple requests for the wrongful billing, but it falls on deaf ears and doesn't go anywhere.

If by some miracle you get a compassionate worker, they do give the money back and it's a credit to your account and Thumbtack takes that credit and randomly starts sending a lot of irrelevant job leads to get that money back plus more. They also have made their website to disable or hide your account from customers unless you turn on the automatic billing process.

Now with this billing process they take every little tiny part of leads and break them down by more categories so they can make more from you. For example: Let's say you're a general contractor, you set doors, hang drywall, remodel bathrooms, roofs, etc. You have to log into your account and turn on automatic payment on roughly a minimum amount per each category. So for example drywall requests you have to set your auto paid leads to roughly $70-$1000. Roofs, bathroom remodels, interior doors, exterior doors, and lock sets you have to set at minimum as well to get leads. This means you're opening Thumbtack into your bank account for thousands of dollars a week. Another example of lead siphoning: you get a lead and they bill you $30 off the 70$ to do the job, that leaves you $40 and next week it goes back to $70 for the same lead type. These leads have been as high as $99.

Most of the clients we work with are real customers, but 9 time out 10, the job descriptions aren't even close to what they tell you it is, which is relevant due someone requesting you because the forms they are filling out they aren't always honest on, and they are forced to select certain categories to make it submittable, and we are charged for an interaction that wasn't our fault.

In September 2020 I get a message on my Facebook business account from someone that was upset because Thumbtack would not allow them to get in contact with me on their website, which I found to be really odd. So I Google search my company, clicked on Thumbtack, attempted to request a quote, and I could not request a quote from myself. Thumbtack also would not take me to the form to fill out for what work I would have been requesting to be done. So I documented it and later received additional messages on Facebook from more people stating the same thing about not being able to request me, and they were pretty upset about it, because they wasted 2 hours searching for an alternate means to contact me, through no fault of my own, for a 5 min conversation.

I called thumbtack and made a complaint about it, but again, it fell on deaf ears. A little more time goes by and I get a call from a potential customer, who tells me that he is a software designer and stated verbatim: "You need to get rid of thumbtack. They are setting things up so people can not contact you for some reason". I know someone reading this is going to say why didn't they just request someone else. Well, I'm sure 1000s of people I didn't have a chance to speak with probably did. But when you get that person that reads through all of your reviews and likes what you do and how you do it, they shouldn't have to spend an additional two hours of their time just to try and find a means to contact me when they are already on Thumbtack.

Today I had a potential customer who was tentatively setting a set of days for me to possibly come see their home on, but I admittedly forgot to get back with them the day we'd agreed to just talk about scheduling a face to face meeting on, and they were allowed to give me a 1 star review stating that I had not showed up for an appointment that was never made or scheduled to be made. I again called thumbtack and they went into my message and read it, and thumbtack and told me I did not set a time or place to meet with the customer and didn't even accept the job, but they refused to remove it, and instead said, "well with your reviews you could probably get it back if you wanted". So now I'm here and looking to lawyer up and join this lawsuit to keep others from being victimized by Thumbtack.