Mike M.

I joined Thumbtack as a contractor in the early stages and they actually did a good job at first. I spent thousands of dollars on quotes and made my money back the first year. I then noticed the second year there was a dramatic drop on results and quickly discovered a ton of fake job requests coming up. I can't help but to think these were generated by Thumbtack because they continued to happen over and over again.
I would call and get the credits I spent refunded but what about all of the people that didn't realize that a large amount of the requests were fake? I also noticed an increase in the number of people that would request service and then look at the quote and never respond (by looking at the quote that qualified it as a good request and you were billed). Why would somebody interested in having work done never reply back to the contractors? I actually called, when they had support you could call into, and the Thumbtack customer support people would tell me that these people requesting a quote didn't respond to anybody, hmm.
Needless to say I stopped while I was ahead, luckily I had a good run while they were legit.
I feel bad for the contractors that get into it now, odds are against them making money from it.
Note, I did very well with reviews that first year and made money from it, all of my reviews were 5 star reviews and things were good at first.
I think most of the reviews I see on sitejabber that are good are from consumers and not contractors, seems like the contractor reviews are mostly bad.
You would think that Thumbtack would make it so contractors and consumers are happy with the website, that is why I think that they are actually allowing this to happen on purpose because that is how they make money or they are actually doing it to make money.
Sad, this could have been a really good setup for everybody.
If you are a contractor stay away from Thumbtack or you will get stuck.