No opportunity to quote, still charged for the "lead".
Why was I charged $39.95 for a lead where the job poster hired the other pro that he contacted before I was even able to make contact with him?
I was on a job on 12/7/23. The job poster reached out at 3:45pm.
I was not in a position to respond until I was done with the project I was working on that day. I messaged him back at 6:22pm. I did not receive a response and he did not read my message from what I could see on the app.
I called the job poster the next morning and he told me that he already hired the other pro the night before.
So why am I being charged $39.95 for a lead that I'm not able to put a bid in for? There was no indication in the post that the job poster needed a response within 3 hours. Also, even if I would have taken a "bathroom break" and messaged the job poster back, there is no evidence that he would have messaged me back and answered my questions. Why is there so much pressure on the Pros to provide a quote at the drop of a hat when there is missing information needed to provide a quote?
Comments
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Welcome to Thumbtack, this is a pretty standard thing that happens. Very frustrating and the script from Thumtack usually goes like this.
“you are paying for a connection, it pays to respond quickly as the client may reach out to more than one pro”
they consider it a “viable lead”, therefore you pay. Their “instant book” system isn’t any better, you pay more up front and many times the client has already reached out to many other pros.
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I've been on Thumbtack since 2017. I have no problem paying for leads where I'm competing with other Pros and I don't win the gig. But there is zero value in a lead that you aren't actually competing for.
Thumbtack's argument for charging for the "connection" doesn't make sense because a job poster doesn't necessarily have value to the Pro after one gig across all industries. Home builders? Wedding videographers? Those are pretty much "one and done" business relationships.
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I'm not sure Instant book is available for videographers like me who don't do events. How does it work? Doesn't the name "instant book" suggest that you are being booked for the gig? I don't see how you aren't eligible for a refund on that one.
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I have blocked off my calendar for the rest of the year due to this change. I’m still being charged for instant booking leads somehow.
these customers never respond and think that they have an appointment set up because Thumbtack promised them a pro would be there within 15 mins of the appointment time. Nobody in their right mind agreed to this. This is forced coercion in the business world. Thumbtack is treating the pros as their employees now and offering not benefits in return. Not only this, but requiring to work whenever Thumbtack and the customer need the pros, is taking away one of the primary the rights and responsibilities of an independent contractor or business owner.
I don’t think Thumbtack can legally change the amount of the fees they charge the pros for whenever they wish, without any formal agreement or extensive notice period. This takes away all negotiation power from the pros. This is how monopolies are created.
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@Fix_Fitness you have control over your availability in both your availability settings and in your calendar to be sure you aren't being booked for times when you are not available. You also have the ability to edit the outgoing message that goes to customers if you want to explain there that you have a particular process/next steps. You can see how to edit your availability here. You can also set your booking window to further out (I think up to 7 days) so that no one can book you within 7 days and you can also block off whole days or just hours on your calendar. You can also integrate your Google calendar with your Thumbtack calendar, if that would help.
You may have already tried these things, but if not I hope they might help you with some of these pain points. I would also recommend checking your notification settings in your account and make sure you have emails turned on, as there were several emails sent out about this change. You can also check of your TT emails are going to your spam/promotions folder.
In the meantime I know @keddingfield has some great advice about rescheduling appointments when the times don't work, we're also working on a rescheduling capability within the app. We are in the process of making a video Q&A about Instant Book, including some tips from pros, that I will be posting here in the Community too.
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@Fix_Fitness I somehow missed the first sentence! Did you say you are still getting booked for jobs on days where you have your calendar blocked off? If so, can you send me some of the customer names that booked you during blocked off times so I can dig a little deeper?
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I’d already flagged and reported the issue for each if them. I don’t know how to retrieve the leads.
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I am aware of all these options. As I have tried numerous methods to try to make this work. It does not. The 7 days advance notice also does not work. We get extremely busy during the holidays. Often times our schedule backs up to 3 weeks out for new appointments during the busy season. Only having a 7 day lead time for appointments on a secondary calendar is simply not going to work due to scheduling conflicts. In the past, I used TT to supplement the schedule anc fill in the breaks in the schedule from rescheduled or cancellations. It was nice to be able to do this and worked out well for the customers as well.
When it comes to booking appointments, In the real world, you have to get all the correct information for a job and then provide a quote(offer) to the customer. They will then accept or decline the quote.
There is no one size fits all for every job. Case and point:
Recently had a request to replace a belt on a treadmill from a customer. The customer was already promised a price and an appointment time from TT… my response to the customer was a quote for the labor AND two options for replacing the belt. The customer never responded, so neither of the two belts were ordered. Time comes for the appointment that was set(customer still hadn’t replied). TT apparently confirms the appointment on our behalf. So not only does this create confusion, but it creating broken promises on the behalf of the pro. There is no way we are going to A.) special order any parts or B.) drive all the way out to a customer’s location if they have never responded. Especially if no parts were ordered. Two days later, the customer hits us with a bad review because we never showed up and bc TT sent them an automated message that told them we’d be there within a specific time.
what gives here? We are essentially being charged so customers can leave us bad reviews. This has happened more than once now.
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Yes, I agree. We have not been here long but have been charged 40 70 $80 for a customer to click on our name. Never even answers us! How is that ok? In one instance, the customer did tell me to come the next morning at 10:00. I told him I could be there between 8 and 12,.. he told me to be there at 10:00 so when I put off other work and scheduled him accordingly, I called him next morning to let him know I was on the way and he told me someone else was already there. Now how would that even be possible? Why would you tell me to come at a time later on purpose for someone else to come under me and then thumbtack charges me ,.. so no call,.. put off work and negative money there has to be something they can do. There has to be a middle ground here
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I continue to be charged for direct leads that conflict with my calendar ON THE PLATFORM. I have tried every approach from kind to threatening legal action and nothing changes. Maintain platinum pro status, but paying over $700 in TT fees, most of which are conflicting direct leads with refusals for refunds. A simple "if, then" line in the platform code to prevent this or immediate refunds for direct leads that conflict with calendar would be SIMPLE FIXES! I need someone at Thumbtack to address this ASAP.
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