How often do you get auto-leads outside your travel preferences?

MrTTennessee

How often do you get auto-leads outside your travel preferences? It seems like I get at least one per week. My travel preferences are set to 30 miles to avoid trouble, and it still happens. Last week I had an auto-lead 1,132 miles away, this week it's an auto lead 140 miles away. They say it's filtered automatically, so how does this keep happening?

DustiO

Hi @MrTTennessee and thanks for posting. I'd love to see if I can help you figure this out - we definitely don't want you getting leads outside of your travel area! I took a moment to check your travel preferences and it looks like you currently have your travel area set to 140 miles for where you are willing to travel to customers.

In your categories where customers can travel to you, you have their travel set to 30 miles, but yours is set to 140 miles. You also have remote jobs selected for some of your categories, which would result in some jobs being very far away (if they can be done remotely and the customer chooses that option on their end as well).

I would recommend going back through each service that you offer and going through the travel areas for each one to ensure you have them set to the right areas. If you need any help changing any of these settings, let me know - I am happy to help! Hopefully this will eliminate the leads that are out of your preferred travel area!

MrTTennessee

Here's the reasons this job did not fit my preferences:

1: the client posted the job under "video editing". But actually needed an "event videographer". My budget range for event videography is $1,000+, and this client's budget was $200-$500, so this job should not been sent to me if the client had posted it in the correct place.

2: Depending on where in Evansville, it is at minimum 140 miles away, if not further. The customer did not specify the address.

It just seems like no matter what I do, I keep being charged for leads that should have been filtered out, and have no chance of being profitable. I've been hired several times on this platform, and none of them have been through "direct leads". This service seems to be a waste of money at best, and at worst a service intentionally taking money from contractors with bogus leads.

Either way, If I'm not refunded for this lead, I will only be using the opportunities tab from now on. That seems to be the only real way to make any money on thumbtack.