People should read this well written article about Thumbtack Pro's

FencingSteve

https://medium.com/@cheshiredave/what-you-dont-realize-when-you-use-thumbtack-to-hire-someone-be9640c723cf

What you don’t realize when you use Thumbtack to hire someone

Cheshire IsaacsFollow6 min read·Aug 20, 2021

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So, you need a new headshot for your LinkedIn profile. Or you need a DJ for your wedding. Or you need someone to repaint your house. You search around a bit and discover you can find lots of willing gig-economy workers on 

Thumbtack

, an online site that aims to match customers to professionals the company calls Thumbtack Pros (I have been one such Pro since 2015, currently inactive). You reach out to a number of them who have opted in for the kind of job you’re offering. You may hire one; you may not. You’re not required to hire anyone you contact, so it’s no risk to you.

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An image I captured for Imbodhi, an activewear startup that had contacted me through Thumbtack

But unwittingly, you’ve aided Thumbtack in abusing the Pros you contacted. You don’t even realize it happened, because Thumbtack doesn’t tell you how it makes its money. But here’s what happens:

Thumbtack Pros get charged every time a customer initially contacts them, regardless of whether the Pro responds to the contact. How much that charge is depends on an algorithm Thumbtack continually adjusts, trying to determine how much your proposed job is worth based on various factors like your stated budget, your location, etc. Once upon a time, the charge was $2 or $3, maybe $4; now it can easily be $50 or more. Pros live with this model because they hope that over time, they’ll make up the difference from losing bids with a few winning ones. That was a lot easier when the bid was $4.

But let’s say Thumbtack determines the correct bid figure for your job is $25, and you contact 10 Pros. Thumbtack charges $25 to the credit card on file for each of those Pros. Thumbtack has now made $250, and you don’t have to choose any of those people.

And here’s the worst part: those Pros — no matter what — will never have that money back in their pocket again.

Under the company’s Terms of Service, Pros have to agree that in the case of any errors, the money for the bid gets put into the Pro’s balance on the platform. It does not go back to the Pro themself. Thumbtack might call this a refund, but it’s not — the money wasn’t in the Pro’s balance to begin with, and the money should never have been charged in the first place, so an actual refund would have to go to the Pro’s credit card. But it doesn’t.

Not only that, but even getting support staff to agree to give a refund takes a ridiculous amount of effort. The understaffed Thumbtack Support team takes days to respond and does not closely look at refund requests to determine where the error may have originated. I personally have had to go back and forth several times on a single dispute to get them to acknowledge their or a customer’s error. When I do prevail and get a “refund” because the company finally agrees with me that a customer made an error when creating their job request, that money doesn’t come back to me even though Thumbtack should never have collected it in the first place; it goes into a balance for me to keep using this system that abuses my goodwill as a contractor.

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One of the amazing boudoir clients I met through Thumbtack

The lack of support doesn’t end there. The company knows that there are a lot of customers that make inquiries and never follow up (known as “tire kickers”). It used to be that if a customer didn’t read a Pro’s reply within four days, the bid would be refunded, a policy called Unread Refund. Earlier in 2021, Thumbtack rescinded this policy and instead provided the customer’s phone number so the Pro could follow up in an additional way. At least for me, texting/calling customers didn’t make them any more willing to consider me for the job. It was simply an underhanded move geared for Thumbtack to keep more of the Pros’ money, couched as though the company were doing us a favor.

Thumbtack used to have Success Coaches on staff whose job it was to get in touch with Pros and make sure the system was working as well as it could for us. I haven’t heard from any of those people in over two years.

Thumbtack also used to have phone support when a Pro needed help. Another thing that’s been gone for a very long time, replaced by a ticketing system that the support staff sometimes never answer.

I have been connected to the company as a Pro through all of these changes for the worse, with a corresponding precipitous drop in my own success on the platform. As a photographer who does everything from headshots to food to boudoir (but not weddings — the topic of one of my disputes), I was hired 97 times on Thumbtack and have an average rating of 4.9 stars with 71 reviews. From the time they began the Top Pro program, I was awarded that status every time until the pandemic decimated inquiries. At my peak, I made $4 for every $1 I spent on the platform — something close to a decent return on investment — but as Thumbtack adjusted how the platform worked for Pros, my ROI got worse and worse: in 2019 it was between 2:1 and 3:1, and actual earnings were terrible, down approximately 75% from my peak year — and that was pre-COVID.

All of these problems stem from the fact that Thumbtack doesn’t tell customers that each Pro pays to hear from them. As of this writing, Thumbtack’s help guide for customers does not mention the business model whatsoever — and it never has. If it did tell customers just how much each Pro would pay to hear from them, it’s very likely that customers would contact far fewer Pros in the first place, and far fewer tire kickers would use the platform at all. On the plus side, the customers who would end up using the platform would self-select as real, thoughtful customers who are serious about their jobs, and most likely they would hire one of the Pros they contact. Perhaps less revenue for Thumbtack in the short term, but happier customers, happier Pros, and a more sustainable business model built on integrity.

So what can be done?

1. First and foremost, customers need to know how much each Pro they contact has to pay to receive their first message. Transparency is the only way forward for the company to regain its integrity.
2. When a situation arises that clearly demands a refund, that refund must be to the Pro’s credit card, not a Thumbtack balance. The money was never Thumbtack’s to begin with.
3. The unread refund must be restored. This shifting of the burden to the Pro is shirking responsibility.
4. Bid amounts must be more reasonable. A $50+ bid is just unconscionable when the chance of getting the job is so low.
5. Thumbtack Support needs to be fully funded with the appropriate amount of people so that problems are addressed with thought and care within a day or two at most.
6. Thumbtack needs to refocus its business model to one that hitches its success to that of its Pros. As it stands now, Thumbtack profits off the desperation of gig workers, not their success.
7. If you are a customer, contact only the Pros who really fit your need, and do your best to hire one of them. And please spread the link to this essay so your fellow customers also know how Thumbtack works.
8. If you are a Pro, please spread the link to this essay far and wide so that the most people possible will see it. Only when customers understand how they’re helping Thumbtack abuse Pros will any real change occur.

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My first-ever maternity boudoir, a client I would have never met but for Thumbtack

Thank you for reading all of this. I truly hope some good comes of this. I used to be proud to be a Thumbtack Pro, I didn’t mind the thousands of dollars I paid the company for leads, and I met some amazing clients through the platform. In fact, I might not have even become a boudoir photographer were it not for Thumbtack. I simply believe that the company has almost completely lost its way, and I hope that it can correct course and create a sustainable model that honors customers, Pros, and its own staff.