Thumbtack Numbers Policy: Give Us Back Real Phone Numbers

BattleBorn26

To the Thumbtack Product Team and Corporate decision-makers, Let’s stop pretending this proxy number system is an "upgrade" or a "feature." It is completely backwards, and it is actively crippling your core demographic, the service professionals who literally pay your corporate salaries. We are tired of the boilerplate corporate responses in the forums telling us that you are "submitting our feedback to the team."

The feedback is already crystal clear, unanimous, and completely aligned: This system is fundamentally broken and it needs to be rolled back immediately. The Reality on the Ground

• Zero Trust, Zero Conversion: When we call or text a paid lead through your proxy system, it shows up as a random, spammy-looking number on the customer's phone. They ignore us because they think it's a robocall.
• Paying for Ghost Leads: You charge us massive, inflated lead fees upfront, but then strip away our basic ability to form a direct human connection and close the deal.
• The Refund Trap: You tell us we can get an automatic refund if a customer ghosts everyone for 72 hours, but if we drop our actual business line in the chat to rescue the communication, your AI text-scanners flag it and strip our refund eligibility anyway. You have turned lead management into an intentional cat-and-mouse game.

The Challenge to Corporate

Your staff keeps repeating the corporate script that this change was implemented to "help pros communicate." If that is an actual fact, publish the internal articles, case studies, and hard data proving it. 

Show us the statistics that prove customer response rates went up after you masked their numbers. Because right now, every actual contractor on the ground is experiencing the exact opposite: tanking response rates, wasted marketing spend, and dead-end leads. We don't want any more support tickets opened, and we don't want any more passive-aggressive feedback logging.

We want a direct answer from leadership and an explicit action plan outlining when direct numbers will be restored. Treat us like the paying business partners we are, not an open wallet to be corporate-tested on.

@DustiO

DustiO

Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective. I can tell this has been a frustrating experience, and I appreciate you being direct about your concerns.

I also want to address one point specifically: when Thumbtack employees say we're sharing feedback with the team, that isn't a scripted response or a way to dismiss concerns. Feedback like yours is shared directly and quickly with the teams responsible for these experiences, and the points you've raised here are exactly the kind of detailed feedback that helps inform product discussions.

I also think it's important to note that the teams building these experiences have been working closely with pros throughout the process. Pro feedback has been an important part of how these products have been developed and evaluated, and conversations like this continue to be an important input as the feature evolves.

What I can share is that the decision to introduce Thumbtack Numbers was informed by data and feedback from both customers and pros. We've seen improvements in customer responsiveness, which is one of the reasons the feature has continued to be invested in. I've also personally spoken with pros who have had positive experiences with Thumbtack Numbers and are excited about the opportunities they create.

At the same time, that doesn't invalidate the experience you're describing. Your perspective is important, and understanding where the experience isn't working as intended is exactly why feedback like this is valuable.

If you have specific examples, metrics, or customer interactions that illustrate the challenges you're seeing, I'd genuinely love to see them. Feel free to send me a DM. Detailed examples are often much more actionable than general sentiment, and I will make sure they get in front of the right people.

What I can commit to is ensuring your concerns are understood and represented accurately. The message I'm hearing is that you believe the current experience is making it more difficult to connect with customers and successfully convert leads into jobs, and that you'd like greater transparency around the reasoning and outcomes behind these changes.

I'll also see if there's anything additional I can share here. We're planning to host an AMA with a Product Manager in a few weeks, after Thumbtack Numbers has launched everywhere and pros have had more time to use the feature. My hope is that it will be an opportunity to answer questions, discuss feedback, and provide additional context. In the meantime, please continue sharing your thoughts here or with Support.

I understand that you may be looking for more concrete answers than I can provide today. However, I do want to assure you that this feedback is being read, discussed, and shared with the people who are directly responsible for these decisions.

Thank you again for taking the time to write this out and explain your experience in detail.