Why does the lead cost more than the job?!

cmarcum215

Curious how thumbtack comes up with prices honestly. I am an electrician and charge $75 to install an outdoor coach light. It takes 10 min or less. I find it difficult to charge more than that and so does the customer when it’s a 10 min job. The lead for this job cost me $102.

Nobody is making money from that except for thumbtack. Doesn’t seem right.

DustiO

Thank you for leaving this feedback! I will be sure to pass it on to the team. In the meantime I would advise lowering your Max Lead Price to a price you feel comfortable paying for those leads.

chilogm1

you On max lead lower. Ever since we have this new pricing system they been charging us 3/10 time the prices. Lower your max lead price to competitive

johnmiller

Thumbtack's lead pricing is based on factors like demand and competition in your area. They charge more for leads when demand is high, and many pros are willing to pay. While it's not ideal that Thumbtack makes more money, they do connect you with customers. You can try adjusting your max lead price or explore other platforms with competitive pricing. The choice to use Thumbtack is yours. Hope this helps!

Diana

Thumbtack has been banking on the hard work of local businesses to have cooperate greed. The cooperate greed is so out of control these days. I've been with Thumbtack for a few years and it use to a good resource. But now it's just priced out ragiously and not being fair to the companies that utilize this advertising.

I understand this is capatlizim but the independant companies are struggling on a platform that use to be a great resource is now another example of cooperate greed. It saddens me.

structuralguy65

I agree with Diana. All Thumbtack is doing is charging as much economic rent from the pro as it can get away with. If Thumbtack really cared about pros, none of this max lead nonsense would even exist. Best thing you can do is educate the customer about what's really going on behind the curtain, and let them make an informed decision next time.

structuralguy65

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the laborer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the license to gather them." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

As for the instant booking, I agree it's a farce. Completely blows up any sense of efficiency or route planning. Prior to this, I merely had a conversation with the customer and offered them three or four choices, and weaved them into my calendar amongst my non-Thumbtack bookings based on location and timing.

If you can, do what I do: allow it to happen only during a small slice of your calendar. Let that be the Thumbtack booking hours, if you can't steer them into a more efficient slot. Everything else is my real calendar, reserved for people that call in via my website, from referrals, or from repeat clients. I didn't have to pay rent for those leads, so those folks get priority and first choice of time slots.

DustiO

@structuralguy65 this is great advice about using the availability on your calendar to help with the issues at hand. We also have several integrations available to sync your calendars with other apps you may use — like google calendar, HouseCall Pro, and more.

Another piece of advice is to change your lead time to a few days out, then you won't get customers scheduling day of for times you are not available. If customers don't find a time that works for them, they also still have the option to reach out to you directly like before. This article covers the basics for rescheduling a booking and for changing that lead time option as well. Let me know if you need more info. Here are a few screenshots as well if it helps!

And thank you all for your feedback. Sharing this thread with the team regularly.

structuralguy65

@DustiO my problem with instant booking isn't the idea of instant booking. My problem is that it removes control of our calendar. The idea that a stranger can flip your weekly calendar or your route planning on its head in an instant is completely foreign to me. Even if you did integrate with TickTick (my calendar), I still would object to losing control over how I can efficiently plan my routes. That's my business. Not the client's or Thumbtack's.

Also, Thumbtack has a glaring error in its calendar blocking feature: you can only block out one slot of time a day. You can can't block two hours in the morning, then 90 minutes in the afternoon.

DustiO

This is really great feedback, @structuralguy65, thank you. In the meantime, I will pass along TickTick to our partnerships team and see if it's possible to integrate. And, would recommend utilizing the reschedule feature for when the booked appointments don't align with your route plans. Not ideal, but hopefully this workaround will help for now.

structuralguy65

@DustiO TickTick would be a good add, because as it stands now it's the best planning calendar out there, imho.

cal.JPG

DustiO

@structuralguy65 I forgot to send you this — you can request a custom integration to connect your TickTick to your Thumbtack. Not sure if it will be possible, but definitely worth asking! The instructions for how to request are in the linked article. Let me know if you send a request, I'd love to follow up and see if you were able to connect the two and if it helps Instant Book to work better for you.