Instant Booking
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I’m a pest control mold remediation technician. We already don’t have much of a customer base during fall winter months and we can’t schedule without talking to clients about services. This is forceful and pseudo unethical business. This hurts us as small business owners please stop this. We all hate it
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I've been reading a lot of other pros thoughts on instant booking, and if this many pros are unhappy with it, why is it still being a requirement?? We just had our first instant booking appt, and here's the thing... thumbtack does not know what jobs qualify for an estimate vs. time and materials and neither do the customers. So how can they book these appts correctly for me? Plus, we require a deposit prior to scheduling, so the first instant book we had, I sent her the info on our charges, because we're not coming to do an estimate on adjusting the height of a chandalier... that's time and materials because it's not worth the gas to drive there and look at the light when we could just go fix it the first time. Anyway, she did not want to pay a deposit, so she canceled the appt, and thumbtack is saying that it doesn't qualify for a refund. THE CUSTOMER CANCELED THE APPT! How does this not qualify for a refund??? And thumbtack's customer service is so non existent, how they can ever give advice on customer service is so laughable it's embarrassing. Does anyone know of a comparable platform to switch to? And not Angi's, because they are even more of a rip off. Thanks in advance!
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Hi
I refuse to increase my budget and therefore will be lucky to get 2 jobs this week ( I got none last week because I was booked solid-before mandatory instant book rolled out) . In the meantime can folks weigh in on other ways to generate leads? I've been told to try Task Rabbit or Care..com. Obviously Thumbtack is catering now only to new users and forcing loyal pros out. Let's figure out how to move on. How cruel was it for them to change the platform right before the Holidays?
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@PaceCleaning I own a cleaning company and a lawn care business. As many others have done, I've turned off targeting and will not use Thumbtack unless they get rid of required instant book, which I doubt they will. Anji is a known scam, so don't waste your time there. There is a site for booking Airbnb property cleanings called Turno.com which seems promising. I'm going to look into Task Rabbit, Care.com, Porch.com, and Houzz. I have had some success advertising on Nextdoor. I've had very little success advertising on Facebook, but I have not put much effort into that. I may give FB another shot as well.
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@SilverLiningCleaning @DrewL03 thank you for sharing your insights and recommendations here. I will post updates and improvements to this thread as they happen should you want to turn targeting back on in the future. Thanks again!
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@SilverLiningCleaning On Nextdoor I've used paid advertising in the past. What I also found some success in is direct messaging people who inquire about services on the forums. Whenever someone posts asking about reco's for services, they usually get a ton of unprofessional responses like "Contact me at xxx-xxx-xxxx." I keep an eye on the forums and DM people with a more professional response and have gotten decent results.
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I'm about one more bad instant booking away from turning off services for good and throwing all my money at Angi Leads
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You know as a platform you have totally imploded when businesses have to think if leads were set to free if they would still participate. Absolutely horrendous system.
It's so bad it almost feels like they want to fail.
I went to opportunities today & now Thumbtack wants $140 for one interior paint lead where the customer is already in contact with 4 other painters.
Really?
A simple gate fix lead is $30
Um let's do some math.....
2 hours * $40 per hour = $80 NOW -$20 for gas / -$30 for lead / -$15 for spring = $65 cost
$80 - $65 = $15 Profit so I make $7.50 per hour HALF minimum wage and that is not even counting taxes or other expenses.
Normally this lead would be $10 or less! I still would not make much on the job but it creates a relationship with the customer. However being forced to accept instant bookings that can actually lose you money without being able to turn down certain leads is disingenuous.
PS: For Thumbtack people reading my post I am not "hating" just to "hate" I would like to see you succeed and all of our businesses grow with you! Unfortunately, I feel like the ego of thinking this works and everyone should just fit in is going to stop you from repealing it.
Eventually, it is too late. Pros have moved on and customers seek pros elsewhere.
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Thumbtack used to be my favorite lead generation service, but with the new forced instant bookings I can't use it. The services my business offers are dynamic and very difficult to quote without doing on-site estimates or communicating with the customer first.
For example, handyman services. This can range wildly from someone needing basic touch-ups to a full remodel. I always get limited details from the customer and don't even know what tools I would need for any given job.
Plus, Thumbtack seems to be wildly inconsistent when pricing the leads. I had a customer instant book us for a $100 junk removal job, and I was charged $100 for the lead. I would've lost money on that job had I not disputed it.
Also, Thumbtack calendar only has 3 integrations, none of which I use. There is no convenient way for me to integrate across my other systems so I have issues with double bookings.
I used to spend tons of money through TT but I will have to focus those dollars elsewhere.
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Please remove Insta bookings is creating a caos with my CRM , customer book and cancel and is way to expensive - any way we can opt-out ??
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@Darrin please refer to our Community Code of Conduct if you saw that a post was removed. Thank you.
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@CristianS what CRM are you using? I'd love to share this with the team who helps with partner CRM integrations. You can post here or send me a DM. Thank you!
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@KateOrganizes Everything you wrote below is the only way instant booking will work and I appreciate taking the time to explain it clearly.
What I would need, as a professional organizer, to make Instant book feasible.
- collect project minimum deposit at time of booking
- customer Agree to cancellation policy including forfeit of deposit. I would need to be able to write the text of the cancellation policy (so it is specific to my business)
- I need control over length of time slots for booking and a way to call customers attention to the possibility that a project is not guaranteed to be completed in that time (all project vary) and that their booking of that time slot only covers the labor during that time. Of course, an estimate will always be provided in advance but by booking the slot they are agreeing to complete the project minimum.
- I need a clause that explains that project supplies and materials may be needed and are not included in the hourly rate.
Thank you in advance for your efforts to integrate my requests.
@DustiO Unfortunately the Book Now feature for Interior Designers and Architects is a flawed system. We can't stop over at someones house and create an estimate in 1 hour without going through a thorough Design brief to outline the scope of work. This is a very detailed and extensive process and the customer has no way of knowing that in advance. The customer can feel frustrated that we can't provide an estimate in 1 hour, making the Book Now feature pretty frustrating for everyone. We also have highly technical design work hours creating demo legends, blueprints, and permit sets, as well as meetings we book weeks to months in advance that we can't cancel due to a spontaneous Book Now option. Stopping in the middle of our work to drive x amount of hours away to provide an estimate that is impossible is not thinking of the Pro or the Customer. As @KateOrganizes mentioned above, if TT is adament about using a Book Now feature, we should be designing it in a way that makes sense for the type of job.
It's possible to Book Now for a phone consultation to review the process, that is paid in advance, during a calendar we set up for available appointments. I truly believe there's a way to make everyone happy and successful in this scenario.
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@Modern_designer11 I really feel you did a great job explaining on all the reasons why the Instant Book feature is not a one size fits all for all industries. The same goes for my industry (Muralist), and I feel the test of the instant book was only utilized for basic services like “mount a tv on a wall”.
But even then there are so many variables that may require more money, or interaction. There really doesn’t seem to be a logical reason to make this a mandatory thing for all Pro’s. It would be like if eBay decided everyone had to use the Buy It Now feature, when a lot of the time the auction frenzy is what gets the right price. It’s a great option, but not for everyone.
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As others have mentioned, the time needed to provide estimates can be very time consuming, and I would say that 99% have no idea what it takes.
We do audio and video integration and design. It can take weeks of back and forth with the customer on deciding on product, equipment, the installation, etc. Sometimes, even a small home theater, can take a bunch of time to visit the home to see the area they intend to use. Then taking all that data, I can provide a layout with speakers, screen, projector, etc. I get asked on every job at the start, what the costs will be. No way of knowing, yet.
For now I will remain hidden as to not incur any fees. Looking at Nextdoor for leads. Maybe Angi.
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Thanks so you all for the great insights on how onsite estimates (or virtual or phone, etc) could work better for your industries! As mentioned I am sharing this thread daily with our teams and this kind of feedback is really important!
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Hi @DustiO
I have had another instant booking canceled bynthebcustomer with no refund. That makes two. The support team must've not got the memo on the new cancellation policy. It's absolutely infuriating !
I'm holding up my end of the deal, treating customer well, paying my Thumbtack fees, getting all five stars, being a top Pro every year since 2018.
We the pros are the money source. What's got into Thumbtack support?
I've already begaun new marketing that has better deals and returns.
If Thumbtack want to support us as we give them our credit cards, they might want to give refund when due per their policy.
That's my weekly budget gone now.
Tom
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Hi @DustiO
I'm glad you are sharing our feedback daily with your teams. Can we get some feedback from them?
What have they being saying? _________________
Are they going to act on them or do they think we are wrong? _________________
If they're going to act on our feedback, what is the timeline please? ______________
We have our future business and families to think of and time is ticking away on us.
Thanks
Tom
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@TomTom I've spoken to them about this. They say they won't do anything because it's past the 15 min window... (This is based on your photo. Looks like the client cancelled 23 minutes since your first response)
This is why I tried to let clients know what they're doing but I got suspended (check my post above). It's apparently against TOS to let them know what thumbtack fee we're paying.
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@Sergey I don't disagree with this at all. For the instant books that have used it as intended, it has worked great. But I would say that my personal success rate with it after crunching the numbers is 10.4%. Which is extremely low. With direct leads, I had a 40-50% success rate, depending on the month.
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As an Interior Decorator, I'm going to add to this thread and say my required instant booking starts Nov. 6th. Just like many of ya'll, I am very frustrated with this new feature. Instant bookings are not and will never be applicable for our industry. It is industry standard for us Designers to charge for our initial design consultations, which can easily take up to a couple of hours speaking to the client's about their wants/needs, lifestyle, aesthetic, scope of work, etc. Before the initial consultations are even booked, we typically have a discovery call to first vet the lead to even get an idea of whether it would be a good fit or not. Interior design is so personable, we cannot just have random "leads" who may or may not be serious just instant book us to come out before they pay or even have conversation with us. And they definitely won't want to pay afterwards either. Not to mention that I'm reaching leads a couple of hours away.
Looking at this thread, it seems that this feature has been rolling out for months and has had negative feedback consistently. Please listen to your customers. We enjoy the platform because it's not like others where you're locked into some sort of pricey membership just to use it. It's simple, pay for the leads that choose us, we like that. No need to fix what's not broken. You cannot require instant bookings. We are all small businesses who have our own processes in a variety of industries, you cannot assume this feature is a one size fits for all. Please take the mandatory feature off. The people who will benefit from it, will use it. The ones who don't- won't. Until then, I will have to step away from Thumbtack.
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It is a ripoff
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Long time user here. This is my take on instant bookings.
I tried instant bookings before it was mandatory and had an absolutely terrible experience with it. Being charged a VERY steep premium for a job that was very nearly the total price of the lead is extremely unacceptable. On top of this, 4/5 instant books were just glorified “quotes”. People just wanted estimates and treated it the same way as a lead. So I made the decision to turn it off and never use it again.
Fast forward to the mandatory instant booking roll off. Now I’m forced to have overpriced leads consist of sometimes MORE than what the jobs worth. Allowing customers to decide the pricing structure for most businesses like that of my own, is bad. But this issue is magnified when instant booking comes into play. Now what was once a $20 lead is as much as $100+. So now it really hurts when Thumbtacks let’s a customer estimate themselves and I get charged for it.
Being in the junk removal industry, I never allow my customers to decide how many truckloads it’ll take. Thumbtack does. Most customers drastically underestimate the amount of stuff they have, leading to drastically different quotes in person after first reaching out. This wouldn’t be an issue if these leads didn’t cost me 3x as much as before.
With this new implementation, I’ve seen the pros in my area slowly deactivate their accounts. At least HALF the companies in my area have left the app just in my industry (junk removal & moving). But it seems Thumbtack doesn’t care, since dummy’s like me are paying for their lost revenue with our glorified “booking” leads.
Very sad to see this happen to what was once a good app. Guess I’ll be soon pouring all my funds into Google instead. I’m just glad I didn’t go 100% like some people did here on this app. I truly feel bad for those pros.
You can also see how the admin on this page isn’t really hinting at any possibility of it being made optional again, only “we are striving to make it better”, or “what can make it work more”.
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"Most customers drastically underestimate the amount of stuff they have, leading to drastically different quotes in person after first reaching out. This wouldn’t be an issue if these leads didn’t cost me 3x as much as before."
Well said
There are too many variables in many fields and instant booking does not work. I have already perm deleted my thumbtack account.
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@TomTom Bottom line, This forum represents a very tiny fraction of Thumbtack pros. They pay @DustiO to come here and take the slings and arrows, but they aren't going to make changes unless/until they see an effect on the bottom line. San Francisco Tech billionaires, such as CEO Marco Zappacosta give a lot of lip service to caring about the little people, but in reality they are solely focused on status amongst their peers and accumulating wealth. If Thumbtack actually cared about our success, they could easily prove it by admitting they made a miscalculation and reverse course. They are not doing that and that should tell you all you need to know.
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