Instant Booking
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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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Totally agreed, I am also in the junk removal space and tried out instant booking. I was charged $60 for a $190 job. When I called the client and said that was thumbtacks estimate not mine (she sent pictures of the load and it was easily $250+). She backed out and never cancelled the job and I was out $60. But even if she did book it, charging 30% of the total job price is outrageous. After dump fees and gas I'd make pennies.
Like many others my leads are off and will remain off until instant booking is gone. Until then I've already brought my business elsewhere. It's up to thumbtack whether they get it back.
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Very much not a fan of this. I got charged $70 for an instant booking and the customer just wanted a ball park for a price to repair a single broken sprinkler head. We have a $125 service call. I called them and informed them that even if he would agree to this I wouldn’t be able to do it because by the time i pay my technician $25/hr to drive make repair and drive on to the next one with fuel and other cost I would make no money. Luckily he cancelled within 15 min. By doing this and charging so much for the lead thumbtack is forcing us to go to homes and up sell the customer which is not how we do buisness. The cost of leads just seem to be made up with no consistency anymore. I’ve also noticed that I have been getting cold calls from house call pro now which seems to be connected to thumbtack.
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@DustiO Will you direct us to the terms and Agreement section with the data and privacy consent details? I don’t seem to have access to that information.
Currently, a total of thirteen states have passed comprehensive data privacy laws in the United States: California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Montana, Oregon, and Delaware.
For example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed Senate Bill 262 into law, adopting the "Digital Bill of Rights" proposed by his office in February. It’s important to pros to know what security is being breached or protected by using your services.
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Here is the Privacy link, I hope this answers some of your questions. It was recently updated in June. https://www.thumbtack.com/privacy/
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To exercise any of your rights, you may submit a request at dataprivacy@thumbtack.com or visit https://help.thumbtack.com/data-privacy I’m not sure if this will help but I try to support where I can.
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One you are to terms of service you lose all rights I got kicked off turo for disputing a charge with my credit card company for a trip that I paid for subs never took
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Unfortunately that’s very true and incredibly frustrating for small businesses and/or individuals that use a service.
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We are now up to 9 pages of negative comments about the change. Not a peep from Thumbtack, even though DustiO says she is sharing our feedback.
I likely will continue to hide my business for another couple of weeks to see if anything changes. Sadly, I think we all know the answer already
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I have never seen a company suicide so badly and continue to do so knowing their users are leaving in droves. It's a spectacle to watch.
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Guess you never used home advisor, also thumbtack did this years ago when they decided to send leads to 6+ pros at a time. They did correct themselves but during that time as a pay was worthless. I’ve always said they need a acknowledgment button so the home owner knows they are costing people money but they won’t do that because it is bad for their bottom line
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@Average_joe1 Been using it on and off for years. This year it's been miles better than thumbtack
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for me in the landscape world the cost and quality of leads was always sub par to thumbtack
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Just got charged $171 for an Instant Booking. Customer only wants 5 ring installs.
$171 paid for me to drive an hour for a customer to receive a quote.
If this was a regular lead I could have atleast told them how much can charge for the job upfront and it would’ve been in the customer hands to accept or deny my offer!!!
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@Walters_Electric32 at this point I would contact the customer through messenger and text or even call give them a price range and tell them if it seems too much please cancel the booking. It’s not a perfect solution but one to stop hemorrhaging money.
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They have to cancel within 15 min
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In less than 1 hour from my last post I got charged $208 for a job that I would normally $200-$300 for (loss of power). Now thumbtack is getting close to 70-100% of this job cost. This is sad honestly because my entire platform is based on thumbtack with close to 200 5 star reviews.
In just 2 instant bookings I paid $380 in less than an hour. I turned the app off right after this and not sure when I would ever turn the app back on.
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I hid my business sometime in Oct. Do I need to re-hide it again at some point? If so, how do I find out when? I want to leave it hidden until Thumbtack comes to it senses or goes "belly up". I will NEVER pay more than $10.00 for a lead that I only make $90 on. It's bad enough that Thumbtack keeps all the money for 10 Pros and only 1 gets the job.
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@Average_joe1 yea unfortunately I have to let them know that they have less than 10 min to cancel. I get notifications through my smart watch so that the second they book I respond so far I’ve had 11 cancellations but all 9 refunded. Like I said it’s not a perfect answer but it stops me from busting my budget on extraneous calls. Hopefully they see the amount of cancellation and come to the conclusion that there instant book feature isn’t working in there favor
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They won’t it’s all a numbers game
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@Walters_Electric32 I would recommend trying to bring your Max Lead Price down, as you currently have it set at the highest level. I know you have your business hidden for now, but if you do decide to unhide I would play around with that and see if it makes a difference. Thanks for sharing the screenshots and details!
Also, @EAI always a great tip to reach out to customers with more details, thank you! You can edit the outgoing message to customers when they book you and you want to confirm the booking. Would highly recommend adding more details there to let customers know if you have any additional pricing or job information that is important for them to see up front. Hope this helps, if even just a little!
@rvgrand Although this thread was started a while back, Instant Book rolled out nationwide just a couple of weeks ago, so you'll see a lot more feedback coming in. That's why I am continuing to share this thread with teams. I am also consolidating any Instant Book related posts from elsewhere into the Community into this thread so we can keep it all in one place and share more easily...so it's a long thread. But honestly, I really appreciate the ongoing discussion and feedback, so thank you all.
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@DustiO Today I was auto enrolled in Instant Book, which I expected, what I didn’t expect was to not have the ability to turn it off after a customer service rep said I could opt out when it would be rolled out.
Called customer service again today (November 6th) after I tried to opt out and it defaults to being on, updated app, checked all settings, still the same.
Instant book simply won’t work for what I do (I mentioned all the reasons earlier in this thread). Was the customer service rep correct, or were they mistaken?
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@Matt I don't think you are able to turn it off once it goes live in your market (the support agent may not have realized you were in one of those markets). I would recommend doing the things that we talked about in the other thread - editing that outgoing message to be sure customers understand what type of consults you typically do (ie phone, zoom, etc) and set up the right expectations there. Would also recommend pricing that consult/estimate to what would make sense for you. I did send your insights to the team regarding your specific category and will let you know if there are any updates to share. Thank you!
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The customers do not care or understand. They book thinking it’s free when you call and tell them that there is a service call ands it’s clearly listed before they select you they still don’t care they want free
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I got tired of re-hiding my business so I removed my Services. I'm keeping tabs to see if Thumbtack comes to their senses and cancels mandatory Instant Booking, but not holding my breath.
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Yeah, I just deactivated my account now and moved on.
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