What does Thumbtack do for Pros when a customer goes dark and doesn't pay

This is interesting, last week I met a deadbeat who also contacted me through Thumbtack. Unfortunately, at $240, it's not worth my time to go through the courts.

Is there a way to block Thumbtack users so she can't use Thumbtack and earn me a charge again? Can I flag her so other "Pro"s know not to work for her? I'd rather be out just a Thumbtack charge than a Thumbtack charge, a hundred miles on my truck, parts and two hours labor.

You mean the email address that sends an automated message to fill out another form?

"Thanks for reaching out.

To help us address your concerns more effectively and provide a faster resolution, please share these details through our Webform. This will ensure you receive the best possible experience and support.

If you've already been communicating with someone at Thumbtack, reply to that email to continue the conversation.

You can also learn more about how to report suspicious activity.

All the best,

Thumbtack Support"

This is what I got when I sent support@thumbtack.com a detailed email with screenshots regarding the reporting system returning errors.

Thank you.

Close to Amish country, but not in it.

When I looked the name for my business, it had to meet certain criteria:

.com, FB, Insta, YouTube names must be available without any additional characters such as LLC or "PA".

It must not be my name.

Preferably, it should sound like someone's name.

It can not be any business that has ever existed within the US - I'm not taking on someone's baggage from a failed business years or decades ago.

After weeks of searching, I came up empty handed.

Then I remembered my old man was a German Ex-pat and I decided to give it a German name.

I bought the .de (German country code) extension too, picked up the phone and told my lawyer to register another LLC for me. (I already own the family farm business and co-own the farm with my brother.)

It's a little difficult for some people to pronounce, they transpose the L and F, possibly because there's another local well known company "Leffler" who has had more exposure than mine. But I figure, if people can learn to pronounce Husqvarna, they can pronounce my company name in time, too.

Things are going well, I have two employees, several sub-contractors, several 1099 temps, hundreds of customers and approaching 1,000 requests for service in less than two years. If only I could get Thumbtack to work in a symbiotic relationship, that would be great!

December returned the best quality of Thumbtack users, by January, it was the second worst in my history with Thumbtack and February has been the worst ever.

It's not the economy, it's Thumbtack. They've changed something to entice their Users to pick more pros even when they only have petty tasks like hanging two curtain rods. I've stopped referring to these as "Leads", it became "Inquiries" last month and pretty soon, it will be "fees", because that's all I'm getting out of Thumbtack rn.

No, I did not fill it out. This feels more like an engineered system to frustrate people like myself.

A robust system would have sent my email to queue to be reviewed by a real person instead of sending an auto-reply asking me to do more work.

It may not be obvious based on my interactions in this community, but I wrote a chat-bot in 2003 that was available to the public until AIM was discontinued (I had left for a different company). It was far more simplistic than ChatGPT, Alexa or even chatbots available today, but it was a functioning tool that the patrons of that company used quite often providing an experience that resembled interacting with a real person.

According to many of your posts, it sounds like you have the ear of development, marketing and support personel and if I were you, what I would have done is sent an email to the relevant person or people "Can you help this frustrated pro? Please see this thread on our message board."

That's the vibe get when I see comments from yourself such as this unrelated message

I'll fill out the form this afternoon or evening.

I got an email back from support today with a different subject line. I replied to that email.

All good.