% of bad leads has dramatically increased - getting ready to leave thumbtack

Hi Thumbtack community! I’m curious if other people are having a similar issue, and if so, hoping we can bring it to the admins attention.

Let me start by saying - I’ve been on thumbtack on and off for a decade, so I’ve seen how leads come in during a variety of times. And I have never seen as high a % of bad leads as in the last 2 months.

I’m getting 5-7 bad leads (direct leads that never reply) PER WEEK as a photographer.

This week I’ve had 6 leads where I replied first (within 3 minutes), had the lowest price, and still never heard back. I’m used to losing some of the leads I get to first, but historically I book ~ 35% of direct leads. Right now I’m booking 15% of my direct leads.
I wouldn’t mind so much if I felt like these were real jobs that another contractor landed instead of me - but with the sheer number of direct leads never answering a message or phone call, it’s starting to feel like a high % of these “direct leads” were just looking around and had no intention to hire someone for a specific project.

With the price for photography in my area, the cost to profit does not work for my business to stay on thumbtack with a 15% booking rate. For the first time ever, I am consistently spending more than I’m making on Thumbtack.

On top of the “never reply” bad leads: I’ve had several people inquire with me, “hire me”, only to find they don’t need my services once they do some planning. Clearly these people are being put in contact with contractors before they are even sure if they have a job to hire us for.

In the last 10 days I’ve had 2 people inquire about video production (an expensive lead), and hire me - to then do some planning and find out they aren’t allowed to have a videographer at their location! It is too easy for customers to contact us with no real plan, or intention of making a hire.

If Thumbtack won’t do anything to make sure customers are serious about hiring before contacting us, they need to at least make getting a refund for bad leads easier. Ideally, refund all contractors if the customer does not make a hire through thumbtack. That would keep things honest, and I imagine get Thumbtack to take “bad leads” more seriously on their end.

I’m hoping to get a meaningful response to this concern so that I can justify staying on Thumbtack.

As of now I am giving it 2 more weeks of documenting all the bad leads with refunds refused. That way if the pattern continues, I at least have proof to share with Thumbtack Admins how their service is no longer profitable for contractors