Thumbtack Numbers Policy: Give Us Back Real Phone Numbers

BattleBorn26
BattleBorn26 New member Posts: 2 ✭
edited June 4 in Community News

To the Thumbtack Product Team and Corporate decision-makers, Let’s stop pretending this proxy number system is an "upgrade" or a "feature." It is completely backwards, and it is actively crippling your core demographic, the service professionals who literally pay your corporate salaries. We are tired of the boilerplate corporate responses in the forums telling us that you are "submitting our feedback to the team."

The feedback is already crystal clear, unanimous, and completely aligned: This system is fundamentally broken and it needs to be rolled back immediately. The Reality on the Ground

  • Zero Trust, Zero Conversion: When we call or text a paid lead through your proxy system, it shows up as a random, spammy-looking number on the customer's phone. They ignore us because they think it's a robocall.
  • Paying for Ghost Leads: You charge us massive, inflated lead fees upfront, but then strip away our basic ability to form a direct human connection and close the deal.
  • The Refund Trap: You tell us we can get an automatic refund if a customer ghosts everyone for 72 hours, but if we drop our actual business line in the chat to rescue the communication, your AI text-scanners flag it and strip our refund eligibility anyway. You have turned lead management into an intentional cat-and-mouse game.

The Challenge to Corporate

Your staff keeps repeating the corporate script that this change was implemented to "help pros communicate." If that is an actual fact, publish the internal articles, case studies, and hard data proving it. 

Show us the statistics that prove customer response rates went up after you masked their numbers. Because right now, every actual contractor on the ground is experiencing the exact opposite: tanking response rates, wasted marketing spend, and dead-end leads. We don't want any more support tickets opened, and we don't want any more passive-aggressive feedback logging.

We want a direct answer from leadership and an explicit action plan outlining when direct numbers will be restored. Treat us like the paying business partners we are, not an open wallet to be corporate-tested on.


@DustiO

Comments

  • DustiO
    DustiO Administrator, Moderator Posts: 2,568 admin

    Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective. I can tell this has been a frustrating experience, and I appreciate you being direct about your concerns.

    I also want to address one point specifically: when Thumbtack employees say we're sharing feedback with the team, that isn't a scripted response or a way to dismiss concerns. Feedback like yours is shared directly and quickly with the teams responsible for these experiences, and the points you've raised here are exactly the kind of detailed feedback that helps inform product discussions.

    I also think it's important to note that the teams building these experiences have been working closely with pros throughout the process. Pro feedback has been an important part of how these products have been developed and evaluated, and conversations like this continue to be an important input as the feature evolves.

    What I can share is that the decision to introduce Thumbtack Numbers was informed by data and feedback from both customers and pros. We've seen improvements in customer responsiveness, which is one of the reasons the feature has continued to be invested in. I've also personally spoken with pros who have had positive experiences with Thumbtack Numbers and are excited about the opportunities they create.

    At the same time, that doesn't invalidate the experience you're describing. Your perspective is important, and understanding where the experience isn't working as intended is exactly why feedback like this is valuable.

    If you have specific examples, metrics, or customer interactions that illustrate the challenges you're seeing, I'd genuinely love to see them. Feel free to send me a DM. Detailed examples are often much more actionable than general sentiment, and I will make sure they get in front of the right people.

    What I can commit to is ensuring your concerns are understood and represented accurately. The message I'm hearing is that you believe the current experience is making it more difficult to connect with customers and successfully convert leads into jobs, and that you'd like greater transparency around the reasoning and outcomes behind these changes.

    I'll also see if there's anything additional I can share here. We're planning to host an AMA with a Product Manager in a few weeks, after Thumbtack Numbers has launched everywhere and pros have had more time to use the feature. My hope is that it will be an opportunity to answer questions, discuss feedback, and provide additional context. In the meantime, please continue sharing your thoughts here or with Support.

    I understand that you may be looking for more concrete answers than I can provide today. However, I do want to assure you that this feedback is being read, discussed, and shared with the people who are directly responsible for these decisions.

    Thank you again for taking the time to write this out and explain your experience in detail.

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  • DreamClean
    DreamClean New member Posts: 4 ✭
    edited June 11

    First post after years as a Pro. This was poorly conceived. Well said, @BattleBorn26

    To the Admin/Moderator, you have "personally spoken with pros who have had positive experiences with Thumbtack Numbers and are excited about the opportunities they create"? Care to elaborate on what opportunities for Pros (other than refunds)? I am genuinely shocked that any Pro using Thumbtack would support this concept. I'll take the >30% refund rate for nonresponses, but Thumbtack didn't have to obscure customer data from Pros to do that.

    I wish you all had reached out to more Pros first. You do not have the maket dominance of Amazon (which obscures customer data from retailers that sell on their Marketplace). But it seems that is Thumbtack's aspiration.

    I'm not comfortable routing all messages for the life of the customer relationship through Thumbtack. They already flow through Jobber and Twilio, and now Thumbtack's proxy number and forwarded to the customer? As a result, we'll play by your rules for the refund period. I expect this is going to cost Thumbtack as you can no longer automatically deny refunds for the high percentage of non-responsive "leads".

    Then we'll explain to new customers that Thumbtack obscures their number from us so they can track and monitor our communication, and we'll ask for their number so we can text them directly. Thumbtack won't gain any long-term data or stickiness, at least from us. But you've started conversations between Pros and their customers about how Thumbtack is just another evil tech company.

    Not to mention technical issues. Lag times. Customers saving numbers in contacts. 10DLC registration/compliance. CRM integration. It was a problem that you don't collect/share the property address so we can quickly refine a quote and check availability. Now we have to ask for the address and phone number.

    Or maybe Thumbtack intends to become the end-to-end FSM/CRM platform. That will be difficult, but makes sense from a long-term strategy perspective.

    In the meantime, we'll continue shifting our customer acquisition spend to other platforms.

  • BattleBorn26
    BattleBorn26 New member Posts: 2 ✭

    Quick update on Thumbtack numbers: my conversion ratio before implementing Thumbtack was one out of every four leads, which I could accept as long as there were some serious prospects in the pipeline. This is the first week since implementation, and I have a friend who also uses the platform in the Dallas market, which was set up a few months ago. He warned me about the changes, but I thought it wouldn’t be that bad because Thumbtack typically serves its core customer base (us professionals) well. However, after this first week, my conversion rate has plummeted. I spent $500, received 12 leads, and only one resulted in a small project. Most inquiries are not serious, and most people don’t respond. I just want to note that this is the first wave of users leaving the platform. This situation is absolutely unacceptable, and I won't tolerate it while you all are breaking the back of a small business customer base. I will be leaving the platform until further updates that support us at set in place. Also want to note I still have yet to see any case studies or documentation of this change actually supporting us.

  • UglyWalls
    UglyWalls New member Posts: 1 ✭

    AlanvWoodriff with Ugly Walls? Home advisor/angies leads tried not giving out the real phone numbers several months ago. After several months, I received an email from the CEO apologizing for the disastrous experience and switched back.

    When I get a lead, I can tell by the number if it’s a scam or not. If it’s local, probably a legitimate lead. If it’s somewhere I’ve never heard of, it’s a scam. With the new number system, I just have to figure they’re all scams and don’t follow up on any of them. Congratulations thumbtack, you have almost lost my business!

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