Thumbtack Numbers Policy: Give Us Back Real Phone Numbers

I’m going to strongly disagree with the direction Thumbtack is taking here, and I think there are several issues being mixed together that deserve direct answers.

First, I keep seeing the statement that Thumbtack Numbers was developed with input and feedback from pros. I would genuinely like to know what that means.

How many pros were consulted? What trades did they represent? How long had they been using Thumbtack? Were they actually asked whether they wanted their customers’ direct contact information replaced with a proxy number, their communications routed through Thumbtack, and calls potentially recorded or transcribed?

Because as a contractor actually using and paying for this service, I have a very difficult time believing that established professionals overwhelmingly asked for more barriers between themselves and prospective customers.

The entire purpose of a lead service is to connect a prospective customer with a professional. I pay Thumbtack for that connection.

Instead, over time, I feel like we are receiving less information, less direct access and less control over a lead that we paid for, while lead costs have increased.

That equation does not make sense.

If Thumbtack is going to provide less information and a more restricted connection to the customer, then the lead should cost less, not more.

There is also a serious transparency problem with lead pricing itself. I can receive seemingly similar opportunities with dramatically different lead costs, and as a business owner I have very little ability to determine why one lead costs substantially more than another. If there is a formula determining the value of these leads, professionals paying for them deserve meaningful transparency into what determines that price.

The newer direct-lead pricing and budget structure raises another concern.

When presented with certain leads, I can effectively be shown two different ways of paying for the opportunity: one price if I maintain my existing budget, and a lower lead price if I agree to add the lead cost and increase my budget.

I would like Thumbtack to explain the economic rationale for this.

The prospective customer has not changed. The project has not changed. The geographic location has not changed. The value of that individual opportunity to my company has not suddenly changed.

What changed is my willingness to commit additional money to Thumbtack.

If agreeing to increase my advertising budget makes the exact same lead less expensive, then what exactly is determining the stated value of that lead?

That deserves considerably more transparency.

The refund structure creates another problem.

My understanding of the current system is that eligibility for certain lead protections or refunds depends upon conducting the customer interaction through Thumbtack Numbers and following Thumbtack’s prescribed communication process. If I instead provide my established business number and communicate with the prospective customer directly, I can lose those protections.

That effectively creates a financial incentive for professionals to route their business communications through Thumbtack.

If that is not an accurate description of the policy, I would welcome a clear explanation from Thumbtack.

But if it is accurate, then professionals are being placed in a position where maintaining control over their own customer communications can come at the cost of losing refund protection on a lead they already paid Thumbtack to receive.

I fundamentally disagree with that arrangement.

There is also the issue of what a “refund” actually means. When a lead is determined to qualify for reimbursement, the money is generally returned as Thumbtack credit rather than returned to the original payment method.

That matters.

Thumbtack can withdraw actual dollars from my account to purchase a lead. If that lead is subsequently determined not to meet the conditions for which I should have been charged, I believe there is a legitimate question as to why the remedy must remain locked inside the Thumbtack ecosystem rather than being returned in the same form in which it was collected.

Then there is the privacy issue.

I conduct proprietary business conversations with my customers. Pricing, estimating, troubleshooting, technical discussions, scheduling and how I operate my company are part of my business. I am not comfortable with a third party unnecessarily inserting itself into those conversations, recording, transcribing or analyzing them simply because it supplied the initial lead.

The privacy explanation also doesn’t make much practical sense to me in home services. The customer contacting me is potentially about to give me their home address and invite me into their house to perform work. At some point we have to exchange actual information and establish a normal business relationship.

Adding another telephone number between us doesn’t eliminate that reality. It adds another step.

And I have personally noticed a substantial slowdown.

July was roughly half of my normal business activity, possibly less, and Thumbtack became so quiet that I actually contacted support and asked whether something had happened to my account or whether I had somehow been blocked.

I used to hear Thumbtack notifications regularly. Now there can be extended periods of almost complete silence.

That may or may not be entirely attributable to Thumbtack Numbers, and I am not claiming causation without the data. But when multiple established pros are reporting reduced contact and conversion while these changes are being implemented, that deserves serious investigation rather than reassurance that the feature is producing positive results somewhere else.

I also noticed something important in Thumbtack’s response here: the stated improvement is in “customer responsiveness.”

That is not necessarily the metric that determines whether this is successful for the professionals paying for the leads.

A customer responding to a message is not a completed job.

What matters to my business is conversion into legitimate, paying work.

Has Thumbtack measured pro conversion rates before and after implementing Thumbtack Numbers? If so, I would like to see those numbers.

There is another side of this that I don’t think gets nearly enough attention: customer qualification.

Professionals are being charged real money for these opportunities, yet customers can submit extremely vague requests with almost no useful information.

A photograph and “I need work done” is not a qualified lead.

If Thumbtack is going to charge professionals $20, $30, $50, $100 or more for an introduction, there should be some minimum requirement for the prospective customer to describe the project, answer relevant qualifying questions and demonstrate an actual intent to hire.

Window shopping should not be sold to contractors as a premium lead.

And these issues become more significant when considered together.

We have increasingly variable lead pricing.

We have incentives tied to increasing advertising budgets.

We have less direct customer information.

We have proxy telephone numbers.

We have communications that can be recorded or analyzed.

We have refund eligibility connected to using Thumbtack’s communication system.

We have refunds that remain inside the platform as credits.

And we still have inadequately qualified customers capable of generating charges to multiple professionals.

At some point, professionals have every right to ask whether the platform is still primarily facilitating introductions or increasingly attempting to control the entire relationship after selling the introduction.

I understand that Thumbtack owns the platform and has every right to develop its product. But the professionals are not simply users of a free service. We are the paying customers. Changes that materially affect what we receive for our money deserve transparency and meaningful input from the people financing the platform.

So I would like some concrete answers rather than another assurance that feedback is being passed along:

How were the pros who supported Thumbtack Numbers selected?

How many established, paying professionals were consulted?

What measurable improvement has Thumbtack seen in actual pro conversion rates, not simply customer response rates?

Have conversion rates been compared before and after implementation?

Why have lead prices increased while the information and direct access provided to the professional have decreased?

Why can the same opportunity effectively cost less when a professional agrees to increase their budget?

What specifically determines the price of an individual lead?

Why should refund eligibility depend upon surrendering direct control of customer communications?

Why are approved refunds retained as platform credit rather than returned in the form originally paid?

And what is Thumbtack doing to require customers to properly qualify a project before multiple professionals are charged for it?

I’ve been doing this long enough to know when additional friction has been inserted into a business process. I don’t need Thumbtack to manage my customer relationship after I’ve paid Thumbtack to introduce us.

I need a lead service.

Connect us, provide the information necessary to evaluate the opportunity, charge a fair and transparent price for that introduction, and then allow two adults to conduct business.

All of that said, you never know who you might be talking to. Being a disabled vet that has 5+ seizures daily, there are some people that struggle more others. with all of the questions and concerns I’ve mentioned and then being able to leave the doorstep effectively to go do the , then now having to wrestle a giant corporation to just do what they’re supposed to do.