Why are clients NOT seeing my pricing?

[jnovember]

I have "Targeting" on and all my pricing set up.   Why are clients who select me constantly responding to my replies by asking for my pricing?   Doesn't Thumbtack show it to them?

Something is wrong with the way Thumbtack is working.  I should not have to manually enter my pricing in my responses.   

[Meckell]

@jnovember if you look yourself up, you'll see that the prices you have set are in fact being shown. Are you seeing that reflect on your end when looking yourself up?

[jnovember]

@Meckell ,

I don't believe you are understanding the issue that I am trying to describe.   A client selects me via Targeting, "requesting my availability" for however many hours, Thumbtack generates a price based on my profile setup.  I then reply with a generic text message via Thumbtack Messaging to acknowledge receipt of their inquiry and begin a discussion.   My generic response does NOT contain pricing, since Thumbtack should have already provided it.    Yet, in over 50% of my the inquiries like this, the potential client has no idea what Thumbtack sent as my pricing and asked me what it will cost for them to have me as a photographer for the number of hours they specified in the original request.   "rajashekhar p" is the most recent example in my "messages".   Take a look yourself!   It doesn't matter what I see.  The issue is what the client sees!

Clearly, the clients are getting the info from Thumbtack in a meaningful way (which may explain the huge amount of "ghosting" you receive constant complaints about.

Thank you, Jon

[Meckell]

I am understanding @jnovember. Your pricing is indeed being shown to customers. They see pros prices in search results when they're searching for a pro as well as in the messaging between them and the pro that they contacted (as long as the pro has added their prices.)
Here is a screenshot of what your most recent customer is seeing in their messaging between you and them:

If they select "see project details" it will show them what's included in the price:

I understand that these situations can be frustrating. A lot of times, customers are just wanting to confirm the price with the pro and that's why they ask. Of course, we want the Thumbtack experience to be easy and seamless for both pros and customers. If you have any feedback about how we're showing customers your prices, please let us know. 

[jnovember]

I don’t know what they see. I only know that half of my potential clients don’t seem to know my pricing.

[meofsharick]

I seriously empathize with your frustrations, Jon. I’m a photographer on here too and I can’t tell you how many nights I have stayed up carefully arranging my profile trying to make my information and pricing as clear and simple as possible. And yet, it would seem the problem is that customers here do not read anything.
On Thumbtack’s end, I’d really like to see if maybe someday they could figure out a way to force them to read certain things. Because what needs to be understood is that we cannot spend day in and day out answering the same questions over and over that we’ve spent so much time already answering in our profile. What are your prices? How many photos will I get? Can you travel 50 miles to me even though my budget is less than $100? The list goes on.

As a whole, all of the leads I get directly through my social media or my own website are almost always quality and serious. The leads that come through Thumbtack? I would say 90% of them are low quality. Either they are not serious about hiring anyone, or they may communicate very poorly with you, or they’re extremely cheap and are hunting for pricing that no sane photographer offers, or they have a very ridiculous request. And it really begs the question — WHY does Thumbtack attract this type of crowd? It’s only once in a blue moon that I actually get a normal, polite person on here who wants to chat and plan a real photo session, like my customers I meet organically. I know this is not a single issue for just me; pros all over the Thumbtack community complain about this every day. I would really like to see Thumbtack continue to search for ways to filter out the low quality leads and instead encourage people who are actually serious about hiring someone. Because again, I think your pros are more than happy to pay for leads that actually go through — but we’re also growing weary of paying for strange customers who only have fifty dollars and can’t seem to type coherent sentences.

[lmheim]

@meofsharick You are completely right about the quality of leads on TT at this time.  I do welding repairs and 95+% of leads and opportunities die on the vine with 90+% never responding to my initial outreach/questions.  Very few "normal, polite people" - just inconsiderate tire-kickers.  As I have posted many times before, the TT structure gives job posters no incentives to operate in good faith, and no enforcement mechanism against those who do not.  Job posters pay nothing, so they have nothing to lose by carpet-bombing for estimates and then going away.  Pros have no way of rating job posters (such as how uber drivers rate riders) to discourage poor behavior and notify Pros of potential concerns.  Until job posters have some skin in the game, there will continue to be a high ghosting rate.  Even though I got Top Pro 2020 status, I recently suspended my account because of (1) the high ghosting rate, (2) the extremely poor ROI on my TT expenses and (3) the lack of concern shown by TT management.  Changes reportedly coming to the Community are supposed to give Pros a formalized way of communicating our needs for the system.  I hope that is successful, but management has to DO something with the information that comes in.