How do you handle a bad review?

[rpcfitness]

Ok, so if someone sends you a message and they're not able to afford your service, or if they have unreasonable requests that you cannot accomodate, then they are entitled to leave a negative review?

That seems like an extremely flawed process, and only hurts those who pay for the Thumbtack service - the professionals.  And it does not give the customer an accurate representation of reviews from actual customers of the pro.

[Kameron]

@rpcfitness in those cases most customers should be understanding as long as your responses are professional and explain the situation well. If the customer truly feels that they didn’t have a good experience when communicating with a pro, we give them the option to share that experience.

[rpcfitness]

Yes, I agree that customers should be understanding, but that is not always the case (as has been demonstrated through various pro responses in this thread).

It does not matter how professionally matters are handled sometimes.  A customer should not have the opportunity to post a review if they have not actually worked with the person that they are reviewing.  If they are dissatisfied with the work, that is a completely different story.  But if they never actually worked with the pro at all, then why should they be able to damage the pro's reputation?

[bonnie_bill]

Reviews should be related to work provided in my opinion. Getting a bad review because a customer was having a bad day that did not intend on doing any business anyway? That does not give a fair opportunity to the Pro and is just awful. It is not representative of the quality of the Pro nor their work.  

[missannienow]

Thank you. I know I bring up many good points. The problem is that the Big People at the Top are not hearing any of us. I believe THAT is the real problem. So if anyone knows HOW to contact the owner, please let me know. I would gladly speak for all of us.

[missannienow]

Oh come on! Getting one bad review does not mnean you arent providing excellent work. People sometimes give bad reviews based on utter nonsense. So tell me, how do YOU weed out those people? You cant. And you cannot be SO perfect in every single job you do - that is not human.

[CHSHOME]

We are in Oregon and have been with Thumbtack for well over 6-7 Years. We've manged to hold a 4.5-4.8 Stars from several Advertizing Website Platforms.

We all want to be the BEST at our Careers. If your a Professional, you take the Good with the Bad. Sometimes in our Profession (which is cleaning Homes) we do make a mistake, once in awhile. But, we don't let that define us as a whole. 

When we make a mistake, we own up to that mishap. Sometimes we can reconcile our mishap and sometimes we can't. In our Company, we understand Human Error. We all started from the Beginning and through Trail & Error, is how we got to the Point we are now.  Yes, it hurts deeply that Customers insult us. But, we pick ourselves up, learning from our Mishaps & try not to make that Mishap ever again. 

It's a Learning Process at work, each n everyday. If you love your Profession, you strive each Day to make their Customers Day. In turn that Customer makes your Day. And those Customers tell their Friends, Family, Co Workers and Others, Etc.......... 🙂 

[missannienow]

Anyone who claims they never make mistakes is delusional. We are human beings and humans make mistakes no matter what kind of work they do. I worked as an RN for 30 years, and believe me I saw MANY mistakes made. Including some of my own. Luckily, I did not hurt anyone by my errors.

In my current work I make mistakes. I have been cleaning houses for about 4 years now. Early on my mistakes were due to my being in a learning process. When I make them now it is usually small stuff, or perhaps not handling a customer as well as I should have.  My one bad review was due to this. The woman and I just did not see eye to eye, and in retrospects I should have chosen different words when dealing with her. Live and learn is my motto!

[bonnie_bill]

Reviews less than 5 stars are unfamiliar to us. Not that we do not make mistakes, we certainly do. But we stand behind our work and always work out a satisfactory solution including a satisfaction guarantee. That includes not charging if not satisfied or providing the service again at no charge. We have only used the no charge option twice in 20 years when "we" were not 100% satisfied with the end result and still got the good review. We did not wait on the client to tell us. 

I can truthfully say we would not know how to handle a bad review. We have always made it right with the client to make sure the client was satisfied therefore received the excellent review. And I guess we have been fortunate not to work with a client that would post one for no reason. That would make us very unhappy. 

That is just our take on this review discussion. 

[Quentin]

Hello all,

I recently reached out on the “TT Chat” about the reviews on my profile. I asked if there was a way to remove bad reviews as they are effecting my getting hired now. The “Rep” I spoke with suggested that I get more people outside of TT to leave me a review on TT. Which would push down the the negative reviews. But as I’m looking and reading through these forums I’m seeing TT will remove comments that pros have about the TT service and even witnessed a TT employee say “we do edit, DELETE and move around comments if it does not match our guidelines” my point for asking that reviews be removed is because some of the reviews on my profile are silly. One client called me “Fake” after me not accepting her form of payment “Cash” who also asked to pay way less then what was quoted to her which was $90.00 for a home cleaning she wanted to pay $40.00 I had another client that we did a job for on a Monday and two weeks after they decided to leave a not so nice review. Who waits two weeks after the service to leave a review?? The rep also told me they don’t remove reviews for transparency for new clients. But hide how much these jobs are costing us to quote them..

Speaking of them hiding how much we pay to quote these “Leads” the pricing is super high. Also they have this budget thing now that we can set a budget on how much we spend a week but they will go through all the cards I have linked to TT until they get one they can charge. No where does it say that they do this. I found that out the hard way. I was charged $75.00 for a commercial job that I never got hired for. There should be a way that TT could charge you a one time fee for the year or on a month to month basis and you can quote as much as you want in that time frame. Instead of every time a client messages you.

Which brings me to the false leads. I reached out one time to the TT Chat once and mentioned how I don’t even know if these “leads” are real because I keep getting “when your next availability” I will reply immediately and get no response but yet I’m charged. I also realized that I won’t get any leads all week but sent many quotes cause I use instant match. Suddenly on Saturday & Sunday I get a few empty “leads” of people asking “how long will the job take” or “when’s your next availability” or “Sounds good what’s next” and then I will reply and get no answer but on Monday will either have money taken from my account for those empty leads or have a balance that restricts me from now using the TT Service. How do we know these people are real?