Thumbtack Automatic Quotes and high cost

[marcwkohler]

This is  part of this subject.  I am now getting quotes without aby budget figure.  That seems odd.  Does anyone know if the category has been dropped or are people choosing not to fill it in.  Anyone know? 

[Meckell]

@marcwkohler if you go take a look at Jason's post here, you'll see that we've made a few changes. Let me know if you have any questions. 

[JENNIFER2018]

The budget for quotes was just as important to us as the date the client wanted service...it told us that the client had a realistic idea of what service would cost...now...not so much.  We are just not bidding on nearly as many jobs because a catering job with 100+ guests is going to cost me over $50 if the customer contacts me....which wouldn't be such a bad thing if the customer wasn't expecting a $35 meal for $20...so what's the point.  TT is getting to be just too much of a gamble for us it seems.

[PSPhotography]

Hello Thumbtack (and the active community),

I know that I am just one business owner, and I can’t speak for everyone on here (though I suspect I’m not alone). Thumbtack has been an amazing tool for my business. In the month of August alone I did almost $10,000 in business brought in primarily through thumbtack. I was happy to spend the $500+ to make this money. I would prefer to pay per bid, but as long as the system is working, I’ll fall in line, and try to make it work for me.

However, not asking for a customer budget isn’t working. Here’s a comparison for you.

The week before you rolled out the change to the system no longer requiring customer budgets I sent out 18 quotes. I was contacted by 8 people, and hired by 5.

In the 2 weeks since then, I’ve sent out 35 quotes. I haven’t been contacted by anyone.

When I, and I imagine other photographers, are building quotes for a customer, we use the budget as a launch pad to sell them the right product. And in this field, if you quote to high they don’t bother to look, and if you quote too low they assume you aren’t up to the job they need. Since I’m basically taking shots in the dark when I quote now, I believe this is the reason I haven’t been contacted in two weeks.

I’ve read in other threads that you are working on a solution, but that these things take time. Sadly, as a father of two hungry children, I don’t have weeks to wait for you to fix it. If I did, my business would go out of business.

I have a marketing budget, and am willing to spend it for leads. However, Thumbtack isn’t providing me any leads, so just yesterday I allocated a large portion of my Thumbtack budget to another marketing platform.

There are a number of issues that need to be resolved, and they have been discussed at length in other posts, but as a stop gap while you find better solutions, I hope that you simply back in the budget questions for my potential clients.

Hoping to use Thumbtack,
Peter

[CappellaPhoto]

You are not alone @PSPhotography this changes are killing us.... And TT is looking the othe way and not lisetening to their real clients.

[CappellaPhoto]

All these modifications on TT system are getting worst... They claimed is better for "US" (?)

Since they deleted the field for users to show their budgets we are having more crappy leads, because we can not filter good leads from bad...

Now, I displayed my Fee, nice and clear.... they user liked my portfolio but he wants to pay less and replied trying to bargain my price... I said NO..... and guess what TT did?

CHA-CHING!!!!! $30.00

These are their responses to me:

Any sort of bargaining or price negotiation is something you'll need to address with the customer. This is a common occurrence in a business transaction and wouldn't affect the cost or validity for this particular contact. At this point, it's up to you to sell the customer on your services and show them the value of your work, which I'm sure you'll be great at!

------------

Again, customers discussing the price with you and negotiating is a common occurrence. This happens on or off Thumbtack, and the fact that this customer is engaged in conversation with you qualifies it as a valid lead. We facilitated this connection between you and the customer, and now the job is yours to win! We realize that some jobs are more valuable than others, so we try to make the price you pay for each customer contact reflect that. You pay a different amount for each contact based on whether we believe the job is more valuable or less valuable.

------

I'm sorry about your frustration, Diego.

Our goal is to make the price of contacts match the value you get. We’re constantly listening to your feedback and evaluating prices to make sure they're fair. Sometimes we find prices are too high, other times they're too low. We want the price you pay to match the value you get, and we’re working hard to make that happen.

I’m going to share your feedback with our team. We’re working to improve our pricing, and your feedback is an important part of getting it right.

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They are NOT thinking about US as their clients..... they are only using us to increase their profits without providing the service they used to give us.
Since you change your logo..... everything is going down the hill, I hope you can get this back in track.....

[DCFGCatering]

agreed.

sad.

[JasonB]

Hey all, 

There's been a lot of very understandable, very reasonable feedback on this thread.  I totally get what's frustrating about this change, and the ways in which it wasn't properly communicated.   

I want to bring in and introduce you all to @MichelleT, our Category Manager who leads all of our Events categories (photography, catering, et.).  Michelle's team oversees request forms, and so they're responsible for taking out the customer budget question.  I'll let Michelle give you more information and an update on where things stand.

I also wanted to say a big thank you for all of the comments and posts on this thread.  We're always listening, and we always appreciate hearing from you. That's why we created this Community in the first place.

Thanks for being here. 

Hope you have a great weekend,

Jason

[MichelleT · Accepted solution]

Hi everybody -

We owe you an apology.

Three weeks ago we stopped asking customers to tell you their budget. We did it for a few reasons, which I’ll get to in a minute, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s been incredibly frustrating for a lot of you:

• This change makes it harder for you to quote on jobs and decide which ones you want.
• We didn’t give you enough notice.
• We didn’t explain why we did it.

Here’s what we’re doing about it:

• We’re testing four new budget questions. By the end of next week, we should know if they’re working and be able to tell you if you’ll start seeing some budget info again soon.
• We’re working on two new features: Packages and Price Ranges. They’ll be ready in a couple months and will hopefully make it a lot easier for pros and customers to meet on prices.
• If anything changes, we’ll let you know here.

In the meantime, let me try to explain what happened.

The budget problem.

Whether or not to ask customers for their budget is a huge debate at Thumbtack.

On one hand, we know seeing a budget can be really useful for you:

• If you’re looking through the Requests/Jobs tab, a budget helps you figure out which customers to contact.
• Customers with a higher budget sometimes seem more serious.  
• You were able to tailor your quote to each customer, especially if you offer a variety of price points and services.

On the other hand, we saw a problem for customers:

• A lot of pros quoted higher prices for the same services if they saw a higher budget.

We know it’s an industry norm for some, but it didn’t seem fair. A waiter doesn’t ask you how much you’re willing to pay for dinner before he sets his prices. So we didn’t think it was right that some customers were getting charged more for the same service.

Also, customers aren’t stupid. On their side the budget question was tricky too:

• Many figured out what was going on and set their budgets lower as a negotiating tactic.
• People who weren’t sure just picked the lowest option by default.

Customers with lower budgets generally received fewer quotes and left Thumbtack unsatisfied. Other customers with high budgets got a lot of quotes but left feeling like they got ripped off. Needless to say, many of those customers did not return.

Where we messed up and what we’re doing next.

We took the budget question away. But we didn’t give you fair warning – we didn’t explain ourselves and we didn’t help you figure out how to use Thumbtack now that that question is gone.

A lot of you have told us that Thumbtack just doesn’t work for you if you don’t know people’s budgets.

So we’re testing new budget questions. One version is an optional open-text budget question. The other is a variation on the original multiple choice, with the ability for customers to indicate more than one budget range they are open to. We’re also working on building Packages and Price Ranges. And we’re hyper-focused on getting this right.

If you have ideas for what we should be doing, we want to hear them. Post them here or email events@thumbtack.com. We’ll be working on this all weekend. Needless to say, we’re paying attention.

And please know that we hear everything you’ve told us and appreciate you taking the time to post your thoughts in the Community. We’re still a startup and we rely on your voices to make Thumbtack better. So keep them coming. We’re working to fix this for you and the best way to do that is for you to tell us where we let you down and what you want to see us do next.

Sincerely, 

Michelle, Category Manager for Events

[revbrian]

Taking away budgets...

Many pro's actually charge depending on what the customer wants to pay. Knowing a potential client's budget, is essential. Have you ever made a large purchase? What's the first thing you get asked after "Hi folks. How are you doing? Nice color car isn't it? It all boils down to:

"HOW MUCH DO YOU DEAR MISTER CUSTOMER, WANT TO PAY?"

And them we have to to help make up for the three or more fold increase in your fees this year and then there is the increase in the number of potential clients who ghost us once a quote has been sent. Even just a short note from our potential customers telling us "No Thanks" costs us money! It has to come from somewhere... By the way, these are OUR (The Pro's, not Thumbtack's Clients, as they don't pay you a daime to use the service, but WE DO).

And then what about those of us who DO charge on (for example) the size of the event? The price we quote will vary on that basis. 

It really does appear to me that nobody at Thumbtack has ever run their own small or independent business or you wouldn't even think of some of the crazy ideas like removing budget questions from a clients list of things they must provide provide to get quotes.

The optics here are that it seems like nobody at Thumbtack has the interest of us Pro's at heart, only the (potential) clients of ours, who don't pay you a penny, but it seems that those who DO pay you (here is a hint: I am talking about your army of Pro's), are ignored. 

Set Thumbtack back to how it was before Instant Match came on the scene and you'll regain our trust.