Travel preferences

[Meckell]

@Carl even when you're promoting your business, you can still respond to each lead uniquely. Can you elaborate more as to why promote doesn't work for you personally? What variables is promote not able to be taken into account? 

[DJStevie]

@Meckell 

How do we uniquely respond to a customer when we have to sit back and wait for a conversation starter?  And even with that starter,  the customer viewed tool was taken away from us, so we can't uniquely respond to a customer. The initial contact tool was also taken away from us, unless we use jobs tab, then jobs are 150+ miles away from us for some unknown reason. I know that I didn't ask Thumbtack to set that travel distance.

[Carl]

Thanks for your interest, Meckell.  There are too many variables to list here, but for example, if the client uploads photos of a project, I might decide I want no part of it because someone else messed it up so badly, or because I know that part of town and I won't go there, or because there's construction presently and traffic makes it too difficult to get in and out of the area.  Additionally, if the client doesn't post enough information to enable me to quote a price, I'll probably just ignore it or decline it.  There are often other factors that would affect the price that I would quote.  The way I understand the "promote" function, I would not see the lead prior to the client receiving a price quote from me because it's an automated function.  That kind of contact just doesn't work for me.  I much prefer to see a list of leads and choose the ones I respond to based on ever-changing criteria.  I'm also not happy with the inability to choose travel distances outside of the "promote" function.  I can't afford the time to sift through leads from all over the cotton-pickin' state.

[Kameron]

@Carl thanks for sharing. When you're promoting you should be able to choose specific cities that you do don't want to visit. Are you saying that the current travel settings don't allow you to specify quite enough? As for your other points about pictures factoring into your decision and if the customer has not filled out enough of the form I'll be passing those points along in your feedback. 

[Howardlbca]

 Why do I continually receive job notifications for jobs all over Northern California when I am only interested in working in the city of San Francisco? This is extremely annoying and bothersome so please stop!

[Howardlbca]

Why do I receive notifications encouraging me to follow up on jobs which I have already passed on?   Please stop sending those notifications!

[Kameron]

@Howardlbca it sounds like you may want to revisit your notifications settings. This link will show you how to find the page you need: https://help.thumbtack.com/article/notifications. If you've already tried turning off the necessary notifications reach out to either Meckell or I in a direct message and we can help out. 

[Howardlbca]

 I don’t see how to change the settings so I don’t receive job notifications outside of my default geographical area.    Receiving notifications outside of my area was not an issue until a few weeks ago when I started receiving them from all over Northern California. I didn’t make any changes to my settings so I don’t understand what’s going on. 

[Meckell]

@Howardlbca you don't currently have any travel preferences set up. Because your preferences aren't set, we don’t know exactly what you want and the job requests may not be perfect. If you want to get more of the jobs you always want, you can promote your business and tell us your job preferences. When you promote your business, you set specific preferences about the type of job, geography, and availability. Please let us know if you have any other questions! 

[Howardlbca]

 For over a year I was receiving job notifications for San Francisco only which was my preference. A few weeks ago that changed and now I am receiving notifications for jobs all over Northern California. This is a result of a change you made and your efforts to force pros to pay to promote themselves. I do not appreciate this change and I’m sure thousands of other pros feel the same way.