@Meckell - so what has happened to my diary point in the Thumbtack system for a review request? Does it ever get sent to him, even if he has already given a review?  I'm trying to work out how this works is all. ... View more

@Kiroberts  "Surprisingly I don't think I was the lowest bid. But I am starting to think they did go with the lowest and now I am stuck as you put it paying for it." I understand. My experience after several hundred TT clients is that they want to see 3 or maybe as many as 5 quotes. They mostly sort on price; broadly speaking they start with the absolute lowest quote first and then work upwards if the lowest isn't available or can't do exactly what they want. You may have been 2nd or 3rd cheapest but the one cheaper than you got the deal. That's just how quoting on TT is! ... View more

I have learnt to set my level of expectation appropriately.  At the end of the day, I suspect you have a client who selected on lowest price and didn't give a "whatever" (I'm being nice here) for you. In thier mind: "We chose someone else and don't care for the losers anymore." Or of course, they might never have been serious at all!!! We can't know, but we pay for it now.... :-(   ... View more

Please include the opportunity to show multiple options in pricing to our potential clients as only showing them one price is a race to the bottom and kills everyone.  Please also let US choose what goes in as extras, not three pre-chosen options (that are all $0 for me anyway as they are included in my base price) ... View more

@SunsetPhoto - " A contact is someone that actually is looking to hire ..." This is something I know was an issue before instant match. I used to choose who to send a quote to and perhaps 50% would never respond, no matter what I included or how many times I sent a message to them or how much of the classic marketing guff I used; "Special offer", "This week only", you know the stuff.  I have a library of "responses" I used to send to potential clients in Thumbtack if they didn't respond to my quotes quickly. I have been a TT Pro since 2008 when it started - that's an entire decade and it didn't take long for me to realize the pattern that you get with a "lookie-loo" on here. These were never ever going to respond. These people are everywhere. With instant match, it's just that we as pros now have to pay (in my case) three times what I paid before to find all that out.  I don't think that these people are ever going away, unless THEY ALSO HAVE TO PAY to send a request for a quote - and that's just too unrealistic the way things are. I also think that the instant match process is far too inflexible - see my other comments - of which I have made many. ... View more

@DefiningImagery there is more to wedding work than photography, you know? ... View more

Yes. In fact an instant match request came in this afternoon set for the wrong price. Where do we as pros get to see what the client sees as far as what average prices are? I price at three distinct levels, TT only allows one price? Really? So very unhelpful. Why do we also not know what the price of a reqply to a quote request is? Very bad of you guys. That one thing needs fixing as a top priority. Your system is currently broken and should have been left as it was before instant match. At least we as pros had a decent manageable system back then but now it's almost unusable. ... View more