About acollinsphoto

acollinsphoto

Yup. As I've explained to the staff and posted on here elsewhere the business model for someone who's a wedding photographer is completely dead. No way to justify spending $53 PER CONTACT for wedding "leads" expecially when a large majority of them are tire kickers just researching and not ready to hire, or responding with "are you available" or "when can we chat" and then ghosting us. Combine that with the fact that they are contacting 14 other people, you have (all else being equal) a 1 in 15 chance of being hired, which means an overall average cost per conversion of $795. That is just ludicris. On top of that the majority of the people posting are claiming budgets of $250-500 for a photographer which is just silly. In no universe does any of that make sense and I'm done. I do keep checking the forums hoping to see a revival of what was once a great system but I am not holding my breath.

acollinsphoto

I truly do not believe at all that they are making fake leads. I do think though that the end-users (that they call customers, though we all know WE are the paying customers) who are making these requests have no concept at all of how it works and don't realize that we're paying so much money. They think it's like a directory. I've had this conversation with a few people who I've talked to on here - they honestly are appalled when they find out how much money they cost folks by sending out the generic one-click questions. You ever window-shop for a car online and see a button labeled "click here to notify me if the price drops" or some such business? And you click it without fully realizing you just started a file on yourself at the dealership and a salesperson is now going to attempt to sell you a car? I think it works sort of similarly here. The end users are largely window shopping and my belief is they sincerely don't intend to be generating false leads. Thumbtack really really makes it easy for them to click stuff that turns them into a lead and tries to pull them in. It's no surprise either as their SEO is through the roof now, thanks in no part to everyone putting a "thumbtack pro" badge on their website. Google LOVES relevant backlinks. Smart gaming on Thumbtacks part. It's why Wedding Wire, etc also give out those "best of wedding wire" awards to literally anyone that gets a review - it's so they post the code on their website and inadvertantly hurt their own SEO by increasing the directory's.

acollinsphoto

Yeah prices have gone insane. I don't understand how they expect to keep people on board. Eventually the end users are going to stop coming here when they find nobody answering their requests. I am seeing wedding photography requests costing over $50. What makes it even more hilarious is they list their budget as $500. Why on earth would I reply to that? And that's basically all that shows up in the jobs feed now. People getting ripped off on the "promote" are keeping the jobs feed empty since the end users are seeing and requesting quotes from up to 15 people in a matter of minutes, making thumbtack hundreds while costing a bunch of poor small business owners a bunch of money and 14/15 (best case scenario, even though I suspect much of the time it's 15/15) are not even getting hired. Even if you do, how's that going to make a profit for anyone? If you're up against 15 other "bidders" every time and you're paying $50 that is not good odds.

acollinsphoto

Yeah agreed, totally crazy. The percentage would ALMOST be fair for a fee for booking, but not for a VERY weak lead.

acollinsphoto · ‎11-30-2018

I just saw a job for wedding photography where the user put a ridiculous low $500 budget for five hours of photography. Sometimes I submit on these because when they see the quality of work they can expect for their budget they realize what's what. But in this case, it said 14 pros contacted. Yikes!!!! How much money did TT make off this customer sending probably quick messages to everyone? A lot more than their photographer will make that's for sure.

acollinsphoto · ‎11-29-2018

And good luck seeing that bid if you don't have auto-quote turned on. I got burned by so many quick-reply messages costing hundreds that I just can't take the chance. Even if things are improved and they are fixing that issue, the auto-quote forces me to provide pricing for 2 hrs, 3 hrs, etc for wedding photography and my minimum booking is much more than that. So what am I to do, just put my six hour booking price under every smaller booking? This would be ok if I could include a custom message explaining the minimum booking, but the auto-quotes are completely generic and they'll only see that I want thousands for their request for two hours or what have you. I just don't see how to make it work. Instant quote would be 1000x better if we could just set up template replies instead of them only seeing a dollar amount.

acollinsphoto · ‎11-27-2018

Same here, I turned off instant match a while back. The kicker is though that barely anything remains in my "jobs" feed since most users are having their requests filled quickly with auto-match so there's nothing left to bid on. When I do get notifications on my phone, if I don't click on them immediately, the job is closed when I do click a half hour later. I guess TT is basically dead for me now. It really worked great for that couple months period between when they changed their quoting system to when instant match started. Instant match just ruined it completely.

acollinsphoto · ‎09-12-2018

Also do add to all that, folks - send your complaints to support as well and let them know why you disagree with the fees, and that you won't be sending quotes until something changes. Just stopping with quotes is good and all but let them know SPECIFICALLY why they won't be getting your money.

acollinsphoto · ‎09-11-2018

Jason, since this was almost four months ago can you give a little insight into exactly what is being done to make the quick replies not redunant? Because I was just charged for another one and I'm at the end of my wits here. Do you understand how much we're being hosed by these? I assume you have visibility into our accounts, go ahead and look. I just got another response back from support declining to refund my $46 because it was " the value of a connection with a potential customer". You would have to be crazy to think that a mere conection with a POTENTIAL customer is worth $46. Do the math. For every actual conversion I'll have spent a hundred to a few hundred. That's not feasible at all. I'd probalby get 10 leads with $46 using FB or Adwords.

acollinsphoto · ‎09-11-2018

Thank you for the response. My biggest gripe, as others have also mentioned, is that there are a lot of occasions of these quick replies either not being genuine interest, possibly even accidental, and then of course the ones saying "lets chat" or what have you and then they do not reply again. These should absolutely be refunded. I have requested refunds for these on several occasions (and have one I'm waiting for a response to right now) and it is always refused. I don't think Thumbtack is acting in good faith to their customers (the ones paying you - ie US) by not granting these refunds. You don't have to get rid of the quick replies if you think users like them so much, just stop charging us for them! And honestly I have no idea how the short responses are supposed to be useful for multi-thousand dollar quotes for wedding photography. I provide a ton of info in the quote, link to my site which has an faq, etc. Saying "when are you available" should not be getting me charged $45. Saying "sounds good, what's next" should not even be an option. They can take a second to ask a real question. They aren't ordering lunch, they're booking a wedding photographer. It's a big deal. If they say "I'd like to chat" or "when can I call you" and they don't follow up, again I should not have to pay for that, unless they also volunteer their phone number or email address at the same time (and even have them click yes on a popup "are you sure you want to give your info this vendor" or something along those lines to confirm their intent). I understand you want to remove as many barriers as possible to the users but you're creating significant $$$$ barriers to us pros and we're not going to stay on this rollorcoaster forever.

Posts	16	Kudos Given	73
Solutions	0	Kudos Received	65

Re: Thank you TT, it was great while it lasted

Re: Ghost leads

Re: $382 to Thumbtack for $1,200 in Business

Re: This is getting more, and more ridiculous.

Re: Here’s what I’m thankful for.

Re: Here’s what I’m thankful for.

Re: Getting rid of the auto generated messages

Re: Sick of paying for people's "Quick reply" messages. $45 for nothing.

Re: Is quick reply worthy of charge?

Re: Sick of paying for people's "Quick reply" messages. $45 for nothing.