ThumbtackReviews 1,535

I have been disappointed by thumbtack in the last several years. As one of the first businesses to subscribe to this service I was thrilled when I got my first lead which lead to a successful short sale for the client that contacted and hired me. Unfortunately, that was the first and only lead that I have gotten from them. In the last few months I have spent an average of $16 to send out a quote to a variety of potential home buyer and sellers - only to not only be hired but just giving the money to thumbtack for "viewing" my quote. There is no checks or balances on this software. As far as I can tell these clients may or may not exist... no way to find out since the information is not provided to see if this is a real lead or just made up. Too tired of giving money to companies that don't provide any real value... would be very careful with this business and providing your information... who knows what they are doing with it... selling it to other companies to send more advertising? Who knows!

Good bye Thumbtack!

I am contractor and I used thumbtack for extra work for the last 2 years. I had a good experience at first but then I my account was frozen for a month because they needed to run a background check. I couldn't bid or get into my account to retrieve my customers information. I called customer service numerous times to find out why they froze my account only to never get an answer and to be hung up on several times with no call back. After they finally reactivated my account, they then deacctivated it again 6 months later to do the same thing. I have tried to get a manager on the phone several times but I all I get when I ask is chuckles like their is something funny about asking for a manager. Im starting to think thumbtack is run by a couple kids out of their basement. Contractors, don't put to many eggs in the thumbtack basket cause they don't care about you or your business. Which is odd because they are always asking me to refer contractors for free bids?

This group of people were sending me fake quotes so I would send a response to the customers and they would charge me for sending these responses. They have done it multiple times. Thank God my husband warned me, and I unsubscribed. Beware, they are pure greedy thieves, and they constantly raise their fees and change their web settings so they could make more cash at the customers losses, they do not even inform the clients ahead of time on the price changes. They are not trusty. Their web must be shut down.
In my eyes they deserve to go to jail.

How can you Blind Bid a Major Contracting Project. Signed up, Paid the Money to help grow the Business. Received Leads. Minimal information (Most was Bad or Incorrect) Submitted Blind Bids. Person would open the Bid to review. You were charged MONEY without a contact or conversation with the potential customer. Thumbtack is SELLING LEADS. This is a LEAD SELLING COMPANY. You WILL SPEND MONEY. Thumbtack will also SELL your Contact Information. My phone and emails have been non stop with Telemarketers. SAVE YOUR MONEY. Thumbtack, Home Advisor or Angie's List NOT WORTH THE TIME OR MONEY>

At first this business paradigm sounds like a good idea, but you will tricked by their payment process. The process is just plain weird. They state that to bid on a quote costs $1.67, then that quote turns into a $58.00. When contacting them, their explanation makes no sense. They say that some answered quotes cost more than others? Why would that be? No logical explanation except it costs more credits to answer some quotes than others? Why? I never found out.

If you just click because you are interested, then you get charged $14 or more. Then to make matters worse, I have had people who had sent me an email - and the email is not there until about four or five days later - and they don't even send me a notice in my email box. I got so used to people just going on there to check prices of contrators, when they were not serious, that I didn't check every day on the site - so the lack of alerts makes me wonder if they were pushing some other contractor to get the job first?

As far as I can tell they do no research on who they let list as pros. I'm all for second chances, but I hired a personal trainer, and like an idiot didn't do a simple google search before hiring him because I trusted Thumbtack had done that. After he ripped me off for 150 bucks I searched him and found his mug shot, then criminal history. He had just gotten out of jail for threatening to kill someone, gun charges, CDS, etc. I'm afraid to changing my rating of him and I can't delete it. I let this man into my home with two kids as a single mom.

So here is how it works. You put on your bio and what service you offer. People in the local area can put in what services they need. Then it links you up. If they message you, it charges you. From this, I have had a big potential scam (good thing I didn't buy into it), 4 people asking for services that I do not offer nor did I list, 1 person from almost a different state wanting a massage (thats what I offer) and another person just messaged me to say I had a nice bio. I could go on but you get the hint. This would be a cool idea if it worked. I wonder how ethical the company is. If you think about it, the company gets paid if people message you. Hmmm are the employees setting up fake profiles and messaging vendors? I don't know. But it wouldn't surprise me. Hope this helps.