Thumbtack

I would give them zero stars if that was an option! My issue worked out, but no thanks at all to Thumbtack. They front like they will help a consumer, but really they have no power over a "Pro" to work out financial or contractual issues. They make money recommending people and are not accountable in any way. I was having a problem with a "Pro" who I found through Thumbtack. I read his reviews and they were great except one that said he never got back to them after they tried to contact him. It happens! I hired him using a signed contract and gave him a deposit. This was followed by five times that he said he was coming the next day and then never showed up. He ignored calls and most texts, except to let us know when he would be "fake" showing up again. I was already actively pursuing civil and criminal action, but decided to turn to Thumbtack for advice and assistance. I used the online chat feature because I like to have an exact transcript of the conversation. The agent took all the details and explained that this dispute would be escalated to the Thumbtack Solution Center. The agent also said that I would get a call from them - I did not - and that they would email me a copy of the transcript of our chat - they did not. I knew enough to copy the chat and was able to paste it into a blank word document. When this "Pro" got the complaint he finally showed up and did the job. Two days after the job he contacted me to ask why I made a complaint and if I was unhappy with the work. I knew he had received the complaint days before. I explained to him that I filed that to help protect myself and make a trail of evidence for court, but now I would withdraw the dispute, A few days later I received an email from Thumbtack. I asked them to get the pro to do the job or refund my deposit, HERE IS THERE BIG HELP FROM THE SOLUTION CENTER: "We have an update on your dispute in the Thumbtack Solution Center. It looks like ***** didn’t accept or counter your suggested solution by the deadline. We know this is
Disappointing, so someone from the Marketplace Trust and Safety team will reach out to you within two business days. In the meantime, we suggest looking into the resources available in your area to hold ***** responsible." So basically they said we tried to reach him and he ignored us. Good luck@. I will never use them again! And BTW they did not get back to me!

You’ll hear from us soon.

Marketplace Trust and Safety Team

I hired this company for my original move to a storage facility back in September. They were suppose to show up on Thursday at 10am they showed up at 3pm. When the guy saw what he had to pack he said our move wouldn't fit because he had another move in the truck.We told him not to bother the storage would close by the time he came back. My husband had to take another day off the next day. The next day they came at 10am and packed everything what I thought looked pretty good. They charged me $450 for the wraps for the furniture which would be refunded to me in three months when I contracted them again. So I was forced to hire them again. I was dissapointed with the way they stacked the boxes in the storage because I had rented two huge units for enough room. When I hired them 3 months later I realized I was right. My china cabinet was scratched at the side and a big chip of wood in the front. The bracket that connects the top to the bottom was lost. Also the wood and screws to my dresser mirror were lost. The mover tried to blame me telling me he had given it to me three months ago. They also broke two glass shelves in my china cabinet. They then dropped a box of liquor which was carefully wrapped with bubble rap. Besides breaking 6 bottles they then brought broken glass and liquor into my house with their boots. Needless to say I was livid. When I started to unpack the boxes 6 of my china glasses were chattered. When they finished and I call he office that I wasn't paying the mover started yelling at me in Russian and refused to leave my house. He threatened with calling the police. I called the office again. This Interchange of calls took an hour before the manager spoke to him and told him to accept $100 and leave. Never have I been so insulted in my own home. I am a diabetic and my glucose was at 650. I will never recommend this company. They should not be in business..

I worked for Thumbtack, right at the VERY beginning when leads were completely free, and it was absolutely wonderful! I LOVED Thumbtack and was getting hired a LOT. Then, gradually, bit by bit, they started to change. The charges were reasonable at first, and they also had this thing whereby if the person ONLY asked for a quote from "you", you got the lead for free.

Someone has been playing around with the system BIG time. You know what they say: if it's not broken, don't try to fix it. As time went on, the categories changed, too, and I found myself being placed into categories that didn't really accurately reflect what I do. My complaints fell on completely deaf ears. I am an ordained Spiritualist Minister, with all of the rights and privileges granted to any Minister of any other recognized religion; I'm not a "fortune teller" (shudder: HATE that expression), even though Spiritualists have the belief of the ability to communicate with people who have crossed over, but I'm not a traditional, Christian, minister either!

Then, we have the public's mindset of "let me book the person who is the cheapest, and who will work for almost free". These are the exact same people after the event who are complaining that the person/entity doesn't know what they are doing!

If you check my reviews, on Thumbtack AND other sites, you will see that they show 5 stars for the most part. That's because I have integrity. No, I'm not the cheapest, but my pricing is on the low end of average for New York City.

Now, I rarely (if ever) use Thumbtack for anything, even though I won an award for "Best Of", back in 2013 I think it was :). I think it's a shame because if it continues to make everything "all about the money" it will gradually wear itself out and down, as do most people/companies who start to believe their own publicity. I mean, Angie's List is free and there are a host of other choices for workers now.

All that being said, Thumbtack gave me a start. At the time I was using Thumbtack, I was just transitioning from a full time corporate job to this work, my passion. For that I will be forever grateful. These days, I get referrals from my early Thumbtack leads and honestly, word of mouth is still King!

Gradually the pricing has gone up and the quality has gone way down. I just simply got sick and tired of quoting for things and spending my good money on leads that went absolutely nowhere. It seems to be the same story for most.

Thumbtack certified and verified this business. JNVIS roofing company's owner seems to be a very decent guy, I like him. I was ready to hire him until I looked him up on DPOR and he is not registered as a licensed contractor in Virginia or anywhere. For those of you who don't know, DPOR is the governing body of Virginia Department of Professional and Organizational Regulations. I posit the questionb to him as why he wasn't licensed and he never answered me. I double checked with DPOR and they could not find him either. I asked him for his license and insurance several times and he never produced them. So buyers beware since Thumbtack and others are verifying him as one of the top roofers in this area, certified and verified by who? I guess Thumbtack is still just trying to make money and /or get a lawsuit against them because they recommended someone to me 4 years ago and I did not do my due diligence and he still has 4500 ( Bruce Ross DMV Roofing and his sister Brittany they're just thieves) of my money and he was listed on Thumbtack HomeAdvisor and including Google. However, I can't seem to find this company on Google either but Thumbtack says he's one of the top rated here but we do know you can buy some people to write reviews right there are legit scam artists. JNVIS doesn't have a website but he is on Facebook, that alone should give you pause, who isn't on FB? What happens if he falls off your roof or one of his workers are injured who is liable? I'll let you unpack that question while I provide you a few answers. No matter how nice a contractor is: In the State of Virginia this applies to all contractors...
Only a licensed general contractor can undertake major projects where construction permits are available... A large number of works can be done by licensed general contractors. It may include earth movement, transportation, power, supports, framing or roofing. But contractors in fact can not always work on it all. And some license only go up to $10,000 so make sure they're able to work on your project, THUMBTACK isn't for sure.
SF
Just looking out-

Look closely at the "leads" -- the names are ridiculous, 99% of the leads are people who don't have facebook or LinkedIn profiles. Coincidence? If an executive named "Simon Z from Maui" is looking to hire a photographer via Thumbtack, don't you think chances are pretty good that "Simon Z" would have a profile SOMEWHERE on the internet? 99% of the names given as the "first names" of the "leads" are so off-the-wall that you think it would be easy to find them on the internet -- nope. And, if you do find one on LinkedIn, it's a "person" with no picture, no information, and no contacts! I can't tell you how many "fake" leads I have come across! On top of that, when I started comparing what the descriptions were for what they needed -- they were all very similar (all very vague).

DON'T put your business on Thumbtack unless you have hundreds of dollars to blow every week. If you already have your business on there, copy and save your profile (so you have it) and copy and save all your positive reviews (so you have them) -- just in case they go out of business before you had a chance to do that!

They should have the potential customers pay $10 (and reduce the fees for the pros). If a customer is SERIOUS about finding an awesome professional to help with his/her project, they won't mind paying $10 to find that contact! In addition, they should make the customer provide a legitimate phone number and email address.

It just makes no sense to pay $20-$70 per POTENTIAL lead with no guarantee of ever being able to have a conversation with the client! With their new business model, all they were doing was simply charging my credit card over and over and I never got any new clients or the opportunity to talk with potential client! Prior to that -- when I was picking and choosing the projects I wanted to respond to --and was paying to send them quotes, I was getting a new client every day! A few weeks ago I responded to about 50 projects -- just to see what responses I would get via their new model! I got lame questions like "Can I call you?" (and, of course, never got a call but got charged on my credit card $20 for that question!) or I was asked a question that was answered in my profile (and got charged for that question).

I am done with them. Their business model will NOT sustain itself if they have no pros (like me) no longer on board.

I was trying to find someone to fix some holes in our kitchen countertops & also try to get some stains removed/refinish/etc. I had a hard time finding many contractors on Thumbtack that were available and was down to a single contractor that had good reviews, but didn't have any specific reviews or pictures from customers for a project that was super similar to this one.

Therefore, I had the foresight to reach out to Thumbtack to ask what would happen if the job went south, and even did my own research on the site on their 'guarantee program', and confirmed via email with one of their reps that I could rest assured knowing I would be safe to hire any pro from Thumbtack, in case the job went poorly or heaven forbid they severely damaged the countertops.

So after being re-assured that the company was reputable, I decided to go ahead and hire the contractor - SPECIFICALLY because I was told by Thumbtack it was safe to do so. TOO BAD THAT WAS A BOLD-FACED LIE!

The contractor did in fact destroy the countertops! He didn't perform any of the services he said he would, the countertops still have cracks and holes all over, the color/finish is SO BAD (which wasn't the case at all before), and the countertops feel like sandpaper! Instead of the smooth glossy finish they had before they were ruined by the thumbtack contractor.

So I naturally tried keeping my calm and reaching out to Thumbtack. I spoke with a friendly rep who (yet again!) assured me they could and would help remedy the awful situation. I sent tons of pics/videos of the before/after countertops. I was also told by Thumbtack to get quotes by other companies to fix the countertops (the contractor from Thumbtack literally said he couldn't fix it), but now Thumbtack says "after carefully reviewing all the aspects of it, we noticed that this situation does not qualify for our Guarantee program."

Thumbtack IS AN ABSOLUTE SCAM. The "Pros" are nothing of the sort. DO NOT USE, YOU WILL REGRET EVERYTHING!

I wanted to warn you about a terrible experience I had with Thumbtack. Ive used them before and found a great moving company that moved us across the country. Therefore, when we were wanting a custom bookshelf made for our living room, I was excited because I thought I found a great carpenter on their site. He had almost perfect, verified reviews. He came to our house, created a prototype for our bookshelf, and we were excited to hear we would have a bookshelf made in 4 weeks. We signed a contract where we paid 70% upfront. After paying the carpenter, he stopped responding to our calls/texts/emails. We were really worried because we had paid close to $5000 and didnt know what was going on. We spoke to Thumbtack, and they told us not to worry and that 9/10 times they were able to resolve things. Thumbtack had his credit card on file and tried charging him for the full amount but could only get half of it cleared. They mailed us a check for around $2400. At this point, we heard back from the contractor and he apologized saying he had health issues. We went to his shop and saw the wood he had purchased. He assured us that it would take two weeks or so to finish it up. Afterwards we didnt hear from him again for a couple weeks and then we got a text from him saying he that he cant finish the project because his health is too bad and he would repay us the balance. After trying to get a hold of him again, we heard nothing. In the meantime, the contractor posted pictures on social media of him making a table with the wood that we presumed he purchased to make our shelves. We ceased contacting him further because he was tweeting messages that were satanic and made us feel uncomfortable. Furthermore, we saw online that he has a criminal background. We contacted Thumbtack again for their assistance, and after our case was escalated to a manager, they advised there was nothing else they could do to help. They said that its now between us and the contractor and they have no additional responsibility to us. When I asked Thumbtack does background checks, they say they ALLOW the vendor to complete one. This experience has been ridiculous and we feel beyond disappointed. We are out $2400 because we trusted Thumbtack to vet their vendors. Instead, they put a criminal on their platform and refused to take responsibility. STAY AWAY FROM THUMBTACK so you dont find yourself in a similar situation!