Thumbtack: Home Service Pros Reviews

by Pervasive Mediocrity

this app charges pros for unqualified leads, literally charging every pro just for just having a conversation with a potential client even if the job isn’t booked. A prospective client can request up to 4-5 pros trying to get them to undercut each other’s estimate and then decide not even go through with the project. On average 30% of these potential clients don’t book appointments, they’ll just become unresponsive. Every one of those pros will be charged for a so-called lead between $10-$50 and have no recourse for recovering that charge from this app. It’s a total scam! this app’s instabook feature doesn’t work as intended and requires a ton of work to adjust the scheduling, while Thumbtack crashes half of the time. Also let’s not forget that this app grossly exaggerates the volume of work available. For instance you can have a $100 weekly budget for leads and they say you’ll receive between 4-14 leads, which is an outright lie. You’ll be lucky if you get 1 job confirmed without the client changing their mind. Thumback is ultimately just another tech company with zero accountability that rips people off.

by H.K All Day

I found an in home tv mounting provider via Thumbtack. Less than 2 months later...the entire mount was loose. When I reached out to the service provider in an attempt to rectify the issue. He told me there was nothing he could do for me since I didn’t purchase the mount from him. The description of services indicates that the provider offers a free in home estimate to make sure the products being used are going to reflect the quality of the work. This consultation was never offered to me. The service provider then proceeded to tell me that this instance was my fault bc I should have asked better questions. As the consumer, how would I know which questions to ask? He also told me that it would be an additional $200 for him to come out and “repair” the mount. I told him that it was ridiculous that I was going to be out of nearly $400 to have a service completed correctly. He said that I was the only one who was upset bc he was the best in town, there were no other prospective providers that would be as good as he claims to be and ultimately I would be the one suffering. I have reported this company to the BBB since I can’t get any assistance via Thumbtack . I’ve already deactivated my account and deleted Thumbtack . Such a total waste of time and money.

by Car12381

I’m only writing this review because the developer responded to my review and was so kind to give me a link for helpful tips and stuff and maybe “I” you know “me” because of course it’s the the other 4, not 1 but 4 professionals that didn’t respond to my project from 3 weeks ago, it wouldn’t be them. You can go find my project for my washer problem about how I explain it’s not spinning or draining. Now if I could take pictures as you suggest of a washer not spinning I would but usually the lid has to be closed for the spinning part and I would need it open for the picture 🤔. So that won’t work, I mean maybe I could rig something up like macgyver to try and capture a non spinning washer with my waterproof camera inside the washer 💡🤔! I mean now we’re getting somewhere........I hope your understanding all of my sarcasm here and just and look up my account and my project. I wouldn’t be so sarcastic if I didn’t notice that 2 of those professionals didn’t just get 3 new reviews since I’ve freaking summoned my project. Now I’m going with sears appliance repair instead of your app. This is the 2nd time in the past 9months I’ve been disappointed in Thumbtack. The first time wasn’t Thumbtack fault it was actually pricing but this time 4 professionals not responding is ridiculous

by Mwsidler

this app’s customer service doesn’t deserve a star. We had a terrible experience with an electrician we hired through the site (way under qualified, never finished the work, went MIA and left fire hazards in our house that another electrician we found on Home Advisor later uncovered for us - thank goodness). We tried to contact this app when we had a problem with the electrician but was only able to open a dispute ticket to try and come to an agreement with the electrician. Obviously the dispute wasn’t going to get anything accomplished because I had already tried communicating outside Thumbtack with the individual to no avail. After the dispute closed because the electrician stopped responding (again), this app said they would reach out to me within two business days. That was weeks ago. Home Advisor on the other hand called me after I hired the new electrician to see if i had any issues scheduling a time with the pro. Then they called a few days later to see how it was going and if I needed any help. A day after that I got another phone call from them asking how I would rate the electricians work and professionalism. Lastly, I got an email asking if I had any concerns with the phone rep from home advisor. Nice to have customer support...even when things are going well.

by Clarr22

UPDATE 1/21: contacted as they suggested in their response, still no help. I wish I could share screenshots of their crappy assistance.

this app support does not have your back and their guarantee is an absolute joke. Had a contractor severely delay our bathroom renovation and when reaching out to this app for help their solution was talking to the contractor and basically acting as a mediator rather than providing any actual help. The contractor has blocked us and has NOT completed the work after it has been 3 and a half months since they started. We are left with an incomplete guest bathroom and the work that was done looks like crap. Now we have lost our money and have no bathroom for our guests to use and still no support from this app other than them telling us to talk to the contractor who has blocked our phone numbers. I have tons of screenshots, text messages, emails from both the contractor and this app to show their horrible service. Now we have to spend additional money to make our bathroom usable for our guest. Very disappointed and frustrated with this whole situation. I wish we had never trusted this app to help us find contractors to work in our home.

by Sdt316

I have been using Thumbtack off and on for some time. Recently was on to hire a small electrical job and sent my info out to the pros…then all of a sudden my account was deactivated. Contacted support to find out what the deal was and they said it appears I’m under the age of 18!! Then they wanted me to provide a government ID to prove I’m 60!! I told them I am not giving out personal info to them especially since they won’t tell me what caused the under 18 flag on my account. They said we can’t tell you that information!! I told them it must be a glitch in their platform cause I can’t be 18 years old over night when they can plainly research and see Ive hired off here before. I have several emails back and forth with these people and told them that if they can’t tell me or fix this problem that I would be going to social media and letting everyone know what horrible service they provide.
Thumbtack isn’t worth giving them a picture of my personal information! Deleted app and posting on social media.

Please don’t bother with the canned response that you are giving to other unsatisfied customers

by Nickman Drew

**The company responded to this post saying i should reach back out to the person assisting. I will update this to let you know if they stand by what they claim.

Use Thumbtack to hire movers. Long story short movers did not honor time to arrive nor did they honor their guarantee to protect or repair damage they caused. The most unprofessional movers I’ve ever used. Once I got this app involved they acted as if they cared and would honor some type of warranty. I followed all the steps. Weeks go by and hear nothing back. I follow up with this app and they say it’s too late the time expired. I asked I don’t understand I filled out all the paperwork and they said well the time lapse and I should’ve filled out something else which they never sent me. I asked them the last time they communicated with me and they told me a certain date. I showed them that before that date I responded with signatures and required documents and they told me they will not respond to me about anything related to the claim. They are a loose middle man with no accountability I HIGHLY RECOMMEND NOT USING THEM. I now have to go through small claims court.

by Ehauwjsosbsbsh

The idea of this app captivated me, the thought of getting my feet running around starting my own business sounded amazing and a dream come true. The layout of Thumbtack is outstanding and everything seemed to be coming together swimmingly.. until. Lead prices, not so much the prices as much as you pay for a “lead” before you can ever message the person. This is an amazing design for the company to make money though you may see no benefit, it’s also great for the customer... they have absolutely no idea you are being charged, so almost every time you message them even at THEIR request they often don’t respond or read your message and not reply. So we are literally paying this app for people to ignore us.

On top of that a week into using it I got phone call from a rep from this app and they diligently tried to sell me a prepaid credit for $300. They assured this would increase my business somehow, and that they could get me more jobs. The rep was frustrated when I asked him why would I purchase this when the 6 leads I’ve spent money on haven’t replied or wasn’t a good match. I would be wasting $300.

Basically Thumbtack would be amazing if you could give this app money after the job was settled, I understand why they can’t... people would find loopholes around that system. So basically this is a horrible alternative to just starting your own business. I regret the money I spent here, you will probably regret it too

by Suburbanmom

The concept of Thumbtack is a great idea for a small business owner such as myself. It gives me a chance to market my counseling business to people in need of those particular services. I initially signed up for instant match in which the customer receives an immediate response when they put in a request. BAD IDEA!!!! this app did not give me an accurate idea of just how much these rates would cost and I ended up being charged over $40 in less than a week. I then turned off instant match and would send quotes only to the customers I chose and was told just how much I would be charged for the quote. The rates varied anywhere from $1-$12 and occasionally I was given the opportunity to quote for free. This was very reasonable although it was a gamble because the majority of the time, the customers would not respond to my quote.
I recently received notice that this app has changed their policy that I would no longer be charged unless the customer responded to my quote. This seemed like a great idea! I could still pick the customers I wanted to quote but I no longer had to worry about spending money on customers who were no longer interested in counseling. I assumed the rates were about the same as they were before. Boy, was I wrong! I was charged $23 for my quote! That is way more money than I am willing to spend for someone whose business I may not even get! I will no longer be using this app for marketing under these new rates.

by Windows101

I have been with this app almost 3 years. I have watch them go from a platform I would recommend to just about any contractor to a company that just the same as the rest. this app used to be a reasonable and reliable source for getting new project leads. Now they are just like Home Advisor and the rest of the over prices lead generation companies. I’ve watched gutter projects go from $17 per to $52 per. Wow what an increase. Not to mention they allow a customer to choose from an unlimited amount of contractors. The competition is fine but let’s say,”this app is charging the contractors $40 per lead and the customer has selected to speak with 5 different contractors. this app makes $200 off a single lead while only 1 contractor will win the lead of course. The sad part of this equation is the lead itself will only go for roughly about $200. End of the day you only make $160 before expenses like paying for travel, and paying employees. Only 2 things can happen with this equation. 1. People go out of business or 2. Prices go way up for the home owner. It used to be a competition between contractors, but now it’s a competition between contractors and the middle man (this app). This defeats the purpose of even starting a business. The constant raising of prices really have me considering trying other avenues and letting this app go.

by Ashbash_05

I’ve used this app for a handful of handyman-type projects. Some turned out great, and I continue to use those contacts, others not so much, and I won’t hold Thumbtack accountable for those situations. However, I will say that’s it’s become more confusing to use Thumbtack lately. After entering two details about your project, you are returned a list of pros who might match up. If you use that list to contact someone, your message to that one pro is now your overall project description. I was told that even though I’ve reached out to one person directly, the project is still available for others to give a bid “in the event the pro I contacted doesn’t work out.” Sorry, I reached out to one person, but it went to everyone?! I’m not a fan of that; it’s shady and super deceptive. Plus, you can’t change your job description unless you completely cancel it and redo it. This is a prime way for projects to get miscommunicated and the scope of work inaccurately quoted. Even more, it groups old projects of a similar nature with new ones. Very confusing. I’ll go back to using Yelp as it seems there is just a more solid base of reviews and contractors available.

by Tabicat39

The only reason I’m giving Thumbtack 2 stars is because it’s a decent idea and it functions properly. Unfortunately that’s where my luck ran out. I hired three different “pros” and every one of them were a complete nightmare. The carpet cleaning guys took an exceptionally long time, leaving an actual puddle in my hallway which took hours to dry and now looks awful, $150 service. The house cleaning went two hours over their original estimate of 3 hours. My house is 1100 sqft, 3 bedroom 1 bathroom, it’s not a mansion. The actual cleaning was ok, but I had to point out several things that were overlooked and thankfully I did that while they were cleaning because they just ran out the door when they were done without me getting a chance to glance at anything. That service was $265. Worst of all was the lawn care men who charged us $200 to slaughter my rose bush with a hedge trimmer and ran over EVERY flower in my garden with a lawnmower. All of these professionals had all positive reviews on Thumbtack . I just don’t understand how I managed to spend over $600 and everything be THAT bad at the end of the two days. Please, be careful who you hire.

by Scolbs12345

The concept of this app seems great, but I’ve learned my lesson, and will only hire people who are recommended to me by friends or coworkers rather than look for them on Thumbtack.
I hired a contracting company via this app to remodel my shower, and they ended up being a total scam. They destroyed my shower and I have now lost $3,000 and will have to go to small claims court, in addition to having a new company re-do the entire job. I let this app know of my experience and that they have scammers on their app, and they acted super concerned but the company is still on there, ready to scam the next inexperienced young homeowner.
Many of the companies on this app hardly have websites outside of Thumbtack , which I have now learned is probably because they had so many one star reviews on google and yelp, that this app was the last place to go.
While it seemed super convenient at first, this app is no more reputable than Craigslist. I gave two stars instead of one, because they were at least responsive and friendly when I made a complaint, even if they did absolutely nothing about it.

by 99 Reasons

We’ve used this app 6 times now. Only 2 have actually done the job. The others were NOT knowledgeable about the jobs they were hired for. Two of them have cost
us a total of $500 to replace or fix their mistakes. We had to replace parts they broke on our awning. One said he could build us a gate for $175 and took 2 days for a 4 hour job and left a huge mess, dug up my grass by the gate because he made the gate wrong.. put the post in wrong, didn’t replace the other post.. I could go on and On . When he decided he was done he gave me a bill for $350 when he said $175 and it’s going to cost me another couple hundred to fix it
this app should screen their providers better. Like I said, only 2 people out of 6 did their job. One of those ended up charging 8 hours at $55 an hour when he quoted 2 hours but he wasn’t aware the first guy hired to do it broke some pieces so we had to order pieces which made that take more than 2 hours to fix

by Growler6g

I’m a dog trainer that provides two services. One is in home training (starting at $60 per session) and a Board/Train Program (starting at $900 for two weeks). If someone is interested in the in home sessions, Instant Match sends a quote for $900 and I get laughed at. Or vise versa. If someone is interested in Boarding, instant match sends a quote for $60. Again, I don’t land the job. If I turn off Instant Match, which I’m forced to do, my quote is last to be seen and the potential client has already viewed the other quotes and contacted at least one other pro. In addition, Thumbtack takes so long to open it puts me at an even worse disadvantage.
One final issue that keeps Thumbtack from 5 stars is the notifications. Why does the notifications go to email? Why can’t the notifications come directly from Thumbtack itself? This puts me at triple disadvantage in the time it takes to get competitive quote out to a potential client.
With these issues aside, I will continue to use Thumbtack and hope this app continues to fine tune it because the overall concept is great and I can see its benefits.

by D.G (Fashionista In Training)

this app is an extremely useful service to use if you’re looking for various services to be performed and you don’t want to waste time endlessly searching the internet for the right company. With this app all I have to do is describe the service I’m looking for and then sit back and wait for the professionals to come to me and then choose the better quote or company. this app online has been such a timesaver and now Thumbtack makes it even easier to connect to professionals wanting to get my business.

Overall I’m extremely happy and impressed with this app’s ability to match customers with needs and the companies that can best help them get their “projects” completed. I would definitely recommend them to anyone looking to get something done but doesn’t have time to search the web looking for someone to do it.

by Tmead77

I used this app for the first time. Thumbtack itself works very well. The first handyman I tried to hire was a bit flakey, but that is not the fault of Thumbtack . I hired a different person I found through Thumbtack , and it worked out great. Thumbtack did a very good job of finding several individuals, however my job was fairly small and there were some who I was connected to who were not willing to travel very far for a small job. That made perfect sense to me. The messaging within Thumbtack was very useful to discuss with the professionals whether the job was of interest, schedule meetings, send quotes, etc. Hiring someone to work on your home can be stressful, but I was able to get my project completed in 3 days using this app. I don’t think I could have done that using the internet and email. In fact, several companies I emailed prior to downloading this app still have not replied. Overall, I’m very satisfied.

by StuZag

Yesterday (at 4:40pm) I went down to my basement and heard loud, running water.
I soon realized I had a broken water pipe and the water was threatening to flood my house. I frantically called my regular plumber, only to find they had left for the day. So suddenly I was left to roll the dice and through this app found A & A Mechanical NYC. Adrian arrived slightly before 8pm (he had just finished a job in Queens) and went immediately to work. He assessed the problem, (the broken pipes were in the wall in our downstairs bathroom) and in under two hours the pipes were replaced. Adrian was professional, courteous, and skilled. If I had waited for my plumbers they would not have gotten to me till the next morning. Neither my family nor my two tenants would have had any access to water for over 12 hours. He really solved my after-business-hours dilemma.
I would not hesitate to call him again and I recommend him highly!!

by Neon Hunt

I always find difficulties to get job done in a right way so I was trying hard to ensure hiring a real professional using your App. It worked so well that now this guy became my main contact of the job done. Your App works fine but one suggestion is to let user see what they said while starting new project. For example, if I said 4 rooms or 5 rooms with 3 flights of stairs while starting new project then I should be able to see. In my case, I have provided details for the cleaning to be done and got price quotation based on it but then this guy increased his price and I never had proof that I have included my project details when a new project for the carpet cleaning was created. Anyways, your App works great to connect dots between professionals and seekers. Just ensure you don’t allow someone without background check to get your App and reputability ruin over the period of your success. Keep it tight and get some big fruits of ROI.

by Rarely Disgruntled

Love Thumbtack! Sometimes you find a bargain, sometimes you pay a premium... depends on the job and how niche it is. When you post a job, the questions Thumbtack asks are simple, but thorough enough to properly categorize the job for specialized bids. You can upload photos of the job to help contractors provide a preliminary estimate, which helps to whittle down your prospects without too many tiresome in-person bids. Thumbtack appears to have a ‘premium’ function for contractors to see and respond to your jobs earlier, so it’s best to wait a day or two (if you can) to respond. Personally, I like to wait to see where the independent contractors with good reviews and reasonable bids land. Personally, I’m a big fan of supporting folks that work hard and steer clear of involuntary schedules. On the flip side, there are a lot of reputable, market-priced, local businesses that find work through this funnel too. It has all sorts. Big fan!

by DFZJ3

this app has changed drastically is the last 3 years. They have figured out how to make more money off the pro without ever being in the pro’s corner. This organization is under staffed and unhelpful. They will never come to bat for over any dispute. You could essentially get ripped off by customers and one of two things will happen. They will refer you around to other “teams” and you’ll never get a straight answer from anyone or they will do as they’re trained and justify why they’re right no matter the discrepancy. They have “teams “ where you can’t even speak to a representative on the phone “email only” so forget trying to reason with them , question anything or dispute. If they do get back to you by email it’s a minimum 3 day response time. It is in no way pro friendly. It’s for the homeowner and their pockets. Poorly run organization, bad customer service, poor in house structure and their payment system will leave you wondering if you even made more than you spent. I highly recommend other trade avenues like Angie’s list over this.

by Michellesaid

Unable to seek out bids—
I have used the this app app for over three years for all sorts of projects—new flooring/trim, pond repair, kitchen painting, tile work, and holiday light installation/takedown. The process of receiving bids was usually great, though I did hate the canned responses that you would allow to come through immediately, I have no clue why that’d be helpful for somebody seeking a bid on a specific project. In any case, I can’t even review bids anymore unless I seek people out individually, which defeats the entire purpose of how I expect to use Thumbtack.

Unable to report contractors—
I worked through a contractor through this app in December for the second time to have Christmas lights taken up, but they have evaded all communication for the last three weeks to come and take them down. There is no section on this app to report a contractor from what I can see, and I can’t add a new review because I already gave them a positive review for work they did in 2017.

by Bahnjay

I hired three contractors thru Thumbtack. One contractor was only hired to do a very small job and they were ok. Two others turned out to be a disaster. They both have spotless reviews on this app. For one of those contractor, I found out that they were having problems with most of their jobs but they still had a stellar reviews. People simply don’t leave bad reviews to avoid confrontations.
One of my reviews were posted twice by an error (you can only update your review once) I contacted this app customer service and asked to remove the duplicate so I can correct my progress 5-star review. They promised to remove but they never did. I hope they are not siding with contractors and protecting them from receiving bad reviews.
Please be careful when you hire contractors here for bigger jobs. I made a mistake of trusting the this app reviews and I lost a lot of money and time. I strongly recommend also checking anonymous reviews on Google, Yelp, etc...

by Alexbrockstar

I’m glad I found Thumbtack because the lady that’s helping me is super nice, but Thumbtack has issues. First, it takes too long to open Thumbtack up. Like if I’m quickly messaging one of the pros and close out Thumbtack , I have to wait instead of being able to reply right away. I know that sounds stupid but it’s just tedious. Second, when I’m messaging a pro and she messaged me back, I couldn’t even see her message. I know she sent one because I saw it in my notifications, but it won’t show up in chat. Lastly, this app sent me and email saying that I got a pro and I should confirm it. Sure I’ll press yes. I press yes and it brings me to a site to leave a review. I decided from the beginning that I was not going to review her until I got product. Apparently if you click a star and click out of it without hitting post it will post it anyways. It wasn’t even the review I wanted to give her. Until these things are fixed I’d rather just use the website.

by Mecklos

I started using this app before they instituted this “Instant Match” idea of theirs. With “Instant Match” this app matches you up with in my instance, a handyman without them having ever looked at your job information. I got 9 referrals thinking these people were interested in taking my job. The first three I picked with great reviews never called me back. The reason most likely is they were not interested in my job but were instant matched with me. So I’m reaching out to all these handymen who really had no interest in my job but were matched with me because they signed up with that new service. The Instant Match is not an improvement this app! It may make you more money but the people you match me with don’t necessarily want the job. Before you implemented this, I would request a job and the pro would look at it and bid if they want the job. Now I’m just getting what amounts to spam. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

by Jessghhfdvvccvbjkdsscvbjb

I have used this app for a few projects. I have had a really good experience every-time. From the response time of the service providers to the job being done promptly and for a fair or better than fair price. I like that it gives you options when considering providers. I read some not so good reviews but as for me (personally and for my business too) I have had nothing but a positive experience each time I go to this app. I hope they continue to keep it simple and affordable not just for the buyer but for the providers as well. Its a good system. Keep it going. I recommend Thumbtack to everyone. As long as it keeps doing what I need it to do then I will gladly keep making this app my go to app for all my out source job needs! Thanks this app. Keep up the good work!