Hi John - that's definitely a good point.

The main reason we do not provide email address information is for privacy reasons. Unfortunately the users on our site do not authorize us to distribute their personal emails or phone numbers until you can make contact with them through our site.

Also, we are doing everything we can to prevent spam on our site - spam both to you (the service provider) and to the consumer (the service user). Spam is a real problem on many other sites like ours, so we are vigilant on this issue. Since many messages are sent without cost, making emails available after submitting a message to the user could expose our system to spam.

Every message sent through our system is delivered immediately by email to the email address we have on file for the message recipient.

Regarding phone numbers, many of the leads we produce do include phone number. Not all of them do, though, and we're currently trying to improve our process so that we can bring you the phone number information for more users.

We have refunded your money on this lead - sorry it didn't work out this time. Hopefully we'll be able to bring you some good business soon!

Hi Adam - Thanks for getting in touch. I just checked on this one.

Looks like the potential customer was corresponding with a couple different photographers but hasn't been in contact with any of them for a few days. Perhaps they met someone and chose them, or perhaps they just haven't had a chance to get back to coordinating with you for a few days. I'm not sure.

We definitely do not block communication between you guys - we would have no reason to do that. That would be pretty awful!

Hopefully this one will end up working out for you, Adam, and I definitely understand your frustration! As I mentioned above, we're currently trying to figure out ways to make potential consumers more responsive. This is a continual issue we hear that we need to improve.

Thanks again, Adam.

Hi Patrice,

Thanks for letting us know - we don't you from obtaining contact info. Whenever you pay for a lead, you get the person's contact info. I'm not sure what happened in your case - I'll have our engineers look into it. Thanks for the heads up.

Hi Eric,

You can get a refund by emailing support@thumbtack.com.

Thanks guys!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack.com

HI Pete,

There's no way to do that yet.

I know it can look pretty cluttered - I'm forwarding your comment to our engineers so they can put it on their loooooooooooong list of things to clean up. :-)

Thanks Pete!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack.com

Hi Tommy and Raja,

Thanks for getting in touch here.

I think there may be some confusion.

When you pay for a lead, you get to email the potential client 100% of the time. The message you send to them through our system goes directly to the client's email inbox. We don't give out the actual email address of the person because we're not allowed to for privacy reasons.  But your message is an email that goes straight to the client's inbox.

Also, many of our leads have a phone number attached to them as well. I think more than half of the leads we bring have phone numbers attached. Whether the lead has a phone number attached should be pretty transparent in the lead email we send you and on the bid page you're shown.

Regarding refunds when you don't get the job - you know as well as I do that we can't guarantee you'll get the job 100% of the time. However, say you get it 20% of the time, and you pay $5 per lead. That's $25 per job... if you make $200 or $250 in one job, then the numbers should start making sense. If you get a job more frequently than 20% of the time, the numbers start making even more sense.

Let me know what you guys think about that - these comments are very helpful to us.

Thanks guys!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi John,

Ah, that's a good point.

We're not yet perfect with the leads we send to you. Although we try to make sure they're a fit in every case, sometimes we fail. It's particularly difficult for someone in a specialized profession like yours.

Our general practice is to be over-broad in the leads we send you so that you are sure to hear about every single lead that's relevant to you. However, sometimes we're too overbroad (like in your case). I'll mention this to our team.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback John, and hopefully we'll be able to improve on this in the future!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Norman and David,

I definitely understand where you're coming from.

We do have a system that notifies you in most cases whether the job was completed by someone else. When the client chooses one of the people through our site, we send everyone else who bid on the job an email notifying them that the client went with someone else.

However, we've heard your feedback repeatedly and didn't realize how important it is for you guys to know whether the client chose someone else and why they did that. I'll talk with our team about it.

Regarding the fee for consumers to post a request - requiring consumers to pay to post a job request would definitely make them more invested. The tradeoff here would be that fewer consumers would post a job on our site. Perhaps the tradeoff isn't worth it. Would you prefer to get many fewer jobs (but from high quality people) or lots of jobs (but potentially lower quality people).

Thanks again guys!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Inyd AdCafe,

Great comments, thanks for reaching out.

Yes, there are probably some people who are looking to shop their competitors. However, I would guess that it's probably less than 2% of all jobs that come through out site.

We try to alleviate this problem with our refund policy. We have worked hard to establish a generous refund policy for bad leads.

We will fully refund your payment - no questions asked - if you don't hear from the potential customer within a week after sending your message, if you learn that they never intended to have the job done by anyone, or if you learn that the job was done by someone outside of Thumbtack.

We would never keep a charge on a job that turned out to be a bogus lead.

I see that we have already refunded your job - within minutes of you sending an email to us.

Sorry about this first unlucky job gone wrong, and I hope we'll be able to bring you some good additional work in the future!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Steve,

I see that your most recent job is very promising - in fact, you're going to give a family an on-site estimate for a deck/porch construction. Wow!

This is a perfect case of how our lead system can pay off. I see that you've paid for a couple other leads on the site. Leads in your industry typically cost $5-10. So say you pay for three leads at a total cost of $25. And the third lead pays off for a multi-thousand dollar job. This sounds like a great deal to me.

I understand how paying for leads can be dispiriting - it's no fun when two or three leads you paid for don't pan out. But in your industry, if even one in 10 pans out into a real job - that's all money well spent. Do you agree?

Thanks Steve, and I hope we can bring you more good work!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi David,

Thanks for getting in touch.

Any message you send through our site is instantly delivered to the email inbox of the person who is requesting the service.

We do not give out email address because we are not authorized to do so by the consumers who use our site. Many job leads on our site do include phone number information.

And you're right, not all consumers who post on our site respond to job leads. That's why we have worked hard to establish a generous refund policy for bad leads.

We will fully refund your payment - no questions asked - if you don't hear from the potential customer within a week after sending your message, if you learn that they never intended to have the job done by anyone, or if you learn that the job was done by someone outside of Thumbtack.

We would never keep a charge on a job that turned out to be a bogus lead.

I understand why you might be skeptical after paying for a lead and not getting a response. However, we have found that those who get the best results recognize that not every lead will turn into a job, but stick with it for a while. Many people listed on our site get almost 100% of their clients from Thumbtack.

Hope this helps, David - and thanks again for getting in touch.

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Jennifer,

I just checked on this, and it looks like our support team responded to the email we received from you yesterday within four hours of having received it. I don't see any other record of another email you sent to us unfortunately.

Sometimes certain businesses are more successful than others at getting clients through this method. Have you tested different kinds of messages to the potential clients, seeing which get positive responses? For example, if you send a really long introductory message up front - maybe that's just overwhelming to the consumer. It might be better to send a short and sweet message, something like "Got your message, I have lots of experience doing this and would love to help out. My price range for a job like this is $X-$Y. Can we chat by phone?"

Hope this helps, Jennifer!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for getting in touch.

I wish we could set up such a system, but unfortunately it is too difficult to track which jobs are booked and which are not. We tried to do that, but it wasn't working out.

I noticed that you've only paid for one lead. Although I'm sorry you didn't get that one job, I want to make sure your expectations are correct in paying for leads.

Paying for a lead gets you the opportunity to bid on a job. Just like with all other forms of advertising - TV ads, SEM, radio ads, etc. - you will always pay for certain customers to see your ad who will not end up paying for your service. Paying for leads is no different - not every customer who receives your message will eventually hire you (just like not every customer you sees your TV ad, hears your radio ad, or clicks on your paid link will hire you).

I want to make sure we set expectations right here, and I hope this helps, Jonathan. Again, I'm sorry that one job didn't work out, but I hope that over time we'll be able to bring you some great work!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Wayne,

Thanks for getting in touch.

We're actually building a phone calling team right now.

However, we haven't done so because building a big phone calling team is expensive! We're a young startup with hundreds of thousands of users... it's tough for 12 of us in San Francisco to build a great product and answer hundreds of phone calls daily. :-)

But that's exactly what we're going to build now. Hopefully there'll be a phone number up soon!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Scott,

Yes, you're allowed to put your phone number in a response. Just say something like "Please call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX - I'd love to chat with you more about what my service entails."

Definitely agreed - it's easier to close the deal over phone than by email.

Thanks Scott for raising this issue.

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Emma,

Thanks for getting in touch.

Yes, you will need to pay to respond to most messages you receive. You can read about this here: http://thumbtack.zendesk.com/entries/21067673-what-are-the-fees-for-responding-to-leads-on-thumbtack

We have actually been charging for many months now (more than a year). It looks like you have gotten lucky and received many "direct" messages - that is, customers who see your profile and message you directly. These are free to respond to.

However, any messages where a customer does not contact you directly - that is, they are just looking for a massage therapist generally - cost money to respond to.

Hope this helps, and sorry about the confusion!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Emma,

There are two types of messages you might receive:

1. "direct" messages: originates from a page like this: http://www.thumbtack.com/ca/signal-hill/massage/holisitc-skincare-massage-hair-services-healing. The client is looking for that particular massage therapist. It's free for that massage therapist to respond to that client.

2. "public" messages: originate from a page like this: http://www.thumbtack.com/ca/san-diego/massage/. The client is looking for any massage therapist who can do the job, and we send that person's information to you. It costs money to respond to these.

Hope this helps!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Dominick,

Thanks for getting in touch.

If you're not getting enough leads under the subscription model to make it work for you, then I'd recommend stopping your subscription.

Hi Bill and Rick,

Thanks for getting in touch, definitely appreciate it.

Your points are well taken.

Here's how we typically think about purchasing leads:

Purchasing leads is like any other cost of advertising. Think about buying TV commercials. Your company runs a TV advertisement and many people see that advertisement. However, only a couple will likely turn into customers.

You know as well as I do that not every lead you purchase will become a customer - only a few will. However, the cost over time will hopefully be worth the extra clients you get. If it's not worth it over time, then I agree that this form of advertising isn't for you - and we encourage you to not pay for any more leads.

With regard to the other lead you mentioned, I'm not sure what happened there. It's possible that the client directly called someone listed on our site, in which case that other person would've been able to book thew new client before you.

Hope this helps!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi David,

Thanks for letting us know.

Did you know about our refund policy for leads from whom you hear no response?

You can check that out here: www.thumbtack.com/leads-program.

Hope this helps, David!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

Hi Lena,

Thanks for getting in touch.

On the contact information issue - about 70% of the leads on our site have phone number information attached to them. And all of the messages you send go directly to the email inbox of the consumer. We don't give out email information, but all messages sent through our system go directly to the email inbox of the potential customer.

Regarding people getting jobs on our site, we're currently running this survey: https://thumbtackcom.wufoo.com/forms/tell-us-your-story-get-some-publicity/def/Field9=8

I'm pasting below a few of the stories that people have told us over the last two days alone (we have thousands of amazing entries in this survey).

Hope this helps, and thanks for trying us out!

Sander

Co-Founder, Thumbtack

-------------------

"I took a real leap outside the box when I put my name into Thumbtack as an illustrator/Graphic Designer/Writer and Editor. I had no idea the amount of good leads I would get, or the amazing people I would meet! I have now got at least five books edited, two covers for books illustrated and am working with a fifty year old nurse who ran across the US in the summer, in the desert and the deep South last year, who I edited her first book for, and am now co-writing her second book about that run! How awesome is that? This from a complete shot-in-the-dark I took with some new, small firm called Thumbtack. (I found them after joining Branched-Out on FaceBook...) They put together a really nice ad with quotes, references, an illustration and everything! I really want to thank Thumbtack for being there. I have been an artist and writer for forty years professionally, and have never had this many leads, good, solid leads, no met this many amazingly talented individuals! Thumbtack is MY success story now! It also shows something significant, the Internet works far better than forty years of word of mouth advertising, or catch-as-catch-can business! The internet has opened up several whole new worlds for me." 

"I landed a contract via Thumbtack 6 months ago to do carpet care at a local insurance company. I signed a one year contract with them. The 3rd month, I was there on a Saturday spot cleaning rugs in the break room when an insurance agent came in to pick up some paper work, introduced herself to me and before I knew it..I was making a bid on cleaning her home. Now, I clean her office and her home once a week! Thanks Thumbtack!!!"

(our first confirmed love story through Thumbtack) :-)

"The most unusual job I have gotten through Thumbtack was for tri-weekly dog running (but that wasn't the unusual part.) Through this job I met my beautiful girlfriend Jessica. The first time she emailed me she warned me that her dog was slightly agressive and "takes time to warm up to you, but then will love you so much he will literally jump into your arms." Lucky for everyone involved, Charlie took an immediate liking to me (as most dogs do.) A few weeks of excercise for Charlie passes and I finally work up the courage to ask Jessica if she would like to get a drink. One thing leads to the next and all of a sudden I am in a very happy, loving relationship (too bad I now have to walk Charlie for free!)"

"I've gotten tons of potential clients, clients looking for my services, and actual clients that I can now call my own because of how easy thumbtack makes connecting myself to the public. I teach fitness/parkour classes and now have a bi-weekly class of 6 students who are absolutely thrilled to have found me and I am just as happy. Aside from this, clients looking for one on one training have also found me and the supplemental income from that helps me to fund more exciting classes for my bi-weekly class."

"The most unusual job I have gotten through thumbtack.com was to travel to thailand to work with a child as a therapist to treat autism."

"We were mainly just actively advertising for just our handyman/contractor service. We did offer installing fencing and decks it just wasn't our main target to advertise for. We got a client that wanted a custom made 6ft cedar fence installed. When the job was finished we exceeded the customers expectations of how this fence was going to look like when finished. Because of this one fence job we did and the word of mouth from our clienttelling his friends, family, co- workers and anyone who would listen.....the next thing we know we started getting many calls and installed a lot of fencing that summer and our fencing and deck department has took off from there! "

"We received a request to build a tree house---for the clients cats....she had a few of them and they would get up in this darn tree and wouldn't know how to get back down. So we sat down and drew up a simple design,it was fun to draw up different ideas based on what a cat would like,along with making a way for the cats to get up and down without any problems. The job took 3 days to complete the client was happy and the cats even to this day are all happy lounging around in their new home..."

"Thumbtack has been a great resource for our business it is by far the easiest advertisement tool we have found and it works. We like using Thumbtack over Angie's list and if you talk to some of the customers who use Thumbtack they will tell you the same."