Andrea M.

This referral site is tricky to use, and they change things up so often that your investment of time and money may be wasted if one of their changes makes it impractical for you. I don't recommend it. It took months and lots of money to get our first online client there, despite often having a waiting list locally. Once we did, we got regular business, but we ended up taking two customers who attempted to defraud us and lost money on both accounts. Thumbtack could have been helpful but wasn't.

They really don't have any screening mechanism or accountability for customers or for reviews. So, be very careful about accepting clients via Thumbtack. They don't have anyone who seems to have a clue about how small businesses really work and will just read scripts to you if you try to discuss how one of their many changes or an existing feature is impacting your business. They think it's a matter of just telling you how their software works and don't understand the business process.

After we lost money on two fraudulent customers for larger contracts, we decided to take our account off Thumbtack and close our page. We were assured that when people searched of us and our business, there would be no connection to Thumbtack. Instead, people who search for my personal name and the name of my company land on a Thumbtack page that makes it appear as though my account was removed for some negative reason and as though I've gone out of business. They then invite the visitor to find my competitors through Thumbtack.

So, despite all the money I paid to Thumbtack in the process of connecting with customers, they have now repaid me by giving people who are searching specifically for me and my business the idea that I'm a bad risk and out of business anyway. While the page doesn't technically say that, every customer who has told me about landing on that page has said that was their impression.

So, if you don't want your future potential customers to think you were kicked off Thumbtack and went out of business, be careful about creating an account on Thumbtack in the first place. The way they've changed things, it's really far too expensive to use, at least in my business. We get much more business from free methods than we ever got from Thumbtack, though that may not be true for you. Check out what people find when they search for me now: