I do not recommend – Thumbtack for Professionals Review

Let me preface this review with my line of work. I am a personal trainer and getting business is already difficult: my services are a hard sell and my industry is saturated with other professionals like me. But I manage just fine, even during Covid-19. So this review is speaking about what it's like to be a personal trainer procuring business on Thumbtack. I'll start with the positives first. I love thumbtack's customer service. They are super helpful, explicit with directions and explaining their choices made. They will even coach you over the phone in how to get more leads, optimize your profile and get you more business. That's about where the positives end. I am a personal trainer and I have been in the industry for over 12 years. I have procured a lot of business from yelp, google ads and thumbtack. The clients I received from the former two are reliable, courteous and considerate. I have had at least 80% 6 month retention in my customers from my website, yelp and google inquiries. They respect my price point, too. Customers from thumbtack, however, are super flaky, penny-pinching, inconsiderate and disrespectful. I don't know what it is about Thumbtack that draws this kind of customer, but they are the absolute worst customers. These customers will fall off the face of the Earth after 4 sessions without any word from them as to why. No explanation, just gone. Or the TT customer will coincidentally run into financing problems and need to drop off after a few sessions and a lot of late minute cancellations. This will be after I have devised a program, meal plans, discounted my rates and accommodated them on my schedule and shifted my appointments around. These customers are THE ABSOLUTE WORST! Then there are the opportunities that you get on Thumbtack. You get charged for leads even if they don't match your criteria or even respond to you after you've responded to the inquiry. I will even send out quotes to opportunities, be charged and then ghosted and never responded to. I'd say 90% the quotes never even get read. I am absolutely convinced that these "leads" and "opportunities" are fake. Fabricated by the thumbtack staff to give the false sense of potential business so they can charge you for the lead. It's actually quite brilliant, if you think about it. Unscrupulous but brilliant. If you're a carpenter, chef, handyman, Thumbtack sounds like it can work well for you. If you're a personal trainer, though, I strongly advise using different avenues.
Review by JordanIceManSmith on Thumbtack for Professionals.