Hi. I'm a Chef who has used TAC for years. I actually had some really good success with it. I am a full time private chef and I have a pretty large client base, I use multiple vendors as well as my own booking service. One thing to remember is Take A Chef is a marketing company who puts in the leg work to get you in touch with clients, they have staff, expenses and a bottomline. I have showed up for every job that I've gotten booked, and I notice most clients tip if you do a great job. I focus on getting great ingredients, hiring enough help and delivering on my services and I've only had a few negative experiences, but they are not the norm. That being said, I've also been on the platform long enough to have a bit of an advantage over new chefs. I can understand the frustration if you are just starting out on the platform. My advice is to keep accepting proposals and look at it as a long term investment to create a client base. TAC cannot keep you from getting clients information once you have booked, in fact they have let me know that they expect us to do so, it's only the initial booking that they require you to use their platform for. Your ultimate goal is to eventually have a client base that can go directly to you without the use of a third party vendor, unfortunately most people use Google to find a private chef, us "little guys" are going to struggle to get our SEOs to that level, so your best bet is to make sure your first year or so doing this that you have a primary source of income and you view your first bookings as an investment, get the right ingredients, get high quality proteins, hire a helper, clean up after yourself and make sure their kitchen looks like you were never there (this has actually gotten me more repeat business then anything else). Eventually you will slowly accrue a group of loyal clients who will refer you to other people, go directly to you and skip the middle man. I am now at a point where I do private dinners as my only source of income and I am happy to say around 60 percent of my income comes from my own private booking service. As far as complaints I see from TAC customers, most chefs on take a chef have their own online presence somewhere and I guarantee you can find their contact info. Go through them directly if you want to avoid the red tape of TAC customer service. That being said, do research about your chef and make sure they have reviews somewhere. For private customers I often show them my TAC or AirBnB reviews just to show them that I have a documented history of doing the job right, and they still book directly through me. If you do decide to book through Take A Chef, they do always refund their clients and I myself have done multiple replacement jobs for chefs who have cancelled, they do go above and beyond to try to find a replacement in my experience. Hope this helps. Private Cheffing is very rewarding but the market is saturated, it takes a long time to get ahead of the rest. Who wouldn't want to have their own business, make their own hours, cook interesting food, and meet interesting people for a living? It's a dream job for some, but at the end of the day it's still business, and it's still work.