You guessed it! Me.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The stylist guy was super friendly and very knowledgeable about curly hair, but we’re never going back there, and here’s why.
Ok, so he came recommended by some other curly girlies I know of, and they were super happy with his work and the prices they paid. I asked for the contact information and they delivered. I contacted the stylist, and he gave me the prices. I know (for a fact) that some hairdressers up change the price based on the hair type and length. I was very upfront about the type of hair that I have (3c/4a) and its length (it’s almost at my butt when properly straightened, so very long in my opinion). So the prices were given (and I know they were based on what I told him because they differed from my friends’ prices on the same service) and we were in agreement. He only took cash, so we offered to get it in advance to give him his money. He said no, which put us on edge, but we were already there, and we had our convention that very weekend.
I went first because mine is going to take the longest. I chose this beautiful dark copper/reddish color (which isn’t the one I originally wanted, but for the sake of my hair I went for it) – 1 color. He applied the color with no problem, he only had to refill the bowl once to get everything. You may be wondering why “1 color” is in bold; it’s just to help you remember it for later. I waited for my color to develop, and he got started on my mom.
When he finished with her color, it was time to wash mine out and supposedly straighten it. He did wash it out, but then he started putting a product on my hair. He didn’t tell me what he was doing, and I obviously thought, “oh, this must be a free service he does in addition to a normal wash, since he didn’t ask me if I wanted to add it on“. I went under the dryer and then my mom underwent the same process, with the extra step that I got.
My mom took my place under the dryer and I got the stuff rinsed out, and my hair was set to be straightened. You would think that someone who is a curly hair specialist would know how to straighten curly hair without damaging it so that it stays straight. Not really.
He did great with stretching my hair out and then using the blow-dryer to straighten it, but in order for it to stay straight in a country where the average humidity is 70.8%, you have to use a flat iron. It doesn’t need to be on high heat, but it does need that extra reinforcement. When we got home, I had to restraighten everything myself.
I took the after picture soon after he finished my hair, and it looked nice. 5 minutes later, my hair was starting to frizz and curl up. We were still inside the hair salon. He finished my mom’s hair, and we’re ready to pay. He started racking up the price. For the two of us.
Remember the one color I chose? Remember the supposedly free service because he did not ask me permission to add on an additional service?
He said he used 3 colors but was only going to charge me two. I can understand that maybe the 2 bowls would be “2 colors”, but 3 colors? Where did the 3rd one come from? The additional things he did to my hair without permission were add-ons. He did not ask me for permission to add these services. There were like 3 that he added.
In the end, we paid over 2x what we were expecting to pay (and we were exaggerating when we set our initial budget).
Which is very bad because we had a very strict budget for that weekend.
So just to recap the story:
- The hair color chosen for my hair is 1 color, not 3
- He did not ask me permission for the extra services that he added
- He didn’t do a good job straightening my hair
- He charged us twice the amount we had agreed upon beforehand
This isn’t the first time this has happened to us, but it’s the first time that there was such a big difference from the original price. It’s fair to say that we will not be returning to him to get the rest of what we wanted to be done (because we still had more services we wanted to get done). One of the curly girlies who recommended him to us asked how it went and if it’s a good place to give to other curly girlies, we told her exactly what happened, and she’s made the decision to not go there either because of his manipulation to us.
What about you, readers? Is this something that has happened to you?
Psst… Here’s the video that goes with this post
JustMari's Adventures 