Today was my first trip to Annapolis Nails & Spa. It came highly recommended by a friend who frequents here often, with Kim as her technician. I am sure Kim is great; however, she was totally booked upon my walk in at 2:50 p.m. I definitely should have called ahead if I wanted her that badly, but I was open to whomever, as I trusted my friend's recommendation. After waiting for a half an hour, I was seated in a chair towards the back of the salon. I waited for about another 2-3 minutes for my technician, Eric, to come back in from his smoke break and begin my acrylic fill with regular polish. I had to wait another 2-3 minutes as he got himself situated, and grabbed a piece of gum out of his backpack to cover his smoky breath.
Finally, around 3:30 p.m. my appointment began. He quickly assessed my nails, made little conversation, and began. I told him, without prompt, that I would like them short and an in between round and square edges. He nodded and continued on. I swear I could smell my skin burning as he quickly skimmed over my nails with the electric file machine (I don't know the name), and slopped on the fill. Literally, what should be a meticulous half an hour process of filing, filling, and smoothing took him about 15 minutes. I swear the man burned my skin as he zipped through, pedal to the medal, smoothing the edges of my nails. By 3:45 p.m. I was washing my hands and preparing for polish.
I then returned to the table and prepared to pay before my nails were painted. Mind you, when I called ahead for the price I was quoted $18 for an acrylic fill and regular polish. To my surprise, he swiped my card and came back with a bill that said $21. Apparently it cost an extra $3 for a cut down, when all I said was I like them short. The man didn't get out a pair of clippers or anything extra, he simply ran his little filing tool over the tops of my nails and made them a tad shorter. I'm a teacher, it's not like I have fang nails that take time to cut down.
So the polish begins... I got a very nice periwinkle blue. Eric blazed through on the first coat and didn't even go near the edges. I made a comment to this, and he stated that he would do that on the second coat. Well the second coat was equally a disaster... it was like a child finger painting. He couldn't stay on the nail for the life of him, and he didn't even do the tops/edges. I asked him if he could please do a third coat to ensure the full coverage of the nails, and that was just not a good idea; more paint on skin than my nails. He then took the next five minutes to take all the extra nail polish off of my skin with his little remover brush (this was actually the only task he took his time on).
By 4:05 p.m. I was sitting under the dryer waiting for my nails to dry from what might possibly be the worst experience I've ever paid for nail wise. Now, here I sit just 6 hours later writing this review and two nails have already chipped. I have done nothing extra-strenuous since then that should cause this chipping on the day of my manicure. Needless to say, I'll be going back to Elite Nails Spa just across the road, and I suggest you do, too. read more