AVA Pro Studios is a place where people can rent rooms to provide various beauty needs. I went to get my hair done by Hair by Kaci Maxam in room #3. I wanted ombre hair leaving my black hair at the roots and leading to a grey ash tone. I also wanted an A-line cut. Even though I met Kaci at her hair school and she's a recent graduate, I was motivated that she said she could cut and color and she boasts a lot of confidence. I texted her 4 pictures and told her what I liked about each one. When I came in, she told me it would take 2 processes. She quoted me $250 for the color and $45 for the cut. She suggested an additional conditioning for $15. After the first process, my ends reached a level 10 (my ends had been processed back in January). The rest of my hair was an orangy brown. She processed again. I couldn't tell a difference so I asked Kaci if it was light enough. She said I was good. She put toner in my hair for a few minutes, washed it, dried it, and then added a platinum color to my hair. It was left in for about 30 minutes. In the end, it was grey at the bottom and light brown at the top.
Disappointed with the color, I tried to talk to her about what we can do. Instead of recognizing problems with the process, she blamed my hair. She told me that the hair does what it wants to do, this has not happened to her before, etc. I just knew I couldn't leave with the current state of my hair so I asked her what my options were. Before making decisions, she wanted to finish because she said hair looks different wet and dry. So, she cut my hair (for less than 5 minutes) and dried it. It didn't look better. In near tears, I was at a loss for words. She said I could change to a caramel color or go through another process. Another process meant another $60. I couldn't believe she wanted to charge me more than she already quoted. I brought up how much she had mentioned it would be to color my hair when I first met her. She said that's how much she would charge before she finished school. Now that she's graduated, she charges more. Are you even allowed to have real clients before finishing school or having a license? This should have been a red flag for me but I was motivated by her confidence and back story.
I knew I didn't want caramel and another process didn't guarantee my hair would get lighter. As she was getting frustrated with my delay in decision-making, she chose to process it again. This time, she kept me under the heat lamp for 50 minutes, checking every once in awhile to see what my hair was doing. Then, she rinsed my hair and put a stronger toner solution in my hair. My scalp and eyes were burning. I wanted to say something but, at this point, I felt helpless. I just wanted to call out to the people at the studio to save me. She washed it, dried it, and applied the hair color again. I think she may have used double amount this time. She kept me facing away from the mirror so I couldn't really see what was going on. I saw her set up her curling iron which I told her it wasn't necessary but she wanted to do it for an Instagram picture. She rinsed, dried, and curled my hair. Now I could see it and still was not what I wanted. My roots were now dark brown, the middle was a light brown, and my ends were grey. In certain light, the middle has a green tone. I asked about the cut and she said she cut my hair. Maybe I'm wrong but an a-line cut requires more than 5 minutes and a whole lot of precision.
After she took a picture of my hair, I tried to talk to her. But there was no use. She got technical with a list of all the work she did to my hair. No matter how much work she did, she messed up. That's just the end of the story.
Before I left, she told me her name is on my hair, she wants me to be happy, she's never had an unhappy client, she said (with no sincerity) that I could come back in a few weeks, and that I had her number. She put the picture she took of my hair on Instagram. She left a comment calling me the client from hell and wrote never again (she removed the comment within a day). Another red flag- don't rely on Instagram to judge the quality of a colorist's work. Instagram is known to make the worst picture look amazing with its filters. How does the green foliage used in many of her pictures turn to different shades of green?
I also later learned that Kaci Maxam never graduated from hair school when she did my hair. I went with a friend to the Aveda Hair School and found her still there. read more