Strolled in here to check out their services during a trip to the State store next door. To begin with there was a lady there who claimed to be the owner, but couldn't answer ANY of my questions for some reason. I was inquiring about grooming my three Chi's. She did explain that they have like a self service area where you can take your pet to wash it or trim it on your own. This seems kind of neat but I can't quite see it being that lucrative. I would just assume that if a pet owner wanted to do their own grooming they would do it in the comfort of their own home, but I digress as I had no interest in using the self serve (not to mention this service is like $12-15, just to use their tubs) as I would just do this at home if I was. No I was there to find out about the actual groomers.
So moving forward, the lady, who was very nice, but really just didn't know what was going on, showed me around a little. I was asking about the services, prices, the groomers, and she seriously had no clue. She said they worked by appointment but didn't know when their appointments were, and didn't know prices or anything else. How do you hire employees and have no idea about their schedules or the pricing or anything else??? This not helpful.... After being there for about 5-10 minutes she said "why don't you call next week and maybe you can catch one of the groomers, but she also mentioned that they had a lot of personal things going on in the next couple of weeks so it may be a while before I could be seen. This is annoying, I was like um, why should I call next week? I am not banging down your door looking for you to wash my Chihuahua's? So I said why don't they call me, making much more sense as they seemed to have the obscure schedules. So I left my number (two of them) and my name. Want to hear a shocking surprise? They never called. That was four months ago. I feel bad as this is a new place and I really like supporting local small businesses over the big chain places but what can you do if they don't take the initiative to get your business.
So, for now I will continue to use the big chain stores, and hopefully Barking Baby's Bathhouse and Grooming Salon will work out their kinks and maybe in the future I will give them another shot. read more