On July 3, 2024, our son who is disabled, went to the Cost Cutters Salon on North Church Street here in Watertown for a Crew Cut. The level of effort involved wouldn't have required more than 5 minutes of a stylist's time. The cost of the hair cut was $24.95. Inadvertently, a $20 tip was added to the guest check.
Our son lives on a modest disability check from the Social Security Administration. He doesn't have the luxury of leaving a $20 tip. Quite frankly, $24.95 for a 5 minute crew cut is more than enough. The payment was made using his bank check card using one of those electronic card readers...not one of those machines are the same. Some times even the store cashiers can't figure them out.
I called the Salon on July 5, 2024 and explained the situation. I explained that our son had a disability; he was told the amount of his hair cut, inserted his card into the machine to pay the salon. When he arrived back home, he mentioned that he had to insert his card into the card reader twice because they were having issues with his transactions. He was given a copy of the receipt, he placed the receipt in the car and came home. The woman who answered turned out to be the manager of the salon. She told me that she needed to call their 'Corporate Office' to check on having the erroneous tip refunded to our son. Later that day I received a voice mail message from her in which she stated that because it was a tip, it could not be refunded by the salon. She stated that she'd contact the stylist and ask her to give our son $20 cash.
I didn't hear back from the salon again, so I called and as luck would have it, the stylist that cut our son's hair answered. She spoke broken English but I was able to understand her to say that she didn't cut any disabled person's hair on July 3rd. Why? Because not every disabled person appeared to be disabled. She told me that our son would have to bring in the receipt and she'd refund him the amount of the tip added to his check in error.
I received a call from our son and he told me that I needed to speak to the stylist. The stylist began by telling me that our son WAS NOT disabled. I surmise that she formed her opinion based on the fact that our son was able to enter the salon on his own steam and didn't drool. Had the stylist had a 15 minute conversation with our son, his disability would have been extremely obvious. She and I further discussed the issue and another woman grabbed our son's cell phone and proceeded to tell me in no uncertain terms that our son was not disabled and that he added the tip to the guest check on his own. I asked her if a person leaving a $20 tip for a $25 service wasn't unusual. I was told that they often received $20 tips. A $20 tip is a tad over 80% of the cost of the service. I would presume that any person who could afford to leave an 80% tip wouldn't be frequenting a hair salon such as Cost cutters. I'm not inferring that a Cost Cutters Salon isn't an unnecessary shop, but again, people who can afford to leave 80% tips won't be relying on Cost Cutters for their styling needs. read more
