My experience happened this summer and it was a nightmare. It's important that I note, the woman who did my hair is no longer at the salon. Either way, this is what went down.
I have long thick hair, so I like to go in for a consolation before the appointment to demonstrate how much I have and how much longer it typically takes people to do anything with it. So, I went in and talked to Debra. I wanted a trim and an Ombre coloring. When I explained that I wanted my tips to be silver, she explained how much fun that would be and how she could get it all done for $170 and in one sitting. This couldn't have been further from the truth.
I made the appointment and Debra set aside two hours. I thought that sounded kinda short for what we needed, but hey, she's the expert. I came in and we started with the hair cut. That alone took an hour and fifteen minutes. Then, she semi-dried my hair and we started the dying process. She said she was going to do a balayage technique that would give me the look I had showed her. First, she wanted to dye my entire head brown to have an even color throughout. Once again, I didn't think that was necessary seeing that my hair was already pretty even in color. This took almost an hour. Then, she started the bleaching process. This took at least 2.5 hours. Finally, she rinsed that out and did another treatment that was supposed to tone all of my hair. Another 45 minutes. In total, I was there over 5 hours. Once she rinsed everything out and blow dried, my hair was red. There wasn't even a difference between my roots and where she had bleached. The last dye she put in my hair not only changed the brown but completely eliminated the lighter shades causing everything to be a shade of red/bronze. DEFINITELY NOT what I asked for. She responded, "What a pretty color. It's not what you asked for, but it's very pretty". I was in shock. So, she wanted to make another appointment to redo everything and make it right. Once again, she set aside another 2 hours for the appointment. Didn't we just learn that it would take longer?
I show up for my second appointment. Again, she dyes everything brown. Then, instead of the ombre or balayage, she decided to just do a full highlight with longer roots. I was there for 4 hours. I looked in the mirror and realized this was such a mistake, but didn't know what to do. I was pretty much completely blonde. Debra said that I need to come in the next week so she could put another treatment on the bleached hair to tone it and take the yellow out. We booked another appointment.
I called her before the appointment to discuss my frustrations. I explained that I was upset with what she gave me. I didn't want to be blonde, and the roots she gave me didn't make it look like a ombre, it just looked that I had a really bad highlight job. I mean, the roots were awful. There were areas that you could see the obvious line from brown to blonde down the crown of my head. Debra started getting frustrated with me saying that she had already preformed over $400 worth of treatments on my hair and she was going to charge me again when I come in for the toning. She then explained to me that the ombre color I wanted would have taken at least 4 treatments. I responded that if she knew that what I asked for couldn't be done in one sitting, I wouldn't have done it. That's why I went in for the consolation in the first place. I canceled my appointment with her and was very angry with what I was left with.
A few days later, she called me back. She explained that she is a "perfectionist" and was not happy with the results and wanted to fix my hair. I came in again and she dyed my roots brown (for the third time) and placed some more highlights here and there. In the end, it just looked like I had a highlight a year ago and let them grow out until now. Not happy. But, that was all she was willing to do. Another 3 hours in that chair.
Overall, my experience was awful. I feel like I got the bad egg in the salon because so many other people have had great results with the other stylists there. Now my hair is super damaged from all the dying and bleaching she did to it over and over again. Every time I get out of the shower, I have to cover my hair in a detangler to have any hope of brushing the knots out. I was so confused to why she would first make all my hair darker before going over it with bleach. I have a hair color that is very uneven and dull. The lighter areas are slightly yellow and some places you can tell where she didn't bleach the entire strand of hair so there's blotches of brown. Friends of mine who work in the industry said that she should have given me a refund for destroying my hair, but I didn't bother asking, especially after she wanted to charge me more for fixing it.
I don't know if there is a solution here or not. For now, just make sure to look at pictures of what your stylist has done in the past to ensure they can do it again. read more
