A friend of mine referred me here for what she told me was an inexpensive but very good massage. I honestly was not expecting much for $20/hour. I'm a bit of a massage snob, and I like and dislike very specific things, but she had raved about it so I was hoping for at least a halfway decent experience. It wasn't even close. Quite frankly, it was awful. Where do I begin?
First of all, no one there speaks English. You can't tell them to focus on specific areas. They don't understand you. There is no communication at all. They just want you to sit down and they start massaging you. This is really lousy service from a massage place, and anyone who knows anything about massage knows this.
One guy seemed to speak broken English, and I told him very explicitly I wanted everything BUT my feet massaged. This seemed to really confuse him and the masseur. I explained to him that have very sensitive, painful feet and don't like them touched. I explained this, and he told me that if I wanted the masseur not to rub my feet, the price doubled to $40. I said no way, and was starting to get up and walk out when he said OK OK, no feet, $20. Unbelievable!
The masseur brought out a bucket of hot water and made me put my feet into it. Just weird, but OK. Then, he reclined the massage chair so that I was flat on my back with my feet bent at the knee at a 90 degree angle with my feet in a bucket. People, this is NOT a comfortable position. It was really straining on my lower back, so eventually I just pulled my feet out of the water and laid them straight out. Ugh, by this time, I'm thinking my friend, whom I adore, must have much lower massage standards than me. So far, this is awful.
The masseur began by doing some way-too-light acupressure therapy on my face and neck. I tried to ask him to go deeper, but of course he had no clue what I was saying. I got literally nothing out of that, which was a huge disappointment since one of my tightest areas is my neck!
He went on to massage my arms and the front of my legs with some weird massage technique that as far as I'm concerned isn't even a legit massage technique. Basically, he just pushed down on me. ???
Then, guess what? He began massaging my feet. After that long discussion about NOT touching my feet, he is massaging away. It was painful as hell, but by this time I was so pissed and knew he didn't speak English, I just dealt with it and soon it was over.
Finally, he had me flip on to my stomach and massaged the back side of my body. Once again he used that weird technique of pushing down on me hard. He didn't take any care to find and work out any knots. Again, just awful.
After 45 minutes, he announced my (one hour) massage was over. I handed him $20 and left. No tip. In addition to the subpar massage, the place was really noisy out front as many other reviews have said. Totally NOT relaxing in any way. This place totally blows. AVOID!
FYI, I am a longtime customer of Massage Envy in Fremont. I've taken great care to find a really good, legitimate therapist there who knows me and knows exactly what to do to give me a thorough, relaxing massage. I figured hey, I can go to Foot Relief once in a while for a quickie massage when my normal masseuse is busy. BIG BIG BIG MISTAKE on my part. I will never "cheat" on my regular place or therpist again!
On that note, if you want a REALLY good therapist, see Tracyina at Massage Envy in Fremont instead. Avoid Foot Relief!
One last thing - the whole place, especially the massage chair, smelled weird/bad. Bleah!
UPDATE: It's now the next day, June 18, and I am in a lot of pain. I'm much more sore and stiff now than when I went in. My neck is killing me and my back is really uncomfortable from all of the hard pushing he did right on my spine. This was hands down the worst massage experience I've ever had. Very disappointing. '
Incidentially, my friend who raved about Foot Relief had a completely different experience than I did. Her masseur spoke fluent English, and she got a great massage. Maybe it's hit or miss? Mostly, I couldn't get past how they tried to rip me off and double their price just because I asked them NOT to rub my feet. Incredibly bad service! read more