Made an appointment for a full set with gel polish & a pedicure, 2 days before. When I got there they still hadn't chosen someone to do my nails. Waited 40 minutes for them to send over a nail tech who was a month away from giving birth. Obviously she couldn't do my pedicure, so after I turned down a reschedule, another student - who because he was graduating that day hadn't been prepared to do nails - offered to do my pedicure. He didn't have his tools, so the teacher offered to go get them from somewhere.
In the mean time, the pregnant girl would work on my hands. She didn't recognize the cuticle remover that they had there for her, so that was a learning curve. Then, they didn't supply her with the correct any of the liquid that you use for acrylic, so the teacher said she would go get it.
By this time, the guy doing my pedicure had the tools. The pedicure took 2 hours! He didn't scrub my feet, or lotion them. All he did was my toes. There was a problem because they didn't have the polish I chose from the samples they showed me. So I said I'd make do with a different red on my toes. He glopped the polish on my toes. When I asked if he was going to clean them up before finishing, he replied I'll just put the gel light on & then I'll take off the excess with wood sticks. (I've never heard if this being done at a salon, it sounds juvenile) I hadn't asked for gel on my toes. There is now normal polish under gel top coat on my skin that is not easily removable.
After the lengthy & terrible pedicure, I went back for my hands. There polish was wrong again here, so now my toes were red/white and my hands a different red/cream. While she did a decent enough looking job the acrylic was thick on the nail & thin on the ends, where it should be the other way around, & the acrylic covered my cuticles. One of my nails broke the first day.
Complained to the teacher while the girl was doing my full set - she at 1st blamed the amount of time on student slowness. This is 4 hours in, by the way. But at least an hour of that was waiting, & on top of that both of the kids doing my nails had to get up several times to go get stuff.
I'm not blaming either of the students for most of these issues, because a good deal of the problems were administrative. Products that students needed that they weren't supposed to supply for themselves were not in the room where they needed them.
I also feel the need to again note that the guy doing my pedicure was graduating! Graduating!! Meaning that he had learned everything he was supposed to learn & still did a poor job. He was a nice enough kid, but this was bad! The girl doing my hands even said that she would not have put up with what I dealt with that day.
When I complained to the teacher, she offered to give me again the same 1st time discount, 20% off, the next time I came in, rather than offering to refund me anything from that day. I don't usually expect things for free, but when something like this was that bad her 1st instinct should have been apologize & comp something even - if it was something small. Not to blame it on the students & give me a tiny incentive to come back.
I had to go last minute for a fix somewhere else as this was right before a Christmas trip, & paid an additional $15 for a cleanup & new paint job. I have pics of my feet elsewhere and will edit the post with the pics if possible.
I really miss the Margate School of Beauty. read more