continued from prior post...
She encouraged me to wait a week or two, until after my hair has had a few washes to see if the color fades and assured me that I could return to have it fixed if I was still not happy. She was being really sweet and asking questions to try to find out what had disappointed me. I was about to pull out my laptop to show her when Annette stepped up to the front desk, looking surprised that I was still there, and quickly asking if there was anything else I needed. She looked at me and said something like, "she's only the receptionist so she can't do anything about your hair"...I pretty much felt like she wanted me to hurry up and leave, while really, the receptionist was just trying to help console me.
I was in tears all the way home. I felt that Annette was unprofessional and rude to me. The tone of her response was unacceptable. I know that she knows that she made a mistake and the situation could have been handled so much better if she had just been honest with me. Perhaps she chose the wrong color? Perhaps the dye did not have enough time in my hair? But the outcome of my hair color is not even close to what I had asked for and I hated it every time I look in the mirror.. I cried my eyes out at home feeling really disappointed by Ann's lack of communication or better customer service. After giving it some thought I called the salon to setup an appt in two weeks to fix the color. I said I'd cancel it if the color resolves naturally through fading. But here was my dilemma... I was treated rudely, I had my nice hair messed up and to say that I was hesitant to let her touch my hair again is an understatement.
There was a possibility that the hair would indeed fade and look ok after a while OR that Annette could have fixed it and I'd come out pleased...but two major things bug me. 1) I should not have been treated rudely and this alone made me not want to see her again. Honesty is the best policy and owning up to a mistake would have saved her a customer and a bad review. 2) I was too afraid to risk being disappointed a second time, doing further color damage to my healthy hair, and possibly have to go get it colored a third time and pay big money for it at some other salon.
The hair trim was mediocre, the head massage while she was washing my hair was honestly really nice, but that pales in comparison to my experience as a whole. I think I looked better arriving at the salon than I did leaving. Sad :(
I spoke to the manager at Koipod, his name is Kahala. He heard me out for about 20 min on the phone (a long rant, I know, and at least he was patient for that) but when I was done he came off as if defending Ann, saying that she is a good and professional worker with many years of hair experience, and that she would never intentionally make a customer feel bad. I'm thinking, "did you just hear about experience or did it go out the other ear?!". I told him that he was coming off defensive and he denied it. The manager should have been open to learning about what went wrong and instead he said that Ann must have thought that was the color I wanted. Every time I tried to help him understand how his and Ann'd responses were perceived by me, the customer, he'd cut me off saying that he "doesn't want to focus on the problem anymore, let's move on to a solution". But it'd be really difficult for me to accept their offer to fix my hair if I still felt like they hadn't understood where I was coming from and they hadn't offered a decent apology for what had happened to my hair and the way I was treated, whether OR NOT it was someone's intention to make me feel bad. Anyhow, I felt like the manager made absolutely no attempt to defend me, the customer, so I canceled the appointment I had originally made to come in and fix it. Almost a month has passed and my hair color has faded a tiny bit in intensity but it is still RED, which is not what I wanted at all. Also, it is not flattering and does not mesh well with my existing brown hair color. My hair was screwed up once there and I'd never go back. I am going to a color SPECIALIST to get it fixed. read more