I had a very negative experience at Maisonry. The staff are inflexible and lacking empathy with regards to their cancellation policies.
I decided to book an appointment with Angela because I had visited her when the salon first opened and she did such a great job with my hair and was helpful with home care advice.
A year or so in, and I had a really hard time booking an appointment. After trying for close to 3 months to get a full highlight appointment with Angela, I finally got one at 10.15 in the morning. This was already going to be a big commitment for me as I live in Marin and would have to travel all the way down to the Mission to spend 4.5 hours on my hair.
That morning, there was an unexpected 20 minute traffic jam leading up to the Golden Gate Bridge. My estimated time of arrival was 10.40am, and I texted Maisonry to let them know that I would be there about 10.45am incorporating parking time assuming there is easy parking.
The person who texted back was extremely inflexible and just told me that since I would be half an hour late, they would have no choice but to cancel my slot. I was very upset because here I was, not even at the site of the jam yet and on the way to cross the bridge to the city, only to be told that I would have to make a u turn back.
I had blocked out my whole morning for the hair appointment and pleaded via text to ask if they could just rush me in or maybe do a partial highlight but the staff just would not bother to help me think of a solution and instead insisted that they would have to cancel and charge me a full cancellation fee of $550 (the full service charge).
I found this unsympathetic. I assume $550 is a lot of money for most people and it was obvious that I was not trying to bail out of the hair cut and was making a genuine effort to get to the salon on time.
For a service business, it just seems unacceptable that their business model builds in zero buffers for customers who might be late due to unforeseen circumstances.
What takes the cake is that while they were the ones who initiated the cancellation, they are forcing me to pay a full service cancellation fee. It was totally not clear from their texts or website that being more than 15 minutes late, AND regardless of who initiates the cancellation, results in the customer having to still pay full price for a service that did not happen, while their staff just gets extra time and money for doing less work for the day. In fact, the website states under their late policy that being more than 15 minute late might result in a 50% charge of the missed service, which I even initiated that I was willing to pay instead of a full 100%charge but was outrightly rejected. Besides the website, no where in their text messages did they mention that being late by more than 15 minutes results in a 100% cancellation fee.
And regardless of all rhetoric and whatever is stated in the website, this is no way to treat a customer who clearly made great efforts to make the appointment happen. I would have at least expected some flexibility in the amount of cancellation fee, or to propose an alternative service that might take less time, etc.
While I do not deny that Angela may be good at what she does based on her Instagram marketing, poor service standards will be detrimental to her business and I'm definitely proactively not recommending anyone to go here. read more