When my stylist left the salon I had been going to, I thought it was time for a change. I scheduled an appointment with Nate, who was the best fit for me according to the woman who scheduled my appointment, since I wanted someone who was good with color and curly hair.
When I went in on Tuesday 2/3, I explained to Nate that I wanted to match my natural color and eliminate the brassiness from my old color fading a bit. He pulled out the color matcher and even brought in another stylist for a second set of eyes. Totally thought we were on the same page at that point. He then asked if we could put in "a few caramel colored highlights." After he reassured me that it wouldn't be drastically different from my natural hair color, I agreed. What I left with was platinum blond highlights, and roots that are a lighter color from the rest of my hair because he didn't pull the color through (even though it is a different brand/different color than used on the remainder of my hair, as this salon uses Redken and my previous salon did not). When I specifically asked him to pull it through, he used a totally different color glaze (Redken Shades vs Chromatics that he used on my roots) so needless to say that didn't really match/help. If anything, I think he made the ends of my hair darker, so the contrast to the highlights was more obvious.
The worst part of hair color is that you have no idea what is happening until the "unveiling" and by then, the damage is already done. When I got home and saw my hair in "real" light, I was completely distressed. My highlights make me look like I'm back in the 80's auditioning for a role on Dynasty. I left him a message that very night. He called me back the next day and offered to fix my hair. But when I went in for said fix on 2/4, it quickly became a no go. I asked him to color my hair to one solid color brown, forget these blond highlights that I never asked for (and in fact had specifically said I did not want). He said to get it all back to one color would require corrective color. However, he was not offering to do said corrective color, even though I only needed it to fix his handy work. So no, I would not be able to leave with hair that was all one color. He offered only a glaze, which from experience I know would wash off in a few weeks, not helpful. Then he started insulting me and telling me how bad my hair was when I came in, and how many different colors it was (not really true, and other stylists did not have trouble giving me the same color all over). At this point, I am crying and then he tells me he's not going to help me and he's going to give me my money back. He says he won't fix it because "he will never be able to make me happy"...true dat, if you can't restore my hair to what it looked like before you took it upon yourself to revisit the 80's, I will not be happy! You make the mess, you should be able to fix it! So that makes me an unreasonable customer? Not in my world.
So instead of fixing it, he leaves me to find someone else to fix his mess instead. Which I can't do immediately, so I went to Walgreens on the way home to stock up on Gray Away...to help hide my hideous highlights!!! Thankfully my old stylist of 15 years was able to fix me the following week. Amazing how she made my hair all one color...something Nate was unable and/or unwilling to do!
I'm sure his rebuttal to my review will be that he refunded my money in full, which is 100% accurate. He gave me my money for the services and gratuity, and offered to buy back my products that I was not happy with, if I bring them back in. Frankly, I don't really want to go back in to an establishment where the owner had me in tears, so that part I will probably not take advantage of, so that's on me...I guess. So in fairness, I did not ultimately pay for these services with money. But my hair certainly paid the price for our "miscommunication" as he kept calling it.
The kicker of the evening was when I told him he was definitely getting a negative review on Yelp, if he was unwilling to fix my hair. Refunding my money was not a satisfactory outcome for me. He said (in a super snotty voice) "oh like you do with every salon you go to?" Okay, it's weird if you Yelp-stalk your customers. And as of that point in time, I had only reviewed one other salon that cut/colored my hair, so not even sure what he was talking about. Maybe if he spent some time figuring out how he could fix my hair to look like what I asked for, instead of stalking me on Yelp and fabricating fantasies of how I spend my days torturing salon owners everywhere with horrible reviews, we would have had a better outcome.
Bottom line: let the photos speak for themselves. Do you want your hair to look like this when you request brown color and agree to a few "caramel colored" highlights? I certainly did not. read more