While I am disappointed to have to put a negative review on this page, and I have previously…read morewritten positive reviews for PIA, I feel that it is the ethical thing to do to share my recent experiences with any prospective clients, as Yelp is how I originally found PIA myself.
**Photos posted above are the side-by-side of the haircut we agreed upon and the haircut PIA gave me & the four square photos of the uneven highlights she gave me on my most recent visit**
Though I had very positive experiences with PIA the first year I went to her, two extremely upsetting experiences within the past year have brought me believe that I needed to find another stylist. Last Fall, I asked PIA to cut a significant amount of length off of my hair (4-5 inches). We looked at over a dozen photos similar to what I wanted and I made sure to show her images of both the front and back of styles I liked. We agreed on a particular photo of a woman with hair resting on her shoulder and PIA turned me around to begin the haircut. When she was done with the back and one side, she turned me to face the mirror and I began to panic when I saw what she had done -- my hair was only about an inch below my earlobe and at least an inch and a half above my chin in a blunt bob. A full FOUR inches above my shoulder. While PIA apologized, took full responsibility, and even offered to put in extensions and give me free blowouts (none of which I took her up on), I was extremely upset. It took nine months for my hair to grow out to the length we had agreed upon and was in the photo.
This more recent event was this past Friday when I had a 10 o'clock appointment and PIA called me the afternoon before saying that she was booked solid until 8 p.m. that evening and wanted to know if I could come in three hours later at 1 p.m. I told her that I could only push it back by a half hour because I had gotten a babysitter especially for this and because I had promised my son I would take him somewhere after my appointment. When I arrived, a family member that was there with her informed me that they were going to the Jersey Shore that day, which made clear to me exactly why she wanted to reconfigure her schedule. I must not have been the only one she tried to squeeze in because she was working on two other people (a single process and a haircut) while she was also working on my hair. By the time the single process was done and my hair had been rough-dried, I had already been there for two full hours -- for a single process. I was supposed to get balayage highlights as well, and though she asked me if she could apply the color for one of the other clients first, I told her that I needed to get home to my son as my appointment was already running so late. We spoke about the color I was looking for in the highlights and I specifically told her that I wanted to make sure it looked natural, didn't look chunky or streaky in a ponytail, and wasn't too blonde. Well, another hour and 45 minutes later, I was finally done with the appointment and left as quickly as possible to get home.
Two days later (who wants to ruin a good blowout with a ponytail?), I put my hair up and literally gasped when I saw that I had basically 1/4 of the left side of my head with obvious highlights and almost nothing on the right side of my head at all. When I looked at the back, my ponytail was basically solid blonde. The issues were obvious and, honestly, embarrassing. I took photos and sent them to PIA to tell her I was unhappy and the next day she responded and told me I could come back in for her to fix them within the next two weeks. I explained that I had already spent almost four hours at her salon (not counting that I live a half-hour away), and that I did not have the time or opportunity to get back to her salon for another couple of hours plus travel time, nor did I have the confidence in her any longer. Perhaps condensing her days from five to three while still maintaining the same client base is why she needed to triple-book people, and I can imagine that it's hard to focus on one client when you are working on three, or she is still settling into what is now her third salon space in a year, but that cannot be something that I, as a paying client, needs to feel the consequences of. Clearly, I should have listened to the more than eight friends who told me never to go back to her after that horrible haircut last year...
Again, I am disappointed to feel compelled to write a negative review (something I have never done before), but I know people do exactly what I did -- come on her looking for honest reviews and not just positive reviews solicited by business owners with offers of discounts -- and so I thought sharing my unfortunate experiences at this salon was the right thing to do.
