I always get a dip manicure and gel pedicure, single matching color, no extensions or tips. You'd think for the most expensive salon I've been to in town, it would be a simple service. I try to go in for service during the week, avoiding the weekends when it's busy and the techs tend to be rushed.
My first three visits were great - good nail shaping, service as expected, and except for the expected grow out, the manicure still looked great after almost 3 weeks. The fourth visit resulted in unevenly shaped nails, shorter on one side of the nail than the other - they looked slanted.
The fifth visit was terrible. The tech did not start with a coat of clear dip down the center of the nail to build up the correct shape. He applied 2 coats of dip color then activator - no clear dip coat on top. After filing and buffing, he finished with a single coat of gel topcoat cured with a UV light.
Within 2 days, the gel top coat was hazy and peeling off. Unfortunately, I was out of town at a conference with an embarrassing manicure at a time when I was shaking hands all day. Not a good look!
I went back to the salon (5 days after the original service) by this time, not only was the top coat hazy and peeling, the color had chipped on thumbs and first fingers of both hands. They offered to fix it for free. Unfortunately, it was the same tech. He removed the dip on thumbs and first fingers, first with a brush-on remover (not soak-off) then very aggressively with the rotary tool until it burned my nail beds. He was obviously in a hurry. He reprocessed these nails as before.
He used the rotary tool to remove the top coat on the other nails (tried to do only 3 of the other 6 nails until I pointed out that the topcoat was failing on ALL remaining nails)
Today, 5 days after the "fix", the dip, AND my natural nail underneath, has chipped on one thumbnail and one pointer, gel topcoat shows cracks across the center of three nails and the corners of 2 others. The color is uneven due to the careless removal of the original topcoat that also removed some of the dip color (no clear dip layer on top of the color, so no room for error).
All this with two straight weeks of sitting in a conference room - no gardening, no washing dishes, nothing more taxing to my hands than occasional keyboarding!
I have another conference to attend next week and I'll be searching for another salon this weekend. Now I'll need tips on few nails to even out the length after breaks have caused jagged edges that will need to be filed down considerably.
Avoid this salon!! read more