 Hey guys, welcome back to my channel, or welcome if you're new. For those of you who don't know me, my name's Sam. I am a licensed hairstylist. I haven't recorded one of these videos in over a year, which is so crazy. I love these videos. I know you guys love these. Today I'm going to be reacting to your salon horror stories. I've shared some of my own here on my channel. I have a whole playlist if you're interested. I'll link it in the description. And I love sharing them because I think it's a learning lesson for all of us. As clients, you can learn from other people's mistakes so that you know what red flags to look out for in the future or what things to ask for, how you can avoid some of these terrible things happening to yourself. And for the stylist out there, it's a great opportunity to learn what not to do. If you have a horror story that you would like me to share on this channel, I do want to do these videos more often. You can email them to me at styledbysamvei at gmail.com. I will have that in the description as well. That is the only email address and the only place where I accept these stories because otherwise they will just get lost if you try to DM them to me or something like that. So if you have a story, please send it to that email address. So let's just jump right in to the first story. So I've been going to the same stylist for the past two and a half, maybe three years. I've always gotten the same thing done and been happy with it. Every time I just get highlights and her prices were decently cheap for my area. I never paid over $200 for a full highlight and because she was so inexpensive, I always tipped around $100. So about $300 total per visit. Damn, a 50% tip? That is very generous. This time I came in with a bit of a different idea. I wanted to do a root smudge at the top so regrowth would be a little more manageable. I told her I just wanted to add a few highlights to brighten up the bottom half as well. Okay, so you were looking to do something a little bit darker than what you normally do. Normally she goes in for a full head of highlights. This time she wanted like a smudged out darker root so that it would grow out softer and not be as high maintenance. And then she just wanted to add a little bit more highlights to the bottom to brighten up the ends. She agrees, walks me through what she's going to do and we begin. She starts foiling and we were talking so I didn't notice right away, but about 30 minutes in I realized she's doing a full head of highlights. I didn't say anything because at that point they were already in my head and I figured she's the professional and I trust her. After three bowls of bleach and a head full of it she goes back to get what I thought was toner for the few in between pieces as she always does. She does about half my head and I noticed the toner wasn't turning dark, it was still white. So I asked her what it was. She then proceeds to tell me this is clay bleach just to lighten you up in between as well. Half my head was already done and I couldn't really change what had happened so I simply said, oh, I didn't ask for that and moved on. She lets everything sit for about 30 minutes or so after about three hours of work. So these things had been in my head forever at this point. Then she pulls the foils out in the chair which she had never done before and gets another bowl of bleach and does a balayage. I figured I wasn't lightening very fast so she wanted to reapply. After about 20 minutes or so she rinses me out and tones me and we go back to the chair for the root smudge. At this point I had been there for about five hours and her next appointment came in while my hair was still wet. She started brushing while cutting my hair which I never asked for, I wanted to keep my length which I told her at the beginning of the appointment. She then rinses and blow-dries me within 10 minutes. I mean this girl was demolishing my hair with that round brush and blow dryer to get me out of the salon. After my hair was about 95% dry she just hands me the card reader and walks to her next appointment. I look at the total and it's $580. I was shocked. I left a 20% tip and walked out. Okay, hold on. I'm gonna pause there because I have so many thoughts. Unfortunately it's super common for hairstylists to rush through the consultation portion of the appointment which I personally think is the most important part of the appointment because that's really where so much can go wrong. So it's interesting to me that she told you what her plan was and what she was gonna do and that's something that I like to do. You know, I ask all the questions. I try to figure out what it is that the client wants and then once I think I have a good understanding I repeat it back to them just to clarify that we are definitely on the same page and then I'm understanding what they're asking for. So it's bizarre to me that she did that but then proceeded to do all these other things which were so unnecessary, not at all what you asked for. And I mean, yeah, I'm not surprised honestly that the total, is she normally for like a standard head of highlights charges about 200? It sounds like she did three times that work. If she kept lightning you, she did a full head of highlights, then she came in with Clay Lightner then she did balayage again, then a root smudge, toning, all of that. So yeah, that price, the 580, makes sense considering how much work she did. However, it was so unnecessary because it's not what you asked for. All she had to do was paint a couple of highlights on your ends and then do the root smudge and a toner. The entire thing could have been done in like two hours or less. It definitely did not need to take that long or cost that much at all whatsoever. And the fact that you said that she started doing a haircut even though you said you didn't want one, to me, immediately when I read that, I was like, oh, she was doing it because she had to because she probably damaged your hair really badly. Which I mean, if you're doing three different lightning processes all in one appointment and the Lightner is sitting on the hair for over three hours, you're most likely gonna have some damage, especially you've been getting highlights on a regular basis. So it's all like you were starting out with virgin hair. Your hair already was pre-lightened and processed so it's not gonna be able to handle that much stress. After getting to my car, I noticed I had an orange splotch in the front of my head and get nervous but didn't think much of it. I got home and looked in my bathroom mirror and immediately started bawling my eyes out. My roots were red, midsections were splotchy orange and ends were completely fried and had a green tinge to them. I was mortified, which yeah, it makes sense because if the hair is over processed and really damaged it's gonna suck that toner up a lot so she used an ashy toner on you rather than turning like a nice ash blonde it's going to suck it up and over deposit and you're gonna end up with like a greenish tinge. I even called my mom over and the first thing she said was why is your hair green? She told me I needed to contact her and have her fix it ASAP so the next day after calming down a bit I sent her a text being as nice as possible but saying at this point I just wanna put a color all over it because I was so done with this hair. And I think that that's great that you did that that you gave yourself some time to calm down because in the moment if you're feeling like really really upset or angry you might say some things you don't really mean or not come off in the most professional way which is understandable but then the hairstylist might come back really defensive and it's not the best way to handle things so I love that you slept on it waited till the next day till you were a little more calm. She agreed and booked me for the following Thursday. After thinking about it I realized that I didn't feel very comfortable going back to her and the way she spoke over text was unsettling so I called the salon and asked to speak to the owner. She pretty much said she didn't do my hair so she couldn't help me and I'd have to talk to the stylist herself if I wanted any kind of a refund. That makes sense to me because some salons basically just rent out the booth to stylists so they're technically independent and they own their own business and they are just kind of paying to use that space within the salon. That's why the owner couldn't really do much to help you and you needed to speak directly with the stylist. I hate confrontation and I felt bad she spent so long on my hair and after learning she was an independent stylist I didn't want that money to come out of her paycheck so I figured I would just go on Thursday and if I still hated it I would take the loss and go to another salon to get it fixed. Come Thursday I leave work two hours early to get to my appointment and I realized I never got a confirmation text so I texted her to make sure we were still good for that day. She responds and said the owner had told her I wanted a refund and wanted to cancel my appointment which wasn't true I just called to see their policies on refunds and explore my options. So long story short she canceled my appointment without telling me and was just waiting for me to call her asking for a refund. I told her I did think about asking but I felt bad and wasn't going to at that point and she responded and said that I should feel bad for asking but she thought it was best and she just gave me my money back. She never asked for pictures of my hair or anything. I think I got fired as a client. I'm not sure but regardless I'm not going back. I also want to make it clear I wasn't expecting a full refund. I understand products were used and I did choose to tip that much so I only expected maybe 50% back. She did end up refunding me in full and I bought some bleach and toner and fixed it myself because I'm too scared to ever go into a salon again. My hair looks 90% better it's still a bit warm at the top but nothing I can't deal with and it's so dead at this point. I'm just focusing on getting the health back. I apologize for the length of the story and I tried to leave out as many small details as possible but I'm just in shock. I spent so long with this girl and left feeling ugly and taken advantage of as she knew how much money I made and I feel as though she added on a bunch of services to get a check because she knew I could afford it. Oh my God, so many thoughts. The fact that she would cancel your appointment talk to the owner just assume oh you want a refund so I'm going to cancel you without reaching out first is not cool. Any client that ever has an issue and is unhappy with their hair period I am going to make sure I'm going above and beyond to remedy the situation you know because that's my reputation at the end of the day. Okay? And whether it was actually something that I did wrong whether like I caused damage to their hair on accident or there was miscommunication during the consultation even if I technically didn't do anything wrong or mess up as the stylist and it was really just on them. Still like I want to make sure that I am communicating with the client so that we can come to an agreement and be on okay terms because I don't want them going around bashing me and you know like having bad hair and then telling people where they went. Yeah, there's some clients that are just like really unreasonable and you can't make them happy no matter what but you have to at least try but especially if it's a regular of yours that always comes in and always tips very generously you would think that those clients you're especially gonna really want to make happy and be on good terms with. So it's totally unacceptable for her to just cancel your appointment and not try to reach out to you especially as an independent stylist like you own your own business and you're the face of your business like what are you doing? So yeah, I do not like the way that she handled that at all whatsoever. So I don't know, did she take advantage and did she do all of that extra work just so she can make more money from you? Maybe, but it's not like she made a lot off of you by doing little work you know like she did a lot there and I mean to be running late with her next client like that sounded like it was stressful for her. It could have just been a huge lack of communication and misunderstanding on her part but I do think that as a stylist it's important to discuss expectations and pricing and all of that at the beginning with your clients just so they know what to expect and you can make sure that they're comfortable with that. I say this all the time you could be the most talented stylist out there but if you don't know how to interact with people and how to have good customer service skills and communication skills you're not gonna make it very far. At the end of the day you are in the service industry so your real goal is making people happy and of course you need boundaries you need people to respect you and your work and all of that but that doesn't mean that you can go around treating clients like dirt and just not listening to them not doing what they want and then not being willing to fix your mistakes and owning up to when you make a mistake and I'm really sorry that you are scared now to go somewhere else I mean I'm glad that you were able to fix your hair yourself at home I hope that you're able to get it healthy again and grow it out eventually but just know that not every stylist is like that there are a lot of really great ones that take their relationships with their clients very seriously and I really hope that you'll be able to find a stylist that you can trust again in the future all right let's do one more shall we? This one says, hi Sam I love your videos and I don't know if you still do these client horror stories but I attached three pictures of my hair horror story. First one is what I started with like outgrown blonde highlights the second one is what I asked for and the third one is what I got okay so let's put a picture of what she started with this is what she asked for and then this is what she got I don't really know what went wrong but I gathered some thoughts after the appointment number one consultation was basically two minutes I showed her my inspiration pictures and she just said she knew what I wanted I explained a few more things like that I wanted to stay on the warm side with the shade of the color but she kind of cut me off because she knew what I wanted that is a red flag you know anytime a stylist is cutting you off doesn't want to hear you out is rushing through the consultation like I said with the first story the consultation is the most important part and it should be pretty lengthy I mean it doesn't need to take like 30 minutes but at least like 10 minutes I would say and it's great that you brought inspiration photos I always suggest that to everybody but there have been times where I've had clients come in they show me an inspiration photo and looking at it it's like very simple especially if it's a photo of work that I've done previously on somebody else like okay yeah I got it I know how to do that no problem but I still need to ask further questions because I want to make sure like they're just seeing a picture right like they're not seeing that person walking around in real life so I want to make sure that what they're seeing in that photo is the same thing that I'm seeing so that I can understand exactly what it is that they like about the photo and what it is that they want like it's just not enough to just show a picture be like this is what I want okay great I'm gonna go do that you know like you need to ask more questions number two she put a toner on my hair and I saw that it looked quite lilac I told her that I don't want lilac hair and she said it won't come out that way after it's washed out I trusted her that is true when toners are processing they almost never look the way that they are going to once they're rinsed out and the hair is dry they pretty much always look like really really dark really pigmented really scary and when you are doing blonde hair often times the toners are gonna look purple or blue even sometimes after you rinse the toner out the hair itself can still look like really purple but then once it's dry it'll be a beautiful blonde so that is a little tricky you don't want to start panicking until after you actually see the hair dry number three after the blowout I saw my hair was lilac all over and I told her that this is not what I wanted she just told me she had to make it a bit lilac and that it'll wash out she told me that I'm a pretty girl now and everyone's gonna ask where I got my hair colored what the- no see that is not okay with me sometimes you will do a toner on somebody's hair and it doesn't take correctly for whatever reason it doesn't come out the way you were anticipating either it took too much or it didn't take enough and like I said when the hair is wet sometimes you can't really tell but it is so irresponsible and unprofessional as a stylist to just like sweep it under the rug and act like oh no it's fine don't worry about it throw some curls in it and send them out of the door no you cannot do that be honest and upfront don't even give the client an opportunity to point it out and ask questions or say they don't like it you should be the one to point it out and fix it right away that is something that I always do and let me tell you because mistakes are gonna happen right with color like everyone's hair is different different hair takes to color differently sometimes and sometimes things will happen that you don't always anticipate even my old boss who's been doing hair for over 20 years it still would happen to her like it's just you can't avoid it sometimes but the best thing to do is be honest because guess what if you are the one pointing out oh you know this didn't really come out right it didn't take properly let's go back to the bowl I'm so sorry about that it's just gonna be an extra 10 minutes I wanna make sure that I do it right because you know I want you to be happy they are going to appreciate that they're not gonna be thinking oh my god this person doesn't know what the hell they're doing I don't trust them it's gonna be the opposite they're gonna trust you even more because you were the one that was honest with them and they're gonna feel like okay I'm in good hands I don't have to worry because they know what I want and they're gonna do everything they need to do to make sure I get what I want and if a client is pointing out something to you and they're not happy you need to do something about that you can't just reassure them like oh no no no it looks great you're beautiful even if it does look beautiful like that after picture I do think is really really pretty and I'm sure there's tons of people that would love to have that color but the thing is it's not what you asked for it's not even close so she should fix that and it's an easy fix all she has to do is do a clarifying treatment to pull that toner out and just re-ton you with something different and if she didn't have time to fix it right there and then she should have asked you to come back a different day so that she could fix it free of charge number four after the appointment she posted a picture on social media with the subtitle another beautiful dusty pink hair like what? I think she just made my hair like she wanted not what I wanted did she just want to do a dusty pink because she thought that would look best or did she not know what she was doing when it came to formulating color and she gave you that color on accident and then decided to just roll with it and act like that's what you actually had asked for I think most likely that is what happened maybe you could tell me what happened here because I really don't know should I have done anything differently maybe explained a different thing so the picture that you showed for your inspiration is great it's a really nice picture and it's actually a really nice angle too because the hair is tilted back so you can really see like how it looks from the front as well as the back it's a great picture it's totally realistic for what you were starting out with and to me and say this is why consultation's so important these are the kind of things I would be saying during the consultation to me when I look at the inspiration photo I see a more neutral blonde but I definitely wouldn't describe it as warm I think the reason that you are looking at this and thinking that this is a warm color is because of the brown lowlights that are running throughout are very rich and warm so it's giving the whole hair overall a warmer look I could definitely see how a stylist would look at just the blonde part of this picture and think oh that looks a little bit more cool toned or ashy and that's the thing, color is so subjective like everybody looks at it and sees it differently so I would have just asked more questions and when you started telling me oh I want a warmer tone, warmer shade then I would ask okay do you want the blonde to be warm as well or do you just want warmer lowlights you know like I would ask some more follow up questions the fact that she did this like lilac-y pinky kind of color just to me seems like she just didn't really know what she was doing when it came to formulating that's the only thing I can think of I really don't think she did that on purpose because obviously it looks nothing like the photo that you asked for it's kind of tricky because she didn't really give you an opportunity to clarify and you would think okay you showed a picture you explained I want it to be warmer and she's telling you okay yeah I got it no problem I mean what more can you really do as a client you know you don't know what it is that she's mixing up even if she told you the formula she was using if you're not a hairstylist and you're not familiar like you're not gonna know what the hell she's saying luckily colors like this these like dusty colors, lilacs, purples they do fade they don't last in the hair so I'd be curious to know she sent this email a couple months ago so I'm sure by now it's not looking like this anymore and it probably did fade to a blonde so I think it was just a lack of experience maybe a lack of color knowledge and a lack of communication skills if you were ever going to a hair appointment first of all I really suggest if the stylist offers standalone consultation appointments I do suggest booking that first so that you can really feel the stylist out and if you feel like they're not taking the time to really listen to you and they're not asking any follow up questions then I wouldn't book the appointment with them and also I know it can be hard especially for those of us that aren't great with confrontation but don't be afraid to speak up if you feel like the stylist is just kind of brushing you off and they're rushing through the consultation they don't really wanna listen to what you're saying stop them and be like excuse me I just really wanna make sure that you are understanding what I want and that we're on the same page here and feel free to ask questions like okay if I wanted to do this color you know how long is this appointment gonna take what are the steps going to entail like what would the process be like how much is this going to cost me how high maintenance is this going to be like how should I need to come in for a touch up and if they're not communicating well with you and they're not being clear and answering all of the questions you have, run. Thank you guys again though for sending in your stories I hope that you guys enjoyed this video like I said if you have a story that you would like to send in to me whether you're a hairstylist yourself and you just have a bad client story or if you have a story about a bad hairstylist from a client perspective feel free to send them in to me styledbysamvayatgmail.com Thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you in my next video. Bye.