Normally I try to avoid writing bad reviews, but this time I felt I had no choice.
A friend and I walked into the salon today, a Tuesday afternoon, around 1pm. The place was rather busy with 6-7 other customers which I took to be a good sign. We were asked to wait for 20 minutes so we walked over to the other side of the plaza to grab a coffee.
When we came back we were sat next to each other in the massage chairs. They used bags inside the foot tubs, which is something I’d never seen before but I appreciate the extra effort to keep everything sanitary. The massage chairs didn’t really work. The remotes were strapped down to the side table and you could only choose one of two preset massages. Both options included tapping which is rather uncomfortable unless you like the feeling of every ounce of fat in your body jiggling in front of a captive audience.
My friend and I both opted for French pedicures with Shellac. The pedicure started out fine. Temperature in the water was alright, though they didn’t seem to add any kind of soak or salts to the water. They asked us to soak our feet first, then shaped our nails. The woman I had didn’t cleanly remove my cuticles, which I’ll get back to later on. She filed my toenails, clipped some, filed some more, clipped again. The end result was inconsistent, with some nails more rounded and the rest more square, but I didn’t notice this until the polish was on.
She worked on the soles of my feet. Razor, foot rasp, and scrub. I did see everyone else get a white electric foot smoother thing used at some point after the rasp and before the painting, but I personally didn’t get the experience. She began painting my toes, and at this point I’m watching the same nail job done by another tech on my friend in direct contrast to the tech I had. The woman working on my friends feet used the very thin artists brush to do the white lines and followed the shape of the nail in light strokes until the line had the correct weight. My tech was using an old polish and painting halfway down my toes and removing the excess with an acetone-dipped brush. I have seen this done successfully, but not here. The lines ended up being different weights on pretty much every toe. Base and colour coats had been applied over the aforementioned still-present cuticles, and at a few points onto my skin.
She had my hands soaking in water to the point where my fingers got pruny. I removed them well before she was done my toes but they still shredded a bit when she filed them. She put cuticle remover on my fingers and then started cutting my cuticles without pushing them, so basically trying to hack away at them. When I pointed this out she said she was going to clean them up under the light, but then tried to continue cutting them. I asked to use the washroom then she asked me to move over to her station.
When I stopped in the washroom and had a good look at my toes I could already see spots where the polish had gone onto my skin and was now separating. I told her that I was no longer wanting to move forward with the manicure and asked to see a manager. She said there was no manager available and asked me to pay for the pedicure. I asked again to see a manager and she just walked back to another client and started working on them.
My friend finished with her other services about 20 minutes later and when we went to pay I asked again to speak to a manager. The woman told me I could talk to “her†and directed me to a woman who was working on another client. I asked her if we could speak privately and she said no. I explained I was unhappy with my service and another woman came from the back and said they would only charge $33 for the pedicure, and not the extra $15 for shellac. I told her I didn’t even get a complete service if the tech skipped steps and failed to clean the cuticles, and they asked me to sit down so they could fix it. I told them I didn’t have the time to wait and we moved towards the cash. They ended up waiving my fee and offering a weak apology. I going somewhere else to fix them tomorrow.