I am extremely disappointed with Jennifer after an experience yesterday. I was a returning customer. I went to her once before. Although she did a wonderful job on my hair, she was running over an hour behind schedule this first time. But I did ultimately have a good experience even in spite of this once she got to my hair. I thought that she deserved the benefit of the doubt when I pulled into the parking lot and called her and she told me she needed to reschedule because she was running behind. But my experience with her today was completely avoidable and unacceptable on her part.
I scheduled an appointment for Dec 15 2015 for my mom and I. This was going to be my Christmas gift to my mother. I raved about Jennifer and her salon after my initial outcome with her, and wanted her to have a great first experience with Jennifer.
So my mom and I get to her new location and go to the door for our 11am appt. It is locked. I call Jennifer. No answer. I call again. No answer. It is now 5 minutes after 11. I text and say we are here, but the door is locked. And then she finally responds over text message (after ignoring my calls, most likely to avoid confrontation) and says that she needs to reschedule because there was a plumbing issue. And then I asked her why she didn't inform us of this earlier and that we drove 30 minutes to be there. She comes back with a whole slue of excuses that she was in the salon until 2 last night, then had to take her son to school at 8 and then she fell asleep before she could send us a message to let us know she needed to reschedule because she was so tired.
This is unprofessional. So the second time in a row, she has had to reschedule and has failed to inform me before I made the 30 min drive to her salon. There is no excuse for this. It would have taken 20 seconds for her to send a quick email or text to let us know that she needed to reschedule. And when I expressed this disappointment to her in a text message (since she kept ignoring my phone calls), I also failed to get any sort of response or action on her part. Although I'll admit my msg was a bit short (I told her exactly what I am saying here, and I did apologize after the fact if I hurt her feelings), but this is a VALID reason to be angry with her. Her text message was full of typos and looked as if it had been thrown together with very little care as to how she was coming across. If she would have given the time of day to make a phone call and explain everything in person and apologize, this outcome could have been different and I would not be writing this negative review. She did not even ANSWER my calls to explain in person. She let it go to voicemail even though she was sitting right by her phone because she was responding to every text. You just don't do this to clients when you run a business.
She did offer 30% discount for this, which was a kind gesture (and she offered a free gift the time before to make up for the first time too), but saving $40 isn't what I cared about. What would have been much appreciated would have been for her to NOT ignore my calls––maybe even call me––and take the time to explain everything in person and apologize for her mistake.
Jennifer may be talented. And she is a perfectionist, which is evident from her wonderful job on my hair. But she lacks professionalism. What this experience told me as a client was that I am not important and that she does not respect my time.