Ran into an issue with my hair stylist, I’m not sure what to do in this situation.
I don’t ask Reddit for advice often, but I figured this would be the best place to go for advice in this situation. Also I am not a stylist so I don’t know all of the correct terminology so if I make any mistakes I apologize! This is a long story but I’ll try to make it as short as possible.
So I’ve been going to this salon since 2022, I had my wedding hair and makeup done there and I decided to keep going after my wedding. I’ve spent a lot of time and money in this salon. I started out with a different stylist that decided to go to a different salon in 2023, well I wanted to stay at the salon I’ve been going to so I found a different stylist and have been going strictly to her since then.
To preface this story, I LOVE my hair stylist, she’s never done me wrong before. I’m not the perfect client, especially this year because I’ve had to reschedule a few times due to finances/unexpected emergencies.
Long story short, I’ve been going getting blonde highlights/root touch ups pretty much every appointment since I first started going in 2022. This week I decided I wanted to change things up and go back brunette with some Carmel highlights for dimension.
I texted with my stylist about it and we decided on a 1.5 hour appointment to work with my work schedule (I had to take an extended lunch to make my appointment). The day comes, my appointment is at 2 so I leave work at 1:30, I get to the salon and my stylist texts me saying she’s running a little behind and if we can move the appointment to 2:30. NBD, I’ll just go grab something to eat. I get back at 2:30 and the appointment starts. I’m mildly worried about time because my 1.5 hour appointment is now 30 minutes less, but I go ahead anyway.
We talk about what I want and what I have time for today and we decide on an all over gloss to take me from super blonde, to a nice brunette color that blends well with my natural brunette. After the gloss and everything, her and her coworker are blowdrying my hair and they start silently talking about how the gloss didn’t take to some of my hair. I ask what’s going on and she shows me and a big chunk of my hair is the same shade of blonde that I walked in with. It’s almost 3:30 now, I have to be back at work at 4, this is the worse case scenario. I decided for the sake of time to skip the trim and layering, so we only trim my curtain bangs a little bit. Which ended up being a little uneven and choppy. Whatever, at this point I have to get back to work.
She starts asking me about my work schedule for the rest of the work trying to find a time I can come back in for her to fix it. We decided on the next day at 9:30am, she braids my hair to hide most of the blonde, I pay $123 for the hour appointment, I go back to work. The next day I leave the house, run into standstill traffic due to a wreck on a 2 lane road and hit every light on the way there so I’m about 15 minutes late. We start, everything gets fixed, I get a trim, layers and my curtain bangs fixed. I’m happy, then it comes time to leave and she charges me $60. I pay it and head to work.
I guess my problem is that the first appointment was $123 for 1 hour even though her hourly rate is between $55-$75 depending on the service, and that I was charged $60 for an appointment to correct a mistake made on my hair. Maybe I’m just asking who’s in the wrong, and what I should do in this situation? It’s very hard for me to find someone I trust with my hair so I don’t want to try to find a different stylist if I don’t have to, but this whole situation rubbed me the wrong way. I’m just trying to get some other opinions. TIA 🫶🏻
Edit to add: She has an hourly rate, so she doesn’t go by how much/how little product was use or what services were done. Her base hourly rate is $55, and for more complicated services like extensions and stuff like that it’s $75.
2nd edit: Just to clear up some confusion, it was not just a cut during the 2nd appointment, she also fixed the parts of my hair where the gloss did not take and the haircut was just what we couldn’t do at the 1st appointment. I also did not choose to schedule a hair appointment on a day where I had to work. I get my schedule for the week every Saturday, and I had my appointment booked out a month in advance. I work at a small business (5 employees total including me) and it just so happened that the same day of my appointment, everyone else couldn’t work (2nd job, childcare, sick etc) so I was the only one that could work and it was an open-close shift.