Caroline K.
Yelp
I had been coming to this shop regularly for facials since last summer, but after a very bad experience recently I will not be returning. Some of the estheticians are amazing (Melani, Hilary) and most are passable. Week before last my regular esthetician was out town so I was paired with Danielle, and it was a horrible experience. I asked her to review my records and use only the products that had been used by my regular person, which includes using only oils and no creams, because I have very dry skin. Danielle decided to use a cream on my face anyway, and it immediately gave me an uncomfortable, stinging feeling. I asked her to take the cream off of my skin because it hurt, and instead she piled a lot of oil on top. I kept asking her to take it off because it hurt and she said not to worry it's fine. After several minutes I had to grab a towel out of her hand, sit up and wipe it off myself.
From there it only got worse. Danielle then proceeded to do extractions without warming the skin first. She put cold and room temperature towels on my face, and when I asked her to use a hot towel to prepare the skin, she told me that actually skin never needs to be warmed up before extractions. I told her that I didn't think that was correct, and could she please use a hot towel. She refused. The extractions were so painful, and left red marks on my skin. During the extractions she had her finger up my nose, and when I asked her to take it out she said that sometimes you just have to put your finger up a clients nose to be able to do extractions. When she worked on my chin, she tried to put a finger in my mouth. Obviously this is really disgusting and unnecessary. She also tried to do an extraction on the super delicate skin under my eye, which resulted in a red spot that persisted for several days, which I later found out from my dermatologist was a broken blood vessel. I left with dryer, duller skin than I had come in with, and had to follow up with my dermatologist. Usually extractions are really fast and easy for me because my skin is dry and not prone to any kind of break outs.
The whole experience was awful, working with management to try and get it resolved was even worse. They begged me to come back in that evening to try and fix the issue. This time I was paired with Alex who is the manager of this location. Alex had an attitude the entire time I was there, and at no time actually seemed to care about what had happened. She let me know she was doing me a huge favor by giving me another facial that evening. In my opinion, trying to mitigate the damage her poorly trained employee did to my face was the least she could do, not a favor. Ultimately I had to speak to three different managers and make about six or seven requests for the service to be refunded before someone actually responded and put the refund through.
There are too many great spas in NYC to get facials to bother with one where some of the estheticians are really poorly trained and the management is rude.