Avriel H.
Yelp
Do NOT believe the hype about this salon.
To her credit she was kind and spent time, and worked hard. I'll give her that.
But she does not know what she is doing with hair color, made things ten times worse than they were when I came to her in distress, did things she admittedly did not need to do which jacked up the cost of the treatment, and painted my hair a metallic orange that is so disgusting other salons laughed at it and called it a crime (given the natural strawberry blond color I aiming for). She left my hair with multiple striped shades of copper, brass, yellow (she called that gold), and didn't even do the roots enough to be concealed. The top of my head looks like someone took paint to it, like the cap of a metallic orange iphone case, and she called this beautiful. I know it may sound like I have an axe to grind, but I kind of do. The salon she works for insisted I pay for the service a whopping 500, even though I was unhappy (and anyone would be) and they acknowledged the orange problem, and despite the fact that the only reason she stopped coloring is that she said more work would do damage and she had to finish later. In other words, the work was not completed. The salon doesn't seem to understand that when a customer's hair is damaged they do not think it wise to go back to the person who damaged it, and refused to refund my money saying they had completed the service. That is the equivalent of a surgeon not completing surgery, botching it in the middle, charging you for it, and then saying he will keep the money and suggests you come back for more work. I dont wanna lose another kidney, thank you.
I came to her asking her to take out stripes a colorist had put in and make a natural look possible. I showed her a picture to give her an idea of my natural strawberry blond color. She put more streaks and stripes in. Her approach was obviously to up-color those stripes and add more to conceal them -- but all she had to do was color that lighter stripes darker and match the whole head (I found out later). Instead she gave me an entire head of stripes. In multi-color madness that looks fake and sickening.
She also didn't make sure before she added color that it would go on to my hair correctly. A good colorist would have done a test strand.
In addition, the prices she advertises are not the prices she gives. The salon seemed to gloat when I mentioned that and they said, "we do not advertise our prices" -- and because of the funky arrangement between them where she works with them (two businesses in one) -- they claim she is responsible for pricing, and claims they are responsible. It is the perfect set up.
But back to the hair... Which is what matters most, because I don't want other people to go through what I went through. It will now take me four years to grow this out and hundreds of dollars to get it fixed and hundreds to get it maintained. It is so complicated a mess up -- resulting from someone taking repeated stabs in the dark without a proper strategy -- that other hairdressers are actually baffled as to how any correction can be done, and certain things they just cant fix.
When I complained to ann-marie about the stripes all she said was, don't look at the individual strands, look at the whole thing... but anyone looking at my hair is annoyingly staring at the strands that cannot be avoided because they are so mismatched and obviously colored and colored badly. When I contacted her later begging her for help and asking her if I wash it out, she said, "dont do anything to damage the work I have done." She said that I had wasted her time and refused to help me because she said I lied about my natural color (which everyone in my family and professional field would prove her wrong about) -- and was insulting. She took more interest in the fact that she had done time-consuming work (even though she admitted she didn't need to do all of that), than my satisfaction as a customer.
I think Ann Marie is extremely knowledgeable. I think she tries hard. I think she cares. I think it is remarkable how accessible she makes herself (when she likes you). But I also think that she clearly was not careful to make sure that she did not take steps that would do more damage -- and when she did the damage, she should have carefully analyzed what to do next and what she did wrong. She never should have charged me for work I was so unhappy with. She should have offered suggestions about how to fix it. But most importantly she never should have done it. I didn't need foiling (I found out later), just a simple glaze. I didn't need three layers of color, just the right one. Again, other salons called it a crime. And I cannot in good conscience, despite her knowledge and experience, recommend her to anyone.
