Tuesday, May 6, 2008

What Would You Expect to Happen?

What's a girl to do?

A client came in yesterday and got her hair cut. She is not a frequent client. Apparently, I cut her hair the last time and she meant to have me do it again, but couldn't remember my name and ended up with a different stylist in my salon. Now, I back up all my stylists. We are all at various stages of skill, but if you come into my salon, I'm confident that you will get a good cut no matter which stylist you see. We don't all cut exactly the same, because we are all artists and all have a different style in our craft.

So, this girl calls me later in the day and says she's not happy with her hair cut would I cut it for her?

No problem. I firmly believe in making it right.

Here's the quandary.

Do I charge her for a haircut that she just paid for once and wasn't happy with? I didn't do that haircut. If she went to another salon in town, she would have to pay another stylist to redo the cut.

However, since it is my salon, should I honor the fact that she wasn't happy with the finished product and to honor the integrity of my salon, should I fix it for free? I'm leaning to that for the client's sake, however, I'm out some time and money by doing that.

Do I "transfer" the payment? Since the other stylist did it and the client wasn't happy, do I pull the money that was paid to that stylist to pay me for fixing the work?

Do I let it go?

3 comments:

InTheFastLane said...

Personally, I would expect to have to pay again, because if I didn't like it the first time, I should have said something before I left.

However, it might be one of those things that you see what the client expects and if she is expecting not to pay, then you let it go, once. Hopefully the client wouldn't take advantage of that and start doing it all the time, though.

Jenny said...

I got my hair cut once at a place and it was horrible, and the lady who cut it, didn't hardly speak at all while she was cutting it.

When I got up to the counter the lady taking my money could tell I was not a happy camper.

The owner called later that day and said she would like for me to come in and let her try to fix it for free.

I did and loved it and have been going to there since. If she hadn't done it for free I would have went somewhere else and paid, but wouldn't have gone back to the salon.

I don't know how they handled it on their side though!
Jen

hepsmom said...

As a customer of a FABULOUS salon, I think that you should tell her that in the future, she should never leave the salon unsatisfied. The haircut is on you/the salon. Additionally, the stylist should make sure that she asks for feedback prior to the customer's departure. If it was a total blindside of haircut hate, then there's really nothing that could have been done.