I have had a few crazies. One situation that comes to mind was a regular client of mine who I usually did an all-over color, and highlights on. She was  about 75% grey, therefore the reason I was doing her base-color as well as highlights- to sufficiently cover the grey. After doing that a few times, she told me that service was getting to expensive for her. We talked, and came up with a plan to only do her base color every other time, to help lessen the cost for her. I let her know that the grey would not be completely covered, but we could blend it enough, until her next visit. So we started doing this, and it seemed to be a good compromise.

Well, my brilliant owner than decides to put on our brochures and website that we now have a "2 week guarantee"-meaning that if you were unhappy with your service, you could come back into our salon in 2 weeks time and get it done for free. They pretty much advertised that. So, one day I get a call from above client, saying she felt like I "missed" some of her hair when I did her last highlight.  ( It was a time I did just a highlight and not the highlight and color.) Although it had been 3 1/2 weeks, the salon owner tells her to come in and that I would fix her hair, free of charge!

When she came in, I started looking at her hair. She said that it looked like I missed spots IN THE BACK of her head. ( How could she see the back of her head?) First, I explained to her that highlights don't cover every hair, and of course there is going to be some pieces that were not highlighted. The owner turns to me and says, well she is too gray, she should be receiving an all-over color as well. I told my owner that I know that, but we had changed how we were approaching her color per my client's request to save some money. Also, after 3 1/2 weeks, hair does tend to grow, so she had REGROWTH. Which was the biggest reason she was seeing grey. I also pointed this out to my owner. I felt like this client was definitely taking advantage of us. The salon owner still made me do her WHOLE COLOR over ( base color AND highlights) completely free. Very frustrating. But I did it. And the client was happy. This client still comes to me, even when I switched salons, but I told her that I will no longer only do a highlight on her.

Here's the clencher though- this client had sent me her best friend whose hair I had also started doing. Well after I did the above clients redo, guess who called me the NEXT DAY to get a redo? Her best friend. And this one made it in the 2 week deadline, so again I was pretty much forced to do it, regardless of the situation.

I knew that both clients were trying to get a service done for free, and I tried to explain the situation to the owners, but they refused to listen. They tried to put a policy in place, but then didn't follow it.

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It is hard to say how to handle these situations. They all have to be assessed on an individual basis. But I say come up with a policy on how you plan to handle these things, and STICK TO IT!

If I've made a mistake or a color is not up to my personal standards than I will offer a re-do at the point of service.  However,   redo's drive me nuts! nuts! nuts! when then are not warranted.

An example I have is that a woman came in *5 weeks* after a color service to let me know that the color had faded and that she saw the return of grey after just a few days.  So why not come in a few days?  Why wait 5 weeks?  Salon policy is that we do re-dos.  So I re-did despite feeling like I was taken advantage of...I mean really, 5 weeks?! Talk about re-growth of course you see grey :) 

It's all about salon policy or personal limits.   If you don't have a salon policy then you're lucky as you can define your own!