Am I getting a Deal or am I being Scammed

Hair Removal Methods Professional Electrolysis
#1

To all the practitioners here, please tell me what ou think this guy’s intentions are:

I have been going to an electrologist for a little over a year. He has over 30 years of experience, and is very reputable here in the city. However, I can’t help but feel that he is not as fast as he should be.

In that year he has only cleared the few hairs on my chin, neck, sideburns, nipples, and chest bone. I feel that they should have died a while back considering at first I was doing 5 hours a week most weeks. In total i’ve been through 85 hours of electrolysis, and now i can say that i see results on those areas.

My questions is:
1 -Does it sound to you like he is not working as efficiently as he should be. From James’s comments about zapping a hair once or twice max, i get that feeling.

2- he is offering me a prepaid package now fro the next 158 hours (3 years of one hour a week) for only $3,800. His regular hours are $60.

I can’t decide if i should do it b/c i am worried that he will just take his time and not really get the hairs b/c he knows he has me locked in for all those hours?

What do you guys think of this?

thanks,
eve

#2

Since I don’t know what the realities of working on you are, nor how your appointments have been spaced out, I can’t comment on the speed or the clearance times. What I can tell you is that if you are being offered a package deal, you really need only ask yourself, “am I reasonably sure that I will do enough hours to equal the regular price?” If so, then go for it. The electrologist doesn’t really gain all that much in giving you a discounted package deal. If anything, it frees YOU from thinking about money enough so you will just come in for as long as you need and as frequently as you should, instead of making your appointments with an eye towards when Pay Day is, and how much you plan to spend on Aunt Tilly’s Birthday Present.

If you have liked this person’s work enough to stick with it this long, I don’t understand why this would give you a moment’s pause.

Am I missing something?

#3

Well, i just feel that it’s SUCH a great deal, that i wonder what is his interest in offering that. I would be paying about $26/hour vs. $40/hour. And he already knows that i will go through with it and that i don’t have an issue with paying.

So it’s sounded a little fishy to me. I woudn’t want him to feel that since i have pre-paid he does not have to try hard every time, he can slack if he wants to b/c ither way i have paid for those 150+ hours.

NO?

Aside from that James, I’ve been meaning to ask you what you think about his technique. he uses a very short needle (I know it’s too short b/c of all the reading i have done on the topic here and also b/c i have my own machine at home and do electrolysis on myself on a few of the easy to reach areas) and I KNOW that the follicles are a lot deeper than his needle.
Does is sound to you like he purposefully does not kill the hairs fast to get people to come for more hours???

I don’t know why, but after a year, i feel like i should have had better results. that’s where all my bouts come from.

As always, your answers are so very important to us! Thank you for being here for us.

eve

#4

On the money, just think of it as a Wal-Mart Style Volume Discount. If electrolysis practitioners either had all their client/patients pre-paid, or never had any no show appointments, and filled the treatment hours they wanted to work all of the time, we could charge less for everyone.

What we do know at the beginning of every year, and month is what our fixed costs are, no matter if we see clients/patients or not. If a certain loyal core of clients were to pre-pay, they could get better prices (assuming the practitioner would offer such) and the practitioner could go ahead and either put that money in an investment, and or pay up those fixed costs, leaving the regular retail customers to show, or not show without it effecting the bottom line on the essentials.

Barbers have a saying, “You eat off the men, and snack off the women.” That is to say, there would be no business without the men, as they are the core customers who provide the barber with the money to make the business viable. Women, on he other hand, are infrequent and unreliable barbershop customers (it is the reverse for actual salons) and provide extra income that can’t really be counted on, but is a great bonus over the usual male based business.

As far as technique goes, I don’t know what your practitioner’s goals are, nor what theory of treatment is being employed. I would be worried if you had large hairs in large follicles, and the practitioner were using size 2 probes, but I really can’t tell what is going on here.

I just would not be so quick to think it was a ploy to work slow. Knowing the volume of work that you are looking to do, if you were my client, I might have made a similar offer to you just because I know you are going to be doing this for a while, and I would assume that you were planning to do it all with me.

Now, on the other hand. I must admit to being a bit of a “Pollyanna” and I believe the best in people until they prove me wrong about them. You are correct, if one were evil, this would be a great way to get a good chunk of money up front, and ride the bycicle for the rest of the year. I personally think it is better for people to say that they saw me for as short a time as possible, and got finished with what they were having done. I think it is a better advertisement for getting business that my people actually FINISH. If anyone works with me for 5 years, I want them to be talking about how we started with one part, and then moved to the next, and that went so well, they added another, and so on.

Thanks for the kind words, and by the way, it is good to have you back. You disappeared there for a while. Your input (and web pages) were missed.

#5

Hi Evelina:

That sounds like a good deal pricewise, compared to $60/hr. I agree with James about the advantages to him in getting his money up front and being able to invest it.

It does not sound like you are entirely pleased with his work however as to the speed of it.

I had some laser sessions on my face initially and switched over to electrolysis. I am currently at the 113 hour mark on that, and it now takes less than 1-1/2 hours to clear my entire face and neck. On the negative side, the hairs are now harder for her to see and remove so it takes her longer per hair.

For a while it seemed like progress was slow, but now I
can see a day when I will need minimal maintenance, or no further treatments. She says she will miss chatting with me
someday.

If you have concerns about the effectiveness or whatever with the treatment you are receiving then now is the time to discuss it with your practitioner. I recently asked mine to do some occasional blend rather than thermolysis and she
has done that.

Good luck!

Alicia

#6

Have you asked your electrologist about needle length and diameter and how large a selection he/she has to choose from and why a particular needle choice is being made for you? Since you have your own needles, bring one in and compare it to his/hers and ask questions about the differences.

Have you asked your electrologist about the total treatment time-frame and why some areas clear faster than others?

Do you feel comfortable directly addressing these issues with your electrologist?

Should you still feel the need to see if your practitioner is using the best needle size, you can do the following:

Have a treatment administered to an area with very fine hairs and during that same appointment, have a treatment done on an area where the hairs are very thick. If the practitioner does not change needles, question this immediately. Remember, the hair requires a needle that is close in matching its diameter.