After several issues Ive had with my treatments such as stimulated growth of darker hairs on my shoulders and neck, stripes of hairs and bold patches on my legs since last year and finally pepper spots which hadn’t shed, the manager of the laser centre has said they will no longer treat me as I’m a difficult customer and they prefer to deal with people who are happy from their treatments. Also the company had organised me 3 free treatments for my shoulders where the dark hairs had grown, I had also arranged with them on top of that I would pay for two additional treatments for my full arms at $200 each so my upper arms would end up with a total of 5 treatments while my lower arms had 2 but now since the disagreement they are claiming that the $200 dollars I have been paying for my arms were only for the lower arms below the elbow and that the 3 free treatments were being deducted from the treatments on the upper arms, they dont want to deal with me anymore so their trying to get rid of me quick as possible even if it means ripping me off in the process.
Are they allowed to do this? and what are my options here?
Okay so maybe Im not the easiest person to deal with, maybe Im a bit fussy and ask questions (mainly cause Ive had a lot of unlucky life experiences) before getting myself into things but every single one of the issues I had was because the operator failed to inform me of the outcome and now their blaming me for bringing them up as an issue. If someone had said to me from the start that treating neck and shoulder could stimulate the darker hairs and that treating missed patches later than usual could leave you with stripes and that I would neeed more than 2 treatments to remove dorment hairs on my shoulders and that lasers treatments can take longer to shed than ipls’ I would not have overreacted but now Im supposedly the bad guy not the staff who failed to inform me.
Before I got myself into this mess I informed them exactly that I could afford 3 treatment and asked wether this would cause any problems and they said everything would be fine but now theyve got my dollars their blaming me saying that the amount of treatments I did is responsible for the issues Ive faced when they knew exactly how many I was going to have.
Today the manager was very rude to me and said I should go elsewhere and said I had wasted the company’s time and money by asking them and consulting them about the concerns I had. They said they had given me a great deal on the treatment and tried to make me feel unapreciative of that fact. They been acting like as if their doing charity or volunteer work right from the start, so what if they gave me a good deal, its still a fair amount of money for some of us, is that really an excuse for them to treat me poorly?
I had an agreement to get my arms done but now they refuse to do it and Im going to be losing out on the agreemnt they had made.
Did you get any of this in writing? Does it say they are able to do this in the terms and conditions? Have you signed any waivers that free them of the responsibility of causing stimulated hair growth and any other associated problems?
This is why it is important to make sure that you get everything in writing, otherwise it’s your word against theirs. Have a look over everything you signed and all the paper work and see what they are capable of doing. If your unsure maybe getting some legal advice might help clear things up a bit.
No, unfortunately it was a verbal agreement and I have signed forms at the start but I cant remeber what was in it, i know I should have payed more attention.
Also the $200 their charging for my arms is written down in my file as Ive seen it. it says:
Arms $200
But now the manager is claiming it was just the lower arms that was $200 not the upper but the operator had arranged full arms for that price. If i go back now and ask them to bring out my file to prove that it says arms in there not upper or lower it will cause more conflict as I think their determined to call the deal off.
If it is a verbal agreement, in my opinion there is not much you can do but try to grab at the best you can get. If you want to pursue this issue of your arms you may want to speak to someone in the legal profession, however I am unable to tell you how much help that may be.
Unfortunatley it’s a little to late, but with anything like this you need to make sure you have it in writing.
I have no idea what laws are like in England, but here, a termination of services requires that it be in writing with a 30 day period to find someone to replace their services.
The big question, is do you really want to be zapped by someone who done not want to provide you with quality care.
They should have known that laser can stimulate hair growth on the shoulders. This is exactly what we are now going through with my son and his back! The hair is too fine (or vellous?). This hair should not be lasered. Sounds like they are trying to get rid of you because they messed up and don’t know how to fix it (just my opinion). Don’t know if there is any real solution to this problem. We are working on it with a doctor who authored a study on this phenomenon. Try googling “Paradoxical Hypertrichosis After Laser Epilation”. It is one study that I found on line. There are others too. I’ve spent many hours looking into this and some doctors hope they can fix the problem with a different, stronger laser. I hope so. Haven’t tried it yet.
I would like to pipe in here if it is OK. I’ve been traveling quite a bit and haven’t been on this website for several months. Sorry for not being as active. I would like to make two points.
The quality of the people you go to is important. Not just as to how well you are going to respond but to the issue of what they do with you if you are not responding. And no matter how good you are, there will be people for one reason or another who don’t respond. If what you are saying about this company is true (not willing to treat you anymore) then you should publish their name and other people should be wary of them. There are a few clients who deserve to be abandoned because of being abusive, but they are the rare exception. One should never abandon a client just because they are having poor results and the client has the perfect right to voice dissatisfaction. I would like to go to point #2 and then come back to this point.
Excessive hair growth or failure to respond. Using good lasers with good technique and settings, these are relatively uncommon. But they do occur. People are different and some just take more effort than others. In very rare situations, they can’t be treated by a laser (though they may not respond to diodes or IPLs). But what these clients require is a fundamental understanding of what is happening and how to treat. And more importantly, an understanding that it will often take many many treatments more than one expected to get to an acceptable endpoint. Electrolysis is always an option and in some cases may be a better option at a point, but even in these difficult situations laser is a viable option most of the time, assuming one knows what they are doing. The important point is that it will take many treatments, often many more than anyone expected or planned on purchasing. Now back to point #1.
Part of what makes a good company is what they do when they are confronted by clients who need far more treatments than was originally expected. I can’t say what other people should do but I can say what we do. First, we evaluate the client individually and determine what we think is causing the failure to achieve success. Sometimes it is obvious and sometimes it is not. But we have protocols for dealing with these situations that we use to guide future treatments. Second, we believe that at a point in time when the client has had a number of treatments for which they have paid and they are not getting good results, that it becomes our responsibility to get to them to those results at our cost. In other words, we stop charging our clients for treatments and treat them for free. At any one time, we probably have several hundred clients who are receiving free treatments but I consider that the same as warranty work. In most cases it is our fault that they haven’t had good results and even if it isn’t our fault, it is still our responsibility.
The point is not that we are so wonderful. The point is that all businesses that do laser hair removal should have a similar philosophy, if they truly care about giving the client value rather than just making money.