Is it possible to find laser hair removal centers that guarantees (or money back) the permanency? If not, why?
I heard once that one hair removal center offered free “maintenance” sessions and went out of business.
I doubt any clinic would offer that guarantee. The simple reason is because your body will always produce hair, hormones control how much hair grows. So a male who’s 20 years old and has say a chest hair treatment done, will probably have more hair when they’re 30 since men for example develop hair into their 30s. It’s not the old hair growing back, it’s your body producing new hair. So that’s why you can’t guarantee someone being smooth forever, since their body may still produce new hair. I’ve seen clinics though offer discounts like 50% off after so many sessions for those “maintenance” sessions. I can’t see anyone offering free maintenance, because what would determine how often they can go?
More than one has.
More typical, however, is that the guarantee is limited in a way that you only get a certain amount of “free” treatment, or for only a certain amount of time. Also, what frequently happens is, if the place doesn’t go out of business, they come under “new management” and the new management doesn’t honor the previous management’s contracts. (some have done this even though there was no actual turn over in the business, just a new corporate identity listed as new owner)
When LASER was first cleared and the first machines rolled out, a friend of mine bought some, and offered treatments. After giving free treatments to honor his own guarantee, he finally offered to switch those people who paid for the LASER work with electrolysis AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE and lost thousands of dollars on the deal. But at least he slept well at night as a man of his word. You are a good man Fino Gior.
Well, they could offer the guarantee for men after the age of 35, or to women… If laser is really permanent, they wouldn’t have to worry about how many times someone would go. They would just calculate the average. Say the AVERAGE person needs 7 sessions, and some people need to come back a few more times. Everyone who gets the guarantee is charged for the cost of 7 sessions plus the COST that is calculated in advance for the special cases where someone needs more than 7. It makes COMPLETE sense economically to offer this.
It doesn’t really. Men after 35 might develop new hair that’s gray, laser can’t target that or hit that. You’re assuming people want to buy a package, many don’t, like myself. I’d much rather pay per treatment. What if it doesn’t work? Everyone’s skin is different. There’s just too much involved with laser to offer a guarantee. I don’t think even an electrologist would offer a guarantee since hair can come back… The thing you have to remember is that after your 7 sessions or so when all the hair is gone, you wouldn’t need to go back for more sessions unless they treated you wrong or your body develops new hair, with the new hair being more likely.
I agree that there are too many factors to offer a full 100% guarantee. But for the record, my clinic offers free maintenance for anything that grows back within a certain period after my package ends. At least, that’s what I was told orally, and I won’t hold my breath if they wiggle out of that promise. They won’t offer me maintenance multiple years into the future because at that point the hair would be new growth, but she implied they will do touch ups for a while anyway.
edokid and MagicalPrincessKitty:
I’m afraid you haven’t grasped the concept of how guarantees work profitably for companies.
It’s just like guarantees for products. You can buy a machine with a 2 year guarantee, or a 5 year one, or a lifetime guarantee, or you can choose not to buy the guarantee. A company wouldn’t loose money by offering a package. Nothing would force you to buy the guaranee package, and the center would therefore not loose any money from you.
edokid: you ask “what if it doesn’t work?” That’s a moot point. A company doesn’t decide to not offer a guarantee because there is a chance that some customer’s product will break. In fact, companies know beforehand that some of their products will break and have to be replaced.
Carpet, please call me at 212-750-2000 to discuss your case.
Yes but buying a machine is completely different, a machine is mechanical and can be fixed easily any time. You can’t compare that to your body. The point is as mentioned before your body will produce new hair so you can’t give a guarantee of any kind. What would that guarantee be, that you’ll be 100% smooth with no hair coming back? You can’t get 100% hair removal with laser so not really sure what you would want.
No one will offer you a guarantee that will actually last a lifetime and if they do, they’ll go out of business as soon as they’re treating more patients for free than for money.
You’re not understanding the main point - that it’s impossible for anyone to prove which hair is “NEW” and which hair “REGREW” since it all looks the same.
The causes of the hair growth that any one person has are so varied and so many things can affect it throughout your life, that it’s impossible to guarantee anything. For example, say a clinic offers a woman a guarantee that nothing will grow back. Then she gets pregnant and has a baby and has a lot of new growth due to hormonal changes. She can very easily hide it from the clinic and just go back and tell them that everything grew back and now she needs free treatments. Meanwhile, it’s not the clinic’s fault that she has hair again.
This is a clear-cut example. The majority of cases won’t be because there are way too many potential things that can cause the body to produce hair (either continue producing or start producing new hair), many of them that the client doesn’t even know about (they just want it gone). The clinics can’t be held responsible for them.
My advice to someone who wants a guarantee for LHR is not to do it, because it can’t be guaranteed no matter what the clinic tells you to sell the package. They can “guarantee” to try their best to kill the hair that’s currently there. Unfortunately, there is so far no way to tell what hair is NEW and what hair is REGROWTH. It all looks the same.
So far the places I’ve seen that offer any kind of discount after X amount of treatments usually charge way more on their first sessions.
I prefer to charge a fixed reasonable/low price and leave the “guarantee” or “maintenance” market to other clinics.
LAgirl: What you are admitting is, that MOST people will grow back hair on their treated area. NOT a small percent! Forget about free treatments for a minute. If it were a small minority of people with hair growing back, a MONEYBACK GUARANTEE could be offered to them. So what is your explaination here? Why can’t hair removal centers profitably function and offer money back guarantees for people who grow hair back on their treated areas (for WHATEVER reason). Is it possibly because it’s not a small percent of people? Do you dare say that MOST people will grow back (old OR NEW) hair?
Romeo, I don’t live anywhere near New York City anymore. Should I call anyway?
Yes, this way I can pull your chart and see what is happening. Please call and give your name to the front desk and tell them that you were a client with us.
No, LAgirl is saying that many people will grow new hair, and then assume it’s the old hair and make the clinic retreat them. This can happen with electrolysis as well. It has nothing to do with the limitations of laser. Will more than a small percentage of people have this problem? Quite possibly. Does it have ANYTHING to do with the failure of the laser (assuming the settings were good ones)? Nope. New hair can’t be killed before it even exists yet, no matter how awesome the hair removal technique is. Lasers are powerful, but they can’t time travel into the future and kill hair that you haven’t even started growing, unfortunately.
MagicalPrincessKitty: Why can’t laser hair removal centers offer a money back guarantee that hair will not grow back on treated areas (regardless of the new hairs being the result of hormonal influences on “dormant” follicles, or incapable of being prevented by the laser)?
You claim that this could not be done and have not given a very good explaination as to why.
I could offer you that, but then i will have to take into account that people will claim that anything they see is a regrowth and ask to do the area again, which means i will probably have to charge 3 times more than i do now.
It’s kinda like car insurance, why in Israel car insurance cost 1/5th? The cost of the claims are much lower.
I never claimed it couldn’t be done, sir. I just said the guarantee would be difficult if it were a lifetime guarantee. And I stated my reasons. They cannot do it because too many people who have NEW growth will demand extra treatments (clinics cannot treat new hair growth for free, that is horribly unfair and selfish to expect them too, and I am not immoral so I have no intention of endorsing ripping off a small business just to weasel out of paying).
This answers your questions as to why not. It is not wise (from a business sense) to offer people unlimited free treatment on all their future hair growth, because that growth is not under your control. Most people grow hair throughout their lives, and the laser clinic should not have to ever take responsibility for that.
If I misunderstand your question, then please rephrase it for me, because the “why can’t they offer guarantees” questions has been answered, I don’t know what other information you are hoping to hear.
What I’ve been saying is “money back guarantee”. If this was offered to clients, they wouldn’t be able to demand any extra treatments. money back guarantee, money back guarantee, money back guarantee … do you understand? They would simply get their money back if hair grew back on their treated areas.
What’s the difference between money back and extra treatments? There is a reason why it’s called permanent hair reduction now, because it ain’t going to work on all hair. So according to you if you get 90% reduction or even 80% and the rest of the hair which cannot be treated with laser grows back, you want your money back? That doesn’t make sense.
You give money back when it’s things you can control.
Ill give you an example, I offer a new service for body contouring called the Zerona. I know that it works on ~95% of the people i think it should work on. So i can give them money back guarantee because i know it will work on 95% of the people, and the 1 person every 20 or so clients wouldn’t kill me because saying money back will give me many more clients.