21/05/2026
How bad of an experience is this??? Am I dramatic??
***First photo is the reference photo I showed her. The other three are what I left with***
After looking at some other posts on this thread about negative Ulta Salon experiences, I feel like I’ve gotten lucky so far. I’ve been several times previously and have had great experiences, and a few of my friends have selects stylists they see there as well. Anyway, this most recent experience seems to be different.
My husband wanted to book me a surprise salon appointment for my first Mother’s Day as a gift (I hadn’t had my hair done in a while since we just had a baby a few months ago). My regular stylist was booked so, I told him to just choose who was available for that day, as I’ve only had good experiences at this Ulta location. We booked a full highlight/balayage service and signature haircut which quoted me around 230, give or take. I made the appointment for 10:30 so I would be done around 1:30-2:30 at the latest and still be able to come home and spend time with the baby and husband.
I get to the appointment and another stylist greets me, i stated I had an appointment with (insert stylist name here). The stylist I booked with pops out from the sinks and says “sit down and I’ll be over in a minute” sooo I do that. Immediately, she starts complaining to me that she thought she would be leaving early today until she saw I booked an appointment (even though it had been booked for a week and confirmed the day prior). I apologized (should’ve left right at the point) and told her it was a gift from my husband for Mother’s Day. She does a quick consult with me where I show her a reference photo (inserted) and just go over what I’m wanting - which was just a trim and some blonde through my ends blended with my natural root color. Just something to freshen my hair up, look natural, and get some blonde throughout. She comes back to give me a sticky note that has a full highlight, signature haircut, gloss, and Olaplex treatment and quotes me $349. I mention my budget was around 250 or so and no gloss or treatment was needed, just the toner that was included. She stated that I had to have these items to achieve the look I wanted. She gave me the option of a partial highlight instead, which was $328. I just told her to go ahead with the full highlight since I wanted the color throughout. (Second chance I had to leave that i should’ve taken).
I’ll spare the drab details but, long story short - I was there until almost 4:30 (SIX HOURS!) and left with chunky highlights that are boldly different from the base color she used. I’ve never had ANY appointment take this long and I’ve asked for the same thing from multiple salons before. It took so long she had to wash the color out of the foils in the back and sent me back to sit down and process another 30 minutes on the sides which resulted in having hair color and bleach dripping down my neck and blotching the bleached hair that was still in foil.
The entire time I was there she was trauma-dumping on me about how she didn’t have a car and has no money, her daughter started stripping at the local strip club and is addicted to co***ne, her daughter is taking her abusive baby daddy to court and he’s lucky she doesn’t “bash his head in with a hammer”. And just more wildly inappropriate information about her family, friends, clients and everyone in the tri-state area it seemed like. Mind you, THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IVE EVER MET THIS WOMAN. She, at one point, went on a tangent about how a long-term customer of hers complained on about her services and never came back after requesting someone else to fix her hair and was name-calling the customer (it was too late to leave at this point since I had color in my hair). So I just said “yes it looks good!” when the service was completed so I could get the heck out of there!!! Once I got home I realized it was a lot worse than I originally thought. And I ended up spending $398.00 after a $40 tip. Am I being dramatic???? Would you be pleased with this experience for $400.00 on what was supposed to be an easy relaxing day? I hate to complain and be confrontational but I am so upset over this entire experience! Please give me advice on what to do and if I’m being dramatic about this. I just hate the way it looks!
