Deplorable treatment

Recently I travelled to Brisbane, with my wife, to attend one of the most wonderful events of our lives, the marriage of our son to his beautiful bride.

As you can no doubt appreciate the lead up to a monumental event such as this is one of excitement and trepidation. There are extremely important things to consider as the parent’s of the groom, and some of those things are what to wear and, for my wife, how and where she will get her hair done.

My wife spent many hours excitedly scouring the internet looking at hair styles. Once that was decided upon there was the important decision about which hair salon to use. We have a Toni & Guy salon in our town and they are highly regarded. By chance there was a Toni & Guy salon (Fortitude Valley) right next to the Emporium Hotel, where we were staying.

On 13 March 2015, 11 weeks before the wedding, an appointment was made and discussions were held with staff about the importance of the event and the need to make sure everything was perfect on the day. It was made very clear to the staff the nature of the event for which her hair was being styled.

By change, the mother of the bride, also made a hair appointment at the same Toni & Guy salon. That is two hair stylings, the mother of the bride (9:00am) and the mother of the groom (9:45am), at the same salon on the morning of the wedding.

The day of the wedding arrived. At 8:59am we received a call from someone at Toni & Guy (a male) advising that they were not able to do the hair styling (The mother of the bride received a similar call). That is 46 minutes notice for us, the mother of the bride received about 5 minutes notice. The excuse given was that the girl who was doing the hair had called in sick.

The advice was that they were busy, and were sure that they could not fit my wife in given the staff shortage, but if she wanted to go and wait they would see what could be done, but doubtful and no guarantees. There was no one las able to do the job.

You can imagine how devastated my wife was. A wedding at 1:00pm and now a cancelled hair appointment. Thankfully after a few anxious phone calls my wife secured an appointment at a nearby salon, BDB, and the immediate crisis was averted.

As to Toni & Guy. I understand that there are issues created when a staff member calls in sick. But they had no contingency plan, no one else able to do the job, especially given the importance of the events being attended by their clients.

They had informed my wife that they were going to be busy. When we walked past the salon on our way to BDB there were only staff members standing around - no clients. About 10 minutes later I walked back past and there were still no clients, just a couple of staff standing behind the till talking. Later when my wife returned she saw that there were no clients. When we later left for the wedding we again saw that there were no clients in the salon.

Frankly I think that the way we were treated was deplorable. It was certainly unprofessional for a business such as this to not have any contingency plan in place. It certainly did not appear that they were busy, as claimed.

At the very least there could have been some genuine effort to recognise the lead time of the booking, the importance of the event and the distance travelled. There could have been some genuine attempt to resolve the issue, such as trying to make an appointment with another reputable and nearby salon. But there was nothing, just a fob-off. How nice would it have been to be told ‘Sorry but we are unable to do you hair this morning because….but we have managed to make an alternate appointment at … salon. It is nearby and we are confident that they will look after your needs. We do apologise for any inconvenience.’ Instead all we got was ‘too bad, too sad.’

We would certainly not recommend this salon to anyone, especially if you have an important engagement pending.