should you pay full price if you only receive half the service?

Question

an acquaintance (we'll call her m) owns a hair and beauty salon and is currently pregnant. she made a post on Facebook ranting because a customer made a complaint after a spa day, m couldn't use products for most of the services she offers because of her pregnancy (hair dye, massage oils, manicure, etc) it took her half the time of a usual appointment and didn't have the usual professional look. M charged the customer full price which the customer wasn't happy with. would/should you pay full price if you only receive half the service offered?

Accepted Answer

No. And I think she should have told the customer when booking the appointment.

Answer

No. From what you’ve said the most professional way to handle it would be to send the customer a refund and apology, not blast it all over Facebook.

Answer

M needs to talk to her doctor. As long as her pregnancy is healthy and she takes precautions (gloves, face mask, ventilation, etc), she can use hair dye and do manicures. There’s safe brands of massage oil blends out there or she could make her own. Really the only thing I can think of that a stylist wouldn’t be able to use is the chemicals used for a Brazilian blow out/relaxers/perm.
As for this issue:
1- a business owner should NEVER trash her customers online. That’s so unprofessional and gross. 
2- if she didn’t provide the service, she shouldn’t charge for it. She needs to either find alternative products safe for pregnancy, hire temp help who can offer these services, or lower her prices and inform customers upon booking that there are certain services that she is unable to offer at this time.

Answer

Offering a service and then not being able to provide the full services is false advertising.

Answer

I wouldn't, not in that kind of situation. If M can't use her products because of being pregnant, than she should either hire extra help who can use them, or find products, if possible, that she CAN use. otherwise, she should lower her rates if she can't offer the usual or comparable product. However, if she's informing her clients that she can't use certain products and what not, and the client still chooses to go to her instead of looking elsewhere, I kind of fell like, if you knew, it was your choice to continue going there, so you're paying the price. But I still don't think it's fair of her to give less than usual service, fully aware that she won't be, and expecting full charge.

Answer

You can still use hair dye when pregnant ......

Answer

Hell no. How is she going to charge full price when she didn’t do the full service?? That’s common sense so I don’t see how she felt right to bash a costumer with a valid complaint.

Answer

If you own a business don't trash clients online like that, I wouldn't go to a salon if the owner posted call out posts like that. 
She was wrong should have charged for what was done but client should have asked ahead of time if services could be broken down.

Answer

Why would you book a spa day if you can't use half the services?  That is the pregnant persons fault.  and you can do all those services pregnant

Answer

Would you pay full price for a meal at a restaurant if half of your food was gone by the time it got to you? No. And this is the same situation. I’ve had a pregnant hair stylist before and she had coworkers help her out with things she couldn’t do, like wash hair cause her belly was too big, she didn’t simply not do what the customer paid for and expect to get the money anyway.

should you pay full price if you only receive half the service?

Let’s Glow

Glow is here for you on your path to pregnancy

25+ million

4.8 stars

20+

Getting Pregnant

Pregnancy

1st Year (Baby & You)

Baby Products