My experience with *company name redacted* @ Parklane Shopping Mall – anyone else?
TLDR: After your first visit, they will become unresponsive after you have signed a package with them. It was a war of attrition, but I managed to get a refund on my package.
** The below story is based on my experience, and I will try to be as objective as possible. There are too many specifics to be fully detailed, so I will try my best to provide a concise summary of the events.
Long story is:
I booked an appointment with them early in December to get my nails done as the photos on their IG looked good, and the price was definitely very affordable. After my visit, they told me they had a special year-end sale which was $250 for $500 store credits. Given that I had a very pleasant experience with them, I was happy to make the payment for this package they offered.
However, things were not great afterwards. Two weeks later, I first contacted them on Monday to give a feedback about my nail work and they did not reply me at all. Wednesday, I tried to make an appointment with them for end Dec and was also met with radio silence while they were still able to post IG stories. So, feeling rather suspicious, I went to google them and found out that they had an average of 1 star over 160 reviews, with most people stating either horrible experiences with their eyelash extension or nail work, and that after signing any packages, they were ignored and were not able to access their credits due to the silence from *company name redacted* end.
Feeling quite frustrated, I reached out to them both on Instagram and Whatsapp (using the number linked to their Paynow) regarding this and requested for a refund (which was originally promised by their technician, stating that if I decided not to use it I could get refunded). However, they chose to ignore me and I had no choice but to call them repeatedly to try and reach them.
It was then that the person on the other end told me they were ‘just a technician’ and this was a company phone. After some one-sided communication on my end, I decided to call them again in an attempt to get some answers. She then said she will check for me when she gets into the ‘office’ at 2pm – which I found really strange because their shop opens at 11am and surely she should just ask a colleague in the shop to check on my payment/package details (and I could easily have provided her screenshot proof of payment).
Then, lo-and-behold, at 2pm there was still total silence from them and they remained unresponsive to all my queries. So again, I called. This time after many calls, she told me she’s not in the ‘office’ yet and will get back to me by 3.45PM. So, I waited till 3.45PM to once again, as you guessed, call them since they were not updating me and were unresponsive to all my messages.
She then told me they will process the refund by closing time at 9.30PM – which honestly I found strange since Paynow literally takes less than 1 minute? Sooooooo, again I waited. Then I messaged at 8.30PM to check in on this and was again met with SILENCE. So, come 9PM, I made a final few calls only to find my audio calls couldn’t go through? So of course I did video call instead. Then after that they finally told me they were doing the transaction and refunded me $200 ($50 deducted for my first visit, which I was ok with since that was fair).
To summarize: They are extremely unresponsive after having paid for a package. After many attempts to reach them, I was able to get a refund. If you do a quick google search, you will realize that this incident I am sharing is not an isolated case. Please be very careful with any salons/retail businesses in general – especially those that sell packages.