As a newcomer to Denver, I tried out Star Salon for a cut and dye—little did I know how awful an experience it would be.
After botching the dye job and giving a less than satisfactory cut, Karen Mealy (the owner, no less) admitted that she didn't really know what she was doing. Precisely what you want to hear after forking over $100, to be sure.
That day, I was charged for the services. Two days afterwards, I happened to look at my online bank statement and noticed that I had been charged again that day by the salon. The charge appeared under Karen Mealy's name—bad sign number one—and was for the highest whole dollar amount possible. Yup, she wiped out my checking account! Fortunately, she was kind enough to leave me $0.83 to deal with my automatic payments.
My bank suggested attempting to deal with the salon directly. Over the course of an entire afternoon, I phoned three separate times, only to be told each time by the receptionist that Karen was "busy" and couldn't speak with me. All three times the nature of the calls were made clear, so Mealy knew why I was on the phone.
During the third conversation I asked the receptionist whether she thought Karen Mealy should speak to me, if only out of decency for a paying customer. She agreed with me and put me on hold to go ask Karen if she could spare a moment. Apparently, she couldn't be bothered as the receptionist informed me that Mealy was too busy to stop for a minute.
Exasperating? Absolutely. An isolated incident? Apparently not!
When this happened to me, I mentioned it to a Denverite friend only to find that—lo and behold—on her first trip to Star Salon the same thing happened to her! Except her card was charged THREE SEPARATE TIMES!
Cleary there is a lot of credit card fraud being perpetrated by Karen Mealy and the Star Salon. I'm just glad I noticed before it was too late.
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