“Spa Day For Two With Two 60 Minute Treatments Each Plus Lunch for £49 at J2A (£190 Value)”. I purchased two of these deals (£98 total) as a gift for myself and three of my friends and we had very much been looking forward to a pamper day.
I phoned the salon the day before to confirm our appointment and to find out what treatments we could have. They requested we attend earlier so the time was arranged to 1pm (which wasn’t a problem). I was advised that we could have a choice of manicure/pedicure, and a massage / head massage with blow dry / facial, and that we could decide when we arrived at the salon. They also confirmed we’d be provided lunch.
When we arrived, we were shocked to see the “Spa” was in fact a hairdressing salon in a terrace house right next door to a Hollands Pie factory. We were then taken through the all but empty salon and up two flights of threadbare, very steep stairs to a room on the top floor, which could only be described as an attic. It was dirty and cluttered and there was only enough space for two to be seated, so two of us had to sit on the floor (which had clearly not seen a vaccum cleaner in a while) whilst we waited. For an hour. We were left upstairs with no offer of drink/refreshments, or even someone popping back up to check on us. After about half an hour, I went back downstairs to find out what the delay was, and I was promised that it wouldn’t be much longer. We waited another half an hour. There was clearly a problem, and the staff seemed to be struggling figuring out what to do with us. There is no excuse for this, we didn’t turn up unannounced, and they’d requested we arrive earlier, so you would expect them to be ready and prepared for our arrival.
When we were finally called downstairs, two of us were to have a manicure or pedicure in one treatment room, and two of us were offered a massage in the second treatment room. At this point I mentioned that we were told that we could have a head massage and a blow dry, and I was then told that this wouldn’t be available as the salon downstairs was fully booked (it was empty). I was annoyed about this, as it was only the day before the manager had told us that this would be available and it wouldn’t be a problem. I had a massage first, and we had to ask at this point if we could have a drink, and begrudgingly we were provided with a glass of water. The towels provided were damp and smelly.
The massage was the worst massage I’d ever had. Basically, a girl sat on a chair in front of me and half-heartedly rubbed a bit at my shoulders for 15 minutes. We were then offered a facial. I have no idea what was being put on my face, as everything was conducted with complete silence. We were then left for 20 minutes with whatever it was they had put on our faces. Unfortunately I had a burning reaction to the face pack put on my face, and my face ended up very sore, red and swollen for a good few hours afterwards.
At this point our two friends that were having the manicure / pedicure came and found us and told us that they’d had a pretty awful experience too. The girls carrying this out clearly hadn’t had any training whatsoever and had just hacked and sawed at their nails with a nail file, then offered them a choice of polish from a pile of nail varnish that was tipped onto the bed in the room. Unfortunately there was a very limited selection of cheap, nasty, gloop nail varnishes. They couldn’t even offer a French manicure as they only had gaudy colours like bright green, blue, purple, etc available.
We swapped around and my friends decided (sensibly!) to refuse the facial treatment after what had happened to my face! They had to request clean towels, as they were just left with our dirty towels to use. (The dirty towels were then left on the floor throughout the entire treatment for my friends)
We then went to have our pedicures. My friend still had some nail varnish on her toes. They had no cotton wool to use to remove the nail varnish, so had to keep going and getting toilet roll from the bathroom to remove the nail varnish. (When my friend asked “don’t you think it would be easier to remove the polish using cotton wool pads? ” she was informed that “the manager is off today so we can’t go and buy anything”). This obviously wasn’t working, so she proceeded to FILE OFF the nail varnish on my friends feet. The “Therapist” was sat crossed legged on the floor while violently filling off her nail polish, as there was not enough room in the treatment room to accommodate 2 customers and 2 therapists. She then just got up, said goodbye to the other girl working on me, and left, informing my friend that “She’ll finish you off in a bit”. So my friend just had to sit there and amuse herself until the girl working on me was finished presumably. Whilst they were doing the pedicure, they had a bowl of hot water for us to put our feet into, which was burning hot, so I had to ask them to put some cold water in. It also had some dried flowers floating in it, which we were suspicious came from the vase in the dirty bathroom that had some dead flowers with dirty stagnant water in it. The “Therapist” then spilt all of the water out of the bowl onto the floor – where electrical wires were in abundance, this then resulted in my friend (who was half treated and barefoot) having to relocate back up stairs to the cold dirty attic where she was informed her “treatment will be finished up here because of all the water”.
It became clear whilst the girl was carrying out my pedicure that she didn’t have a clue what she was doing. The Pedicure consisted of some foot soaking, a small amount of nail filing and the offer of gaudy nail varnish, there was no actual “Treatment” involved in this treatment. I chose not to have my pedicure finished as I didn’t want my nails painted in one of the array of disgusting colours available. I also think they were reusing / not cleaning equipment between treating people. At this point we had been there three hours, and we decided there was no need for them to finish our mani/pedis and we decided to go home, and pamper ourselves more successfully at home instead.
The facilities in the whole place were dirty and disgusting, and bordering on unsafe.
There was no offer of food or drinks. The only refreshments we received was a glass of water we’d had to ask for after we’d been there over an hour.
To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. What we received was in no way what was advertised by Groupon, and £100 is a lot of money to spend on something so shoddy.
Just to confirm, the “small print” on this offer stated that we would receive the following (with my comments):
• Two treatments up to combined value of £80 with max treatment time of 2 hours (I would be amazed if they could sell the shoddy treatments we received at that price! They clearly didn’t have a clue what they were doing.)
• Choice of hot stone massage, express seaweed facial, sea twist body wrap or reiki offered a massage, facial and manicure or pedicure – (we weren’t offered what had been agreed on the phone the day before.)
• Access to facilities such as sauna and sunbeds (not offered at all, I’m not even convinced they have these facilities)
• Lunch of sandwiches, fruit salad, cake and wine (no food was provided, a glass of water was provided after we requested a drink)
• Slippers and gown on arrival (not offered at all)
I would assume that Groupon would “vet” places first before offering these kind of deals, but clearly not. I would be amazed if any of the “therapists” there had any beauty qualifications and it’s really not safe to be massaging people / carrying out manicures/pedicures in unhygienic conditions, when you don’t have a clue what you are doing. There is clearly a high risk of injury/infection from doing this.
Very disappointing. Do not go to this "salon"
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