A beautician has spoken out about a client who cancelled her appointment 15 minutes before she was meant to be there before making an ‘entitled’ demand.
The woman not only decided not to show up at short notice – she also tried to insist on keeping her deposit so she could put it towards another treatment. When the technician said she couldn’t do that but would be able to rebook on her website, the client was not pleased.
Appearing on the Beauty Growth Academy podcast, Alysha Bradley relayed the exchange between the client and beauty therapist, and people were gobsmacked by the customer’s nerve.
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The client said she wouldn’t be able to make her appointment, but she didn’t want to lose her deposit, so she asked whether she could come in “next week” as an alternative.
Alysha explained that the cancellation came “15 minutes before she was due to come for her one-hour appointment,” and the beautician thanked her for letting her know she wouldn’t be able to attend, but as per her booking policy, she would be “unable to move” the appointment as she cancelled with less than 48 hours’ notice.
“To rebook your appointment, please use the booking link on my website. Hope everything is okay,” she finished the text by writing.
The client then said that she couldn’t “help that something has come up,” asking once more to just “move” her appointment so she didn’t have to pay another £20 deposit. “Money is tight for me at the moment, and I’ve been coming to you for ages now! Surely you can understand,” she said.
But the technician was having none of it, explaining that while she understands things happen, she now has a “one-hour gap in the diary,” and because her client had given such short notice, she wasn’t able to “fill” that space. She said she was happy for the client to come next week, but she’d have to rebook through her website, reiterating that she hoped that everything was okay.
Things then started to get heated, with the client labelling the situation as a “joke” and seething that she was paying her beautician to just sit there and “do nothing for the next hour.” She then threatened not to return to her if she wouldn’t move her appointment, saying she’d been a “loyal client” and she’d “never had to move an appointment like this before.”
But the beautician stood firm, explaining to the client that her business is her “only source of income.” She then explained she would be losing £35 of the £55 price of the treatment as a result of the cancellation, leaving her with only the deposit.
She also told the client that in the last six months, she’d changed her appointment at the last minute four times, saying she “cannot allow this to happen,” and that’s why she’d put a policy in place to “protect” her income, saying that she hoped her client understood this.
The beautician received a response back saying: “Enjoy the £20 because I won’t be back, absolute rip off,” leading Alysha to ask: “Why do some clients feel so entitled? You cannot pay your bills or feed your family on last-minute excuses.”
In the comments, someone wrote: “People who are not self-employed will never understand.” Another fumed: “Imagine going to work.. and being told you’re not going to get paid for that hour from your employer. You’d be fuming. So why is it different for self-employed people.. we also have bills to pay.”