I wanted a dark ash blonde and the hairdresser did not use his expertise to advise me on which colour would work best for the effects I wanted to achieve.
I picked out a dark ash blonde colour from the book, and then he told me that fading it out to the tips was not possible with the £50 I had paid, as it was a 'whole different treatment' (even though all the other hairdressers I've been to have put the dye on my roots and massaged it through the ends to make it lighter at the tips... This is not Ombre or Ballyage by the way, they're done with bleached ends...)
In the end he agreed to do it, but did it very cack-handedly, and the shorter layers around my face were completely dark and it looked very unnatural.
The colour came out nearly black when he had washed and dried it, it was definitely not dark blonde. It washed me out and was very unflattering; it looked like I had used a box dye from Boots and all my friends agreed.
When I politely voiced that I wasn't happy with how it looked as the colour was a good few shades darker that what I expected, the hairdresser arrogantly exclaimed "BUT DID I NOT JUST DO WHAT YOU ADKED ME TO DO, EH, EH?"
He should have known from experience how the colour was going to turn out and advise me what to choose.
And they should have offered an alternative or at least some advice on how to help make it wash out quicker, but they booted me out the door as quickly as they could.
£50 is not throwaway money, but I might as well have done just that.