I’m from Stockport, I’ve lived here all my life and I like to be involved with the awesome growth that’s been going on in Stockport at the moment. I support it in any way I can, but I couldn’t not be honest about my experience with Tramp. Just as a disclaimer, it’s not any sort of reflection on Stockport or the good they’re doing in Stockport. I had heard so many good things about Tramp, and wanting support Unberbank and the businesses there it just made sense I’d choose to have my hair coloured there. Not to mention I’d seen brilliant positive reviews from people I knew personally. When I first visited Tramp and went into the salon, I had a really lovely experience with Kelly who made me feel very comfortable and gave me brilliant customer service. She listened to what I wanted, helped me price it all up and book it on the Treatwell app. We had an understanding that even though I had selected ‘full head of highlights’ on the app, I was having a treatment to strip the box dyed colour out of my hair before it was to be bleached and toned. So far it had been a really wonderful experience and it promised to be a very friendly and exciting appointment. When asking about the cost, she assured me that it would definitely not cost more than £125-135 overall. Kelly’s services came at a small discount through the app. The appointment was on Tuesday 28th May. My appointment date came up, and a week before I decided I had questions about the toner they’d be using, I wanted to pop back in and see the example just to be sure. For three days I rang twice a day and got no answer. Finally after leaving them an answer phone message, I got a text to say ‘Kelly has left the business’ and so they had to cancel my appointment. That’s unfortunate and fair enough. So, we re-scheduled for Monday (27th May), a day before my originally agreed appointment. The Thursday before, I still didn’t have answers about the toner I wanted to see despite calling many times so I took the initiative and went into the new salon building. There, I couldn’t speak to Kristian, whom my new appointment was scheduled with so I spoke to another woman who gave me a consultation. I took extra care to explain to her the agreement I had with Kelly about not only the slightly unusual procedure of the appointment, but the price me and Kelly had agreed. I wanted to confirm the price wouldn’t change, now the manager Kristian was going to be doing my hair - and she assured me that ‘As we’ve cancelled on you, it won’t cost you anymore than agreed’. So we were back on track it seemed. Sunday evening I go to bed, ready and looking forward to my hair appointment at 10am the next day. I wake up at 4am to a text from Tramp to say due to an electrical problem, they’ve got to cancel my appointment. That made the second time it had been cancelled. Again, something unfortunate has happened and it’s a shame but if it’s really an electrical problem it can’t be helped, but I can’t pretend I wasn’t once again disappointed. They’d had some kind of party on Friday night, maybe it had something to do with that. It was strange to me they’d contacted me at 4am as opposed to the evening before, but these problems can happen overnight. Continuing via text, on Monday morning they arranged for the appointment to be the next day, Tuesday - the original day of my original appointment. I like to give the benefit of the doubt, but with the two cancellations and the amount of problems I’d had contacting them it wasn’t looking good. The next day I turned up for my appointment, at this point quite ready for it to be over with. The experience had been so difficult to arrange that it wasn’t really a treat anymore. Kristian greeted me and I asked him if he knew the details of my appointment (as the female employee I spoke to assured me the information would be passed on) and he gave me a very happy ‘No’. For the third time, I relayed all of the details of the originally agreed service on my hair to assure him I wasn’t here for a full head of highlights. He seemed distracted as he listened. I then spoke up about the fact the employee I spoke to assured me it wouldn’t cost anymore than the £125-135 agreed with Kelly, to which he said ‘Well that’s not okay. Nobody gets to decide the cost of appointments besides me. She shouldn’t have told you that’. So now as you may expect, I’m a bit frustrated. I can’t afford the treatment to cost anymore than the agreed amount. We don’t take this discussion any further so now I’m wondering about how out of pocket I’ll be. Kristian begins my treatment. Throughout the whole treatment, he seems very distracted. He keeps reaching for his phone to text between brushes of my hair. A couple of times, he went off to mix the toner and or/bleach for my hair. After a while I’d naturally look around to see where he was, and he was spending ten/fifteen minutes at a time texting on his phone before mixing the bleach for one minute and then coming back over to me. A couple of times someone came into the shop, he would greet them (as you’d expect) then spend a good ten minutes talking to them between applying the bleach and developer to my hair. My experience thus far had been negative enough that perhaps I was picking up on this bad customer service a little more than you might normally. When he spoke to me throughout my appointment, he wasn’t very friendly and actually made me feel unable to have a conversation with him. At one point, he seemed to try and embarrass me by saying ‘Now promise me you’ll never use a box dye again’ very patronisingly. So far, it had been bad enough that I was just waiting for it to be over. At some point Kristian suggested that I come back for a follow up appointment to add toner to the patchier areas (due to my own previous cheap box dye). I dismissed this, until he said it would come at no extra charge and be part of todays treatment price. Despite the bad customer service, I thought if it didn’t cost me any extra it’d be worth coming back for. At the end of the appointment, we discussed it again and he assured me ‘It won’t cost you anything’ and then murmured something about ‘maybe an extra £20 or something’, not really talking to me. This was troubling but I tried not to press, and we booked in a new appointment for June 27th with the understanding it wouldn’t cost anything extra. I left with my new hair, with no feeling of elation or happiness at all with my new hair - the negative experience of the appointment had been bad enough I couldn’t care less my hair was done. On June 20th, I called up to have my appointment rearranged as another commitment had come up on June 27th. I gave the employee of the phone the time and date of my appointment, and she had a look in the store calendar… but nothing was booked in for that day with the name ‘Becky’ at 5pm. I heard her speak to Kristian, to which she said he hadn’t put it into the calendar. So, if I hadn’t called to rearrange he wouldn’t have expected me in the first place - which was funny because I’d watched him book my follow up appointment on the Treatwell app. I agreed to the new date of Monday July 1st at 5pm. At this point, I didn’t even prompt the conversation about the fact the treatment was supposed to be free because I was certain they’d have forgotten and felt very frustrated. The day of my treatment, July 1st, I made several phone calls to the salon to contact them about the prearrangement of there being no extra cost. No-body picked up and I couldn’t leave an answer phone message. I didn’t really expect anyone to pick up though, due to the lack of contact about my last appointment when I’d called them many times. I text Kristian the manager, as I had his number after when he text me at 4am to cancel the appointment the second time. After my work day ended, I got into Stockport and was outside Tramp for 5pm on July 1st - and it was closed. The shutters were down. I walked up to the smaller salon they have, and that was closed too. I waited for ten minutes to see if anyone would arrive, but they didn’t. My appointment had been forgotten about. I still haven’t had contact from them over what happened. I’ve never had such bad customer experience. It was particularly annoying and upsetting because they have been all over the media, promoting Stockport and receiving lots of amazing reviews from all kinds of clients. I don’t really understand why my had experience had to be so different. It was beyond disappointing, very frustrating and a little unbelievable. They seemed to be exciting and credible salon with a great reputation, but they failed me epicly from the start. I continued to give them the benefit of the doubt but there isn’t really an excuse for how poor the whole experience was. It was tough for me to write this review as they seem to be so prolific, but perhaps reviews like these will get through to them. I felt unimportant and frankly, unwanted. The management and customer experience was poor from beginning to end. As someone who’s worked various customer service roles, I know what the bare minimum is, and it wasn’t met. It’s a real shame.

Styled by Kristian

Becky•almost 7 years ago

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Needed a haircut at short notice, independent little place with lots of flare!

Anonymous•almost 7 years ago

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Really fun and friendly staff, colour turned out a little warm at first but Tamika fixed it and was lovely!

Ellen•almost 7 years ago

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