Kata Spa & Wellness — Local services in New York

This negative review is not of the quality of the massage, but pertains solely to the poor customer service I received from the front desk, after being a returning customer for months, and the nonchalant attitude from the owner himself (a man named Joon).

This establishment claims to not take advanced reservations with specific massage therapists until the day of. Yet, on numerous occasions, I have requested appointments with certain therapists as early as 6 AM the day of (4 hours before their opening hour) only to be told that that particular therapist's schedule is already "fully booked" for the day", or that she only had one spot available. As a returning customer, this was frustrating to me as it clearly showed that the person taking reservations was showing favoritism toward certain customers (how is one customer told that no advanced reservations are made, whereas others seem to be able to book in advance?)

I have attempted to reach out to the owner so that I can get a better understanding of the reservation policy; no response from Joon. I then decided to regularly inquire about the availability of my preferred therapists, in hopes that one day I would be told that she is indeed available. After weeks of these attempts (none of which were successful), I received a text message from the owner (Joon) telling me that they don't take request appointments because they are "a small staffed team" and "taking request appointment gives them limitations". I then got on the phone with Joon and asked him to explain how this policy seems to be in effect for me but not others; I even brought up the specific experience of being told a therapist's schedule is booked for the day as early as 6 AM. Joon attempted to discredit my story; fortunately, the correspondence in question was through text messages, so I took a screenshot of it and forwarded it to Joon. At this time, I had previously purchased a package of 4 massages and had one session remaining. The ultimate response I received from Joon, after being a loyal customer, is: "If she [the therapist] happens to be available at the time of your visit, we will assign her to you. I can process a refund for your last remaining session if you wish."

This event took place in May of 2019. Since then, I have tried calling the establishment to make a reservation (with no particular therapist) yet I am yet to have someone answer my calls. Occasionally, someone seems to accidentally answer and then instantly hang up the phone. I got the impression that the owner has instructed his staff to not answer incoming calls from my number. To verify this theory, I asked friends to call from their own phones directly after I make an unsuccessful attempt reaching the spa's landline. To no surprise, my call did not go through but theirs did.

Once again, this review only pertains to the poor management and customer service at this establishment which, from my experience, is top-down. The massage therapists themselves are at...

This place deletes its reviews. The owner was extremely awful. If you look on yelp, you’ll see all the reviews specifically about him, but they definitely pay Google to scrape their reviews. I left a lengthy review of my experience last year and now I see that it’s been deleted so I’m leaving it again - I was running behind to my appointment less than five minutes. I lived around the block. Before I knew it turned out that the owner canceled me and asked me to reschedule. I told him I was literally a block away. He said too bad I said I’d be into the office to speak with him. he basically started antagonizing me from the door telling me to keep my voice down, though I was not raising my voice. when I told him if he wanted, we could step outside to keep noise down he got even more aggressive, acting like what was my problem for suggesting that. I got scared given how he was antagonizing me, and I started recording him. Later on when I got home to leave this review that apparently got deleted and the one also on Yelp, I found on yelp that there was many reviews specifically about the owner being rude and aggressive. I will never go back for those reasons. And I also will leave this review all over Reddit where they will never be able to...

If I could give negative stars, I would.

The massage therapists at Kata Spa are really good, and the place itself is excellent. However, I have l experienced significant issues with the man at the front desk, who may be the owner. His behavior has been extremely unpleasant and could be described as either racist, rude, or highly arrogant. For a couple of months, he mysteriously claimed that everything was booked out and unavailable for us. The phone was also mysteriously out of service just for us. He also refused to book my husband for a massage because he did not approve of the tip amount given last time. He told me that on the phone specifically. Another time, when I tried to reschedule an appointment, he told me to never call back again. Others here have also experienced the same treatment. This behavior is incredibly annoying and unprofessional, overshadowing the otherwise good service provided by...