Art & Soul Tattoo — Local services in Portage

Here was our personal experience with Art & Soul's customer service and the reasons we chose to not have any work done at this shop. The guy at the front desk was fine overall. He was pleasant, we told him what we needed, and he politely answered our questions, but when we were sent back to speak with Blaine about doing cover up work, Blaine apparently was in the middle of working with a client (so it was super awkward to interrupt him even though we were told to go back there). When we got there, he basically just looked at us like "what do you want?" And asked us zero questions about how he could help us. He ended up sending us back to the front desk just to get his card and contact him later. But while we were there he said he usually just draws something up the night before a customer's appointment, which struck me as odd because what if we didn't like his design or wanted to make adjustments? Do we then have to reschedule our session? (Seems like a pretty half-a**ed way to design a tattoo for a client in my opinion - if that works for others, great, but im not comfortable with that). They're way booked out too so if we needed to adjust any designs, especially with the large amount of work we need done,, we'd be waiting quite some time to get another appointment. But then when we got back to the front desk to get Blaine's card, we mentioned again that we were needing cover up work done, the guy at the front desk ended up telling us that someone entirely different (Luke) was who we would want to work with for that kind of work. So I thought, we already told you this so why did you direct us to speak with Blaine in the first place if he wasn't the guy for the job at this shop? It was a waste of time for all involved. We just got a really weird feeling about the place and the people there, so even though we liked some of the work we saw, it just gave us a bad vibe and we decided to move on to some other shop for our work. We will keep doing our research and won't be going...

My friend and I went to this place on recommendation from a couple people. It was for her first tattoo and my third. We heard good things about the artists here, so we were optimistic going in. Our experience was pretty disappointing from the start. We walked in and said we were looking to get tattoos and could we look at some of the artists' books. We were directed over to where they were and looked at them for a few minutes. Everyone then proceeded to pretty much ignore us for for about 15 minutes. There was a guy sitting behind the front desk with his back to us doing something on the computer who didn't acknowledge our presence once. The main guy running the counter had to step away and employees came and went and again no one asked us if we needed help, if we were being helped, nothing. Finally my friend called out to the guy with his back to us and asked if they had a lot of people in line and he simply said "we're booked up for the night" and turned his back to us again. At this same time the main guy came back up to the counter and told us we could make an appointment to come back. We did this, but the whole experience was so awkward and uncomfortable. We felt unwelcome and really out of place and like we were inconveniencing them. We cancelled our appointments are are going somewhere else. We both lost $10 "non-refundable deposits" for our appointments but for something I'm going to have the rest of my life I guess I'll suck up a $10 loss. I have no comment on their actual tattooing or quality of work, so for all I know that could be great, but their customer service was so terrible that I completely lost confidence in their ability and will not give them...

I began getting tattooed by Geoff in August of 2023. After reviewing my bank statements, I realized I’ve spent well over $10,000 there. While the shop claims to preach tolerance, my experience—especially with Michael—tells a different story. He consistently spreads misinformation and comes across as unsettling to many people I’ve spoken with. He must be connected somehow, because no other explanation would justify keeping someone so unprofessional and incompetent in that position.

The final straw was when Michael inserted himself into a situation between me and another customer, making assumptions instead of simply asking what happened. Because of his actions, the shop has lost tens of thousands more—I had every intention of continuing to get tattooed until I was fully covered.

I’m sure they’ll try to twist this post and prove my point further by responding with the same intolerance and pettiness I experienced firsthand. That should give you a good idea of the type of people you’ll be dealing with.

As for Geoff—he’s still a solid artist, but he deserves to be somewhere better. That shop, new location or not, is a dump—and the people running it are what really...