Plaza Hair Salon — Local services in San Diego

In the past I had frequented this salon because of Mai's work and the special care that she gave her customers. The second time my hair was ruined was 3 about months ago. As usual, Mai's calendar was filled and she had no available appointments for a long time to come, so again, I decided to trust another stylist at her salon. My thinking was, since these stylists are hired by Mai, they would have the same expertise (or at least close) as her. That once again turned out to be a big mistake. Sara, was the stylist that I entrusted my hair with the second time. She absolutely destroyed my hair. Because I had such high trust in the salon and Mai, I let her work on my hair at her discretion. She was highlighting, coloring, and cutting my hair. As always, I showed a pic of myself with the hair I had in the past and wanted again. Sara went to work. When she started to take my hair out of the foil, I noticed that all my hair had turned white from the roots down! I had asked for a few partial golden blond highlights, but she had bleached almost all of my hair almost completely white! In the pic, my hair was clearly brown with just a few highlights that were barely visible. When I noticed almost my entire head was bleached white, I started to tear up. She assured me she would "fix it". After washing my hair she dyed it completely brown. I didn't understand why she would bleach my hair, then dye it brown. After she washed the die out, she lost track of what I had told her about how I wanted my hair trimmed, and she chopped over half my hair off! I have extremely thin hair that took 6 years to grow out. She took it all off in less than 5 minutes! Not only had she bleach burned all my hair, she chopped over half of it off! Furthermore she had given me long layers, that I had worked years to get rid of! I had told her in the beginning that I was getting rid of my layers. She did that exact opposite of everything I asked for! It was devastated. The tears were streaming down my face as I tried to compose myself. Then she and the other stylist (that had ruined my hair the first time) both said, "it's only hair. Why are you crying about something that will grow back?" Their business was hair, so it must be important to them. To my utter surprise, when Mai found out, she was on their side! She said my hair looked good! What she didn't acknowledge was that it was the exact opposite of what I had asked for, and now it was completely bleached damaged underneath the dye and short! I had worked years to grow my hair out long, and I loved my long hair. As a child my mother always cut my hair very short and I dreamed of having long hair. This was the only time my hair was the length I wanted it, and Sara just chopped it off in less than five minutes! Knowing I was very upset, Mai offered me a deep conditioning treatment (that did nothing to restore my damaged hair). In the end, I had a $300 bill! I refused to pay that much, so I payed $150 and gave Sara a $40 tip for her time, not her quality of work! Fast forward 3 months, I have had to dye my hair 3 times since, because the color keeps washing out because my hair is bleach blond and completely damaged underneath. And never once has Mai reached out to me, a loyal customer of several years, to apologize for her stylists destroying my hair and making me feel bad. To add insult to injury, when I went back to get the free deep conditioning (which did not even slightly help my frizzy chemical damaged hair) she said I didn't pay for the appointment! This was an outrage because I payed almost $200 to have my hair destroyed! I waited 3 months to write this review, to give Mai a chance to at least acknowledge her team's incompetence, but she has not, so I'm finally...

I recently went here for the Japanese hair straightening and two different stylists were working on me, one on the right side and one on the left. Now my hair on the right side is curlier than the hair on the left. The stylist on the left (Wendy) used much more of the perm solution on my hair whereas the stylist on the right (Sarah) did not use nearly as much. The stylist who used more solution did a much better job and I love how straight it is, I would even leave it as is with no touchups. However, now I have to straighten my entire head just to match the left side with the right. There needs to be more consistency in technique among the stylists here. Or they just need to have one stylist per client, not two, so that the result will be the same throughout the whole head of hair. I did not pay $400 to have half of my hair look different from the other half.

UPDATE: Downgrading from 3 stars to 1 star. I went back for the "fix." Beforehand, I called Mai and asked if redoing an entire perm would be too damaging. She assured me my hair would be fine. Now my hair looks so damaged. It did not look damaged at all after the first perm, it looked so healthy. I should have just kept on straightening my hair by myself. Also, while I was there I asked for a trim from the stylist who did the better job on the first perm (Wendy), and my haircut was completely uneven and jaggedy. I got home and realized the right side was about an inch longer than the left side. From the back you could see that my hair was cut at a diagonal with choppy layering especially on the right side (photo included). I had to drive back to the salon for Wendy to fix it and she tried to tell me my hair was originally uneven so she kept it like that. I know it was not uneven and have photos to prove it. While she was fixing it, I had to keep pointing out how it was still uneven because for some reason she could not see for herself.

2 of the 3 times I have been to this salon were for fixing previous mistakes. I should have been offered a partial or full refund for either the perm or the haircut or both. The perm should have been done right the first time and now my hair is damaged. I am very unhappy with my experiences at this salon and did not pay top dollar for such poor service. Go...

I wish I could leave a better review, but my experience here was very disappointing.

I showed my stylist, Kay, this photo of Goldie Hawn for inspiration. She said my hair wasn’t long enough for that exact look, which I accepted, so I asked for a simple trim on the ends and some long layers. She also pointed out that the front of my hair was slightly longer than the back and offered to even it out while keeping as much length as possible. When I asked how much length off of the front that meant, she showed me about half an inch. That sounded fine to me.

She asked me to remove my glasses for the cut, which is important to note because I can’t see without them. I trusted the initial conversation about length for that reason. But when she paused and asked me to check the progress (while switching out a dull pair of cutting shears for another), I put my glasses back on and was immediately shocked. My hair was much shorter than what we agreed to. When I said so, she told me she had mentioned that layering would make the front shorter — but she never said that during our consultation. If she had, I would have walked away instead of agreeing.

She continued cutting, blow dried my hair, and sent me on my way. The next morning, once the blow dry was gone, I realized my hair was noticeably uneven. I now have to make another appointment at my regular salon to fix it — and until then, I’m stuck going to work with a bad haircut.

Even if the Goldie Hawn style wasn’t possible, all I asked for was a trim and long layers. I truly regret not going to my regular stylist. I thought this would be a straightforward request, but instead I left with hair much shorter than I wanted and cut unevenly.

Edited to add: I also got a brow and lip wax and left with hair on my lip still and wax that was still on my face. At that point I was emotionally done and...