AMO SPA - LIFE. STYLE. SPA. CAFE. CLINIC. WELLNESS. — Restaurant in Bali

I don’t know why it took me so many years to post this review. Probably because as a woman, we were told to shrug off injustice and not make a big deal out of things even if our boundaries are crossed. Or maybe because no one would believe us. Please know that I am posting this to protect female customers going forward and I should have done it way sooner and stood up for myself more.

It is also not easy for me to write this because I will never want to drag a business for no good reason. I thought about this for more than a year before deciding to post. But I know deep down that it has to be said.

A few years ago, I came to this spa to get a massage and they only had male therapists then. At that point, I did not think much of it because I thought the spa would enforce standards and respect with female customers.

Towards the end of my massage, the therapist told me to turn over and started to massage my chest area without asking me for my permission. I was a lot younger back then and I did not have the wisdom or strength that I have now. I felt my body froze as a trauma response and I did not say a word until I got to the counter to pay. I was still very much in shock till then, and I told the receptionist what had happened. As much as she was surprised and told the therapist to apologise to me, he did it very half-heartedly. As she was a woman as well, I found her response to be very unsatisfactory.

I regretted not taking more action and escalating it at that point in time. Oh and they still took my money instead of refunding me.

I really hope he’s no longer working there, and that he gets the karma he deserves. This serves as a cautionary tale to all women to never get male therapists (no matter how they present themselves) and to trust your instincts.

Speak up, always.

I apologise to my inner child for not standing up for her back then, but I hope this review does something to help heal her.

Update: Dear Anggun, you have every right to protect your establishment and staff. Please know that this happened many years ago, I don’t know if it was under your management or someone else’s. I can most definitely give you my name for the reservation but like I said, it happened around 10 years ago and I have never forgotten it since. I am unsure if you keep records that long.

But I know what I went through as that experience is burned into my memory, and my conscience is clear as day. If I am making things up, you can be rest assured that karma will come for me. My only regret is not making a bigger fuss and standing up for myself as I was only in my late teens then.

Respectfully, this is why women don’t speak up because they are usually discredited...

My partner and I visited the spa for the denial package and we were disappointed. We booked via email and they asked if we had a masseuse preference of male or female and we said no.

We arrived an hour and a half early to use the sauna and pools which was nice.

Our treatment time came and 5 minutes past the time someone came to collect us and we were given robes. My girlfriends robe was super tiny, had a hole in the side and smelled dirty. The robe I was given didn’t fit. When we got upstairs they said they’d look for another for me, but they never brought me a different robe or towel wrap which was disappointing. They had us fill out the intake form for what kind of massage we wanted and we both chose firm/ strong pressure. A woman came to collect our forms and then came back and told us they only had female therapists available and they couldn’t do strong pressure, only medium. They asked us if it was ok and we said no not really, this is an expensive treatment and we want good strong massages. They came back and said sorry the male therapists are already booked. So we had to have the female therapists and they said they would try as much pressure as they could.

The females asked us how the pressure was and we both asked for more pressure which they said they would try but they were already giving as much as they could. Since they were trying to give so much pressure the technique suffered and the massages were unsatisfactory and disappointing. When we finished our massage service, no one came to ask us if it was ok even though they knew we weren’t getting the pressure we wanted.

Additionally, my therapist didn’t use enough oil on my inner thighs and caused a horrible rash on my legs from friction. I experienced a burning sensation and broke out in red bumps on the places where she was stingy on oil. The rest of my body was fine. I will include pictures so you can see. This was absolutely unacceptable. I’ve never had this happen from a massage before.

The reflexology was nice, but overall this was a disappointing experience. We were told AMO was a great spa but that was not our experience. We should have been asked what kind of pressure we wanted when booking so they could schedule the therapists properly. Instead, they waited until 5-10 minutes after our appointment time to ask us and we were denied the pressure we requested for the massage which was the main treatment of the package.

Lastly, we sent this same message to AMO directly to see if they could do something about it but had no...

My friend and I visited this place in February 2020. Of course, it's not normal to review a place 2 years after you visited, but my friend just noticed that the facility had responded to her 1-star review telling her that she must be reviewing the wrong place. Wow! I have never seen such egregious gaslihhting of a customer by a business! So as another dissatisfied customer, I just wanted to call them out on that. To be clear, we are exactly the target demographic of this place. 2 30 year-old Canadian girls who like to travel and have fun. We are not people who leave reviews (good or bad) very often. We are not big complainers and our standards are pretty average, I would say. I say this because it's not that we a hobby of giving bad press to businesses. That being said in all our travels, we have never come across a place where the reality was so far away from the expectation. We were both looking at each other and indeed wondering if we were at the right place because we couldn't reconcile the good reviews with how terrible our experience was. But it was no mistake, we were at AMO spa and we were nothing short of grossed out. First of all, the floors were understandably a bit wet, but there was just hair and other dirt all over the floor in all locations, from the spa area, to the rickety corroding sprial staircase, to the unclean and unpleasant-smelling changing room. As my friend said, it wasn't very busy but we felt like sardines in the 1 hot tub and 2 sauna rooms which all felt and smelled very unclean. I also distinctly remember looking at the massage area and being astonished that it was outdoors in what looked to be an alley way and with the tables separated by curtains but who knows, maybe they've installed brick walls since we visited. The alleyway massage situation might not have been so bad, but there were cleaning supplies lying around. We would normally never leave a place that we paid (relatively a lot of money) to be at, but we both looked at each other after 15 mins and said "this place is so unclean and cramped, Im really not able to relax. Shall we leave?" And we were both relieved to find we felt the same way as the other so we could get the heck out of there. All this to say, no, we were not in the wrong place and shame on AMO SPA for trying to make it seem as though we're just "confused" instead of addressing our very real review from our very real experience at their facilities. We can't wait to be back in Bali and go back to all the other lovely businesses we...