Deliberately waited to make a post AFTER a Spa Week would be over. The Spa Week is usually perceived as a time when you have a chance to get a good treatment for cheap. Well, let’s just say straight – you are fooling yourself. Any technician worth their salt would tell you same thing: why would they spend quality time on your treatment if they’re only getting paid a tiny fraction of a laughable amount of money? They don’t. So what you are getting is the cheapest version of whatever is that you’ve decided to do. Got an upper lip hair removal for 50 bucks? Do you think you really got a good service from the tech who was actually paid for the performed procedure something around 5 – 10 dollars? Do you really believe a good laser treatment service should be performed for that low amount of money? Would you yourself work for 5 dollars an hour performing luxury service 10 to 12 hours a day? Does the whole picture gets clearer now?
Now, let’s step back from Spa Week for a paragraph and consider this. Most of the beauty procedures you undergo are not one time deals. You brush your teeth every day. You do your nails every few days. You do your hair a few times a week. Also, you exercise a few times a week. You see your dentist and clean your teeth a few times a year. See a pattern? You build a successful relationship with service provider, you build a trust – and then you both use it to a mutual advantage. You get the service, they get the money. If one of you would not be happy, it can surely find a way to make the other one unhappy too. If you don’t pay – your nails don’t get done, your hair is a mess and even your gym may deny you access (duh!). On the other side – if you aren’t happy with your nails – you may leave less tip or even search for another place altogether.
Back to Spa Week and all the complicated laser treatment procedures. The whole idea of Spa Week is to get you into the laser treatment place and attempt to sell you a package of service. If you don’t need a package – you don’t need a treatment at all – and you will not receive a good treatment, that’s for sure. Most of laser treatment places – or should I say, respectable laser treatment places – would NEVER BOOK A REGULAR CLIENT FOR A SPA WEEK. There could be a few exceptions, but if they value you as a client – you will have to press them hard enough to be booked. Why? Because technicians are overworked, tired and pretty much every treatment is being done as fast as possible – because it only earns a technician a lousy 5 – 10 bucks. Barely a good lunch in Manhattan. Which means your experience during a spa week is pretty much useless – you can’t say how good or bad place is during normal hours, because of how good or bad the place was during spa week. Simply because a lot of places hire extra help for a week or two and then let them go. Because laser treatment technicians are overworked with hasty procedures and multiple sales pitches. Because of the enormous pressure on staff overall – most people barely have time to take a sip of water, let alone have lunch. And most of all – because Spa Week isn’t about giving clients a good treatment, it’s about giving spas and salons a higher foot traffic, so that they can get a stab at larger amount of people.
Spa Week is not about you, it’s about the money. Don’t trust anyone who says otherwise.
It is often said that you get what you paid for. For most of the cases it is sad but true. However, most of laser treatment clientele, at least in NYC, believe that there is some sort of a scheming going on and if you look hard enough you can find same service for a lot less. Well, the good news is – you just might. If you stumble on a particularly good laser hair technician who is not driven nuts far enough by a greedy boss. So in other words you have to be at the right time, in the right place AND that laser hair removal technician has to have access to a laser treatment machine that would allow you to get the result you want. If your skin is dark and there is no YAG machine (we’ll get to specifics later) – chances are you are just wasting your money no matter what the girl on the reception desk is telling you.