What a marathon!

[femmefan]

Looking for a little advice please.

Today I had a client booked for new l&p toes and re-balance on fingers and I allowed 1 hour for toes plus 1.5-2 hours for fingers.

She asked if I could do her toes first as she wanted polish over natural l&p and thought it would give time for them to dry while I did her fingers.

Fine, everything went well and the toes were completed in 45 mins including polish.

Fingers - oops, I should have checked them first because I decided that several needed to be removed due to side-lifting. Never mind I thought and parcelled them up in foils so I could still work on the others. Quite some time later however I decided that yet more needed to come off, again through side lifting. I find it very hard to make these sort of decisions - even if I persevere with filing off lifted areas I find it a nightmare replacing down the sides with a bit here and a bit there I never get a very smooth surface and have to spend more time finishing!

I ended up removing all but 4 nails and then the client was looking at her nicely grown nails and suddenly said - would it be easier for me to remove the rest and apply gel polish instead of l&p enhancements?

So, I dutifully removed the remaining 4 nails by which time 1.5 hours had passed since I had finished her toes!

Gel polish applied with no problem BUT all in all the client arrived at 10.30am and didn't leave until 2pm :cry:

She was well impressed with her new black gel nails but I wasn't impressed with mucking about all day and only earning a total of £45 (£20 for toes, £5 removal & £20 nno).

How do I stop this from happening again? I know now to check clients existing enhancements first, but at what point do I say they have to be removed and replaced?

Sorry for the long rant but I'm getting very despondent about these clients whose nails tend to lift down the sides. Deep sidewalls, slightly ski-jump and obsessed with gardening, diy and cleaning without gloves :irked:

 

[Susie H]

I think you would benefit from doing a 121 half day training with NSI. If you ring the phone number from the web site they will get a local trainer to contact you. It may seem like a lot of money but I have to say when I did it, the trainer earned his money in the first 5 minutes. You are using good products, I use them, and I'm terrible with my nails, hardly ever use cuticle oil, never wear gloves and I don't get lifting down the side walls. I would say its either that you are getting product on the skin or your prep down those side walls needs to be more thorour. But with out seeing you put a set on I'm just guessing. I hardly ever remove the entire nail on a re balance just keep going month after month.
Sky jumps are the exception, I remove as much free edge as possible, apply form, reverse apply and extend nail bed and then apply zone 1. But have found that after a few re balances the nails are pushing the product away and causeing pocket lifting. So for the one client I had who had sky jumps, we used to do a complete soak of every 5 appointment.
Lastly my soak of is currently £12 and nno £25.
Hope this helps:hug:

 

[femmefan]

I'm actually not worried about my application or prep - I have a good regular client base and only 2 clients have this side lift problem, in fact other than nail-biters I don't have any other issues with lifting at all. Both these clients have the same type of nails and both abuse them. I don't particularly look after my own nails but they certainly don't look the colour that these women's do when they come for maintainence. I'm really looking for more in the way of guidelines - at what point do you look at a set of nails and say "sorry but they all need to come off". I tend to try and repair everything, take hours of frustrating work and still only get the maintenance price which is not really fair on me when it is not my fault that the nails come back in this condition.

 

[glitz]

Well in my opinion I would probably just had a quick look over her nails
before starting any treatment I often have clients in for nails/pedi/waxing and assess the nails if a re balance has been booked I can usually judge what amount of time is required and if as you have said such a vast amount of work was required I would have given her the options either for soak off new set - if she was soaking off I would have done her toes during the time she was soaking off so not to waste time stating the additional cost.

Or back fill & replacement where required informing her again of the additional cost and charged accordingly. If she chose to still have a re balance I would have asked her if she would mind having another appointment for her toes and explained in full what was required and why it would be necessary. Then you would not be out of pocket and the client would know that you are giving her nails the time they needed & deserved.

As for your question on how to assess what maintenance the nails require
unless the nails are totally trashed or its not going to be cost effective for the client or poor time management for me I will always re balance. I give 1 free replacement with a maintenance appointments anything else is charged for accordingly it takes me as long to do a re balance as it does to do a full set so the time is negligible. HTH.

 

[mely-bely]

This stuff happens to me all the time and is so frustrating. I book a client in for a fill and when she gets here decides she wants an entire l&p color change. My 1 hour appt ends up being 2 plus hours after removal and re-application.

If I have the time I will do it - if I don't I will explain to the client that if she wants a color change, she must tell me when she books her appt so I can book her enough time. I then go over the cost with her and make sure she understands she is looking at $$ for removal plus the cost of her new set.

 

[Susie H]

The answers you have been given seem good to me, also in a gentle way you can chat to customers and explain to them that if they look after their nails better then the maintenance will cost them less. I put my price in because I think you are charging to little for your service, I have done this in the past and found that the clients took much better care of their nails when they paid more to have trashed nails removed.
You learned from this one, time wise you know what you did wrong, well not wrong but could have done better:lol: and some clients just wont learn, which is fine but they do have to pay for your time as well as your service otherwise its just not worth you doing this iukwim:hug:

 

[femmefan]

The answers you have been given seem good to me, also in a gentle way you can chat to customers and explain to them that if they look after their nails better then the maintenance will cost them less. I put my price in because I think you are charging to little for your service, I have done this in the past and found that the clients took much better care of their nails when they paid more to have trashed nails removed.
You learned from this one, time wise you know what you did wrong, well not wrong but could have done better:lol: and some clients just wont learn, which is fine but they do have to pay for your time as well as your service otherwise its just not worth you doing this iukwim:hug:

Yes, I did learn from this one and I must be more strict with charging extra for trashed nails. It has been difficult for me as I have not been doing nails for that long and although I am now confident in the quality of my work I am needing to spend less time per client in order to grow my business further. I have in the past been too 'nice' and let far too much go - free nailart, free repairs etc. Regarding prices, please take a look at my price list on my website (see link below). I'm in the process of evaluating it so that I can implement a price increase on August 1st (my first anniversary). I know my maintenance price is too low but could you suggest any further tweeking? Any suggestions gratefully received.

 

[Susie H]

I think your web site is great.
I LOVE the fact that your insurance is displayed so prominently on your home page.
Your pamper parties on first glance look low but, you do say prices from, so so long as you are not a soft touch:lol: when they call these are actually a good pull.
Well done you, I love your gallery:hug:

 

[angel fingers]

i'd put your natural nail overlay up to £25. i think 20 is low.

i personally charge the same for nno as i do for extension because tipping takes me very little extra time and i want to keep things simpler.

maybe raise your rebalance price to 18 because this is what you will be doing most of and you need to make sure you are arning enough for the time it takes. especially if you are having people abusing the nails and leaving a lot of damage to sort out.

with your ladies who are having side lifting, you could try building their apexes a bit more. this will make the nails a bit more rigid and could help stop the sides popping up. if its only happening on these 2 its probably them and not you. also it sounds like they are going too long between appointments so tell them to come earlier for maintenance so you can catch them before this happens.