Dobney London Highgate Ruined My Hair

I urge you not to go to Dobney London salon in Highgate, they have totally ruined my hair, and have not even been sorry about it. Apologies for the censored photos, I didn't really want images of me with such awful hair on the internet, but you can clearly see how messed up it is. If you want the short version, they are horrible people who over the course of three visits ruined my hair colour, blamed me, left me physically bruised, significantly ruined the condition of my hair, and ended up ignoring me and refusing to help, only partially refunding me and not saying sorry once.They were nice at first, but as soon as they messed up, the mask quickly slipped and I had a horrendous experience.

Settle in, I'll try and be as brief as I can, but a lot happened and it's all horrendous - everyone's worst nightmare of going to a hair salon. My mum kindly offered to buy me a  hair colour and cut for my birthday, a big deal for her as she's a pensioner and London prices are so high. She said I could pick anywhere I wanted, but I thought I would keep the cost down a bit and not go too central. Dobney London is a fairly new salon and I was kind of curious, but they still quoted me £245 for a cut and highlights so it was a really extravagant gift for my mum. I had a consultation with Andre, a colourist, which makes me laugh now as it was such a huge waste of time. When I came in for my appointment he stuck his hand out and said 'nice to meet to you'  - he had no memory of our consultation so I had to go through the thing again. It was a bit tiresome as Andre kept trying to talk me out of what I wanted, cool-blonde highlights with my own darker blonde going through them (same as my profile picture, scroll down to the bottom of the blog). He said I should have it painted on instead of foils, and be a more natural blonde. I was thinking in my head, seriously? We've been over this at my consultation.

Eventually we got going, the whole appointment lasted five hours. When Andre washed my colour off and took me back to the mirror I could see my hair was greenish-yellow and made some kind of exclamation. He asked me if that was good or bad. It was kind of hard to see what the colour was like under their strong lights, but once I was out in the daylight I could see it was really brassy, lots of that horrible gingery shade that us light blondes fear. I called the salon when I got home and they offered me to come in for a colour correction.  At my second appointment things were immediately tense as Andre was telling me it was my fault. He was argumentative and doing nothing to put me at ease that he was about to fix my hair. My mum had been so sad when I told her it hadn't worked and she said 'Oh, did I waste my money?' I had assured her it was all going to be fine now, but this initial attitude from Andre threw me. I actually started to cry a bit, not much, just slightly tearful, and Andre started to get cross saying 'don't cry, you're making ME cry.' The manager (a really horrible woman called Becky Dobney, more on her in a bit) came over. Her reaction to me crying was so weird, she soothed Andre and said to him 'let's try to make it lighter, to make you both happy' like Andre was a five year old.

When I sat back down in front of the mirror after the hair wash my heart sank as I could still see my hair was yellow when wet, when it should be white. Andre started to dry it and I asked him what we could do about the brassy bits and the yellow tone. He was really sulky and said 'you're not going to let me dry it all?' I told him I could see my hair was yellow, and the section he had dried clearly showed brass. He was forceful about drying it and I didn't know what to do as I knew that was him trying to end the service so he didn't have to correct the colour anymore. Becky came over and I said 'what can we do about this?' and pointed to the brass on top. She said 'It looks lovely' and walked off. I was so staggered she did this, and it gave Andre the opportunity to just end things. He admitted it wasn’t right and told me to use purple shampoo to correct it.

I went straight to another salon on the high street and they were shook. 'How did they let you leave the salon like that?" is what they said, and they also told me not to worry, they had a plan for getting rid of the brass and changing the yellow tone. I rang Dobney’s and said I wanted a full refund as I now had to pay another salon to correct this. And now, here's the stupid part. I'm such an idiot. they talked me into going back a third time and having a senior colourist. Every instinct was telling me no, mostly because the manager Becky had coldly ignored me on my last visit when I pointed out the duff colour to her. But I didn't know where I stood, and if I could get a refund if I refused a colour correction. I felt so unhappy about having to go back, but I was slightly hopefully that the two bad dye jobs had been down to Andre being a poor colourist, and that this was unlikely to happen again.

The colourist they gave me is Lauren Thwaites, who's also a freelance stylist. She was really nice and sympathetic at first, telling me some of the reasons she felt the blonde had gone brassy. We went through my photos - images from magazines, and the one of me again. She showed me her Instagram feed, I pointed out a cool blonde I really liked, and she told me I was in good hands as cool blonde is her speciality. I felt like she got it, and that this was where the tide would turn. Nope. I ended up with that brassy blonde in the photo above. She could tell it hadn't worked as my hair looked yellow again when it was wet, and she said 'don't worry, hair is always warmer when it's wet.' It was warm alright, piss yellow maybe? That's how I'd define it. As my hair was being dried by the other manager, Edmund Dobney (a big middle-aged man who always looks miserable and like he just wants everyone to eff off and die) I asked for Lauren to come over. 'Is this how you wanted it?' I asked her. Yes, she lied. Edmund said 'it looks blonde' with a confused tone. I had two options, make a scene and demand my money back, or try and get this resolved yet again. I really wish I'd gone for the first option, as what ensued was a really awkward and unhappy confrontation with Lauren, and then her making my hair grey with brown, blue, and green streaks (see picture) and then refusing to do anything else.  I said to Lauren, 'you assured me you could get rid of all the brass, you said cool blonde was your speciality.' Lauren ignored this and argued that my hair is not brassy. 'You could see it was when you took the towel off, that's why you made that comment about me not worrying," I said. Lauren argues some more. I start to cry again, just a little bit, still not making a scene. "What about the photos I showed you? This shade is nothing like them." Lauren tells me that photos from magazines are edited and the people don't have that colour in real life. "Why didn't you say that when I showed you the photos?" And so on.

I should tell you, I was perfectly calm and polite all through this, as I had been at the other two visits as well. At the start of my appointment with Lauren, Becky had come over and said "Alright?" and I had said (calmly) 'not really, I don't think it's good for a stylist to make someone's hair brassy and tell them to sort it out with purple shampoo" (referring to visit two with Andre). And what do you think Becky said? Something along the lines of - "I'm sorry, don't worry we are going to fix this". No, she just walked off again, no comment whatsoever. With leadership like that, it makes sense her colourists can turn into bratty children if they get something wrong. I've since found out from a professional colourist that it's not necessarily the colourist's fault if a colour doesn't take or comes out differently to what they were expecting. Dyeing is a chemistry, and the colourist needs to play detective to work out what's gone wrong and correct it, because all colour is easily correctable. Not for Andre and Lauren, they'd rather gaslight the customer, make them feel like you did something wrong and you're crazy for not accepting the results.

Lauren begrudgingly put a toner on. It did indeed get rid of the brass, but left my hair like it is in the top picture. She was furious, pulling on my hair so hard with a comb. "What are we going to do about this?" I asked in the calmest of voices. "I'm not doing ANY-thing else to this" Lauren spat. "Do you like this?" I asked. "No, I liked it how it as before" she said.  And then Lauren left me, went off to the next customer, her 'charming mask' back firmly on. I had to wait ten minutes for Edmund to come over, the most awkward ten minutes of my life as I genuinely thought they were all going to ignore me until I left. He didn't say anything, just looked at my hair, looked at me. "So, what are we going to do?" I finally asked, still so calm (they did not deserve how quiet I was in their busy salon). Edmund said he'd have to give me my money back. I told him if I had to leave the salon looking like this I would sue him. He went off to talk to Lauren, and they told me they'd put a toner on to 'un-do' this and go back to the blonde it was before. Lauren was obviously mad as hell she was being made to do this, my neck got bruised on the sink from her pulling my hair so roughly. She told the salon junior to rinse it and dry my hair, so that was Lauren quite literally washing her hands of me again. Back at the mirror for another hair dry I could see I was still grey, brown, blue and grey, just slightly lighter (picture above, though it doesn't show the blue and green as much as it is in reality). I asked the junior to kindly fetch Edmund, and I asked him if he really wanted this to show people what Dobney's could do. He said no, but offered no further comment. No apology, no plan of action, just silence. He was literally just standing there looking at me. I asked him if he did colour, or if Becky did. He said they don't. More silence. I sighed, 'okay I'll take my money back'. Edmund kept £70 of it though for the cut, no goodwill gesture from him. I was so unhappy to have to go out in public like that, it's got to be everyone's worst salon nightmare. I was really shaken, I should have kicked over all their equipment stands and told the other customers to be careful, but instead I walked out quickly and quietly, the only one looking and feeling like a total dick. The condition of my hair was ruined and took ages to sort out, with a much better salon of course. A Highgate salon to avoid like the plague!