When you go to a salon, you expect to walk out looking better than when you came in. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. For one Reddit user, u/ZABETHxo from Louisville, Kentucky, her salon visit turned into a nightmare after she says her hair was completely ruined at the Ulta Beauty on Dixie Highway. According to her post, she went in excited for a fresh balayage but ended up leaving “in tears” with severely damaged hair. What should’ve been a simple transformation quickly went wrong.
ZABETHxo said the stylist started by applying bleach with her fingers, calling it a “ponytail technique.” When the manager decided the color wasn’t light enough, she allegedly told the stylist to bleach it again, this time using a brush and an entirely different method. “I asked if my hair could handle it, and she said yes,” ZABETHxo wrote. “It couldn’t.”
She added that no strand or elasticity test was done beforehand, something that should always happen before bleaching to prevent damage. To make things worse, the salon reportedly didn’t have the correct toner for the color she requested, so she had to find an alternative shade on TikTok herself. The result, she said, was orange, yellow, and patchy hair.
The stylist then washed and blow-dried her hair three separate times, which only worsened the damage. When ZABETHxo pointed out how uneven it looked, the manager allegedly brushed off her concerns and said her hair was “fine,” even though there was visible breakage.
Things didn’t get better afterward. She said her Google review was deleted just two days after posting it. When she reposted and contacted Ulta’s customer service, she said they offered no solution, which made her feel ignored rather than helped.
Since that appointment, the Louisville woman says she’s spent more than $140 on emergency treatments, had to cut six inches of hair, and plans to spend another $160 at a different salon to repair the damage.
“I never raised my voice,” she wrote. “I asked questions calmly and tried to trust the process, but I was treated like an experiment. No one should go through this.” As of now, Ulta Beauty has not publicly commented on the incident.
Other Redditors were shocked by the story and criticized the salon’s response. “Wow. At the very least, a refund should be a no-brainer. The result looks nothing like the picture. I’m so sorry,” one user wrote.
Others claimed that after deleting ZABETHxo’s review, the Ulta salon allegedly boosted its Google rating with fake positive reviews. “They have new reviews from a day ago to help with their stars. I reported them, they’re obviously fake, all done in a day’s time. I suggest others report them too,” one Redditor commented.
