POLICIES

CANCELLATIONS OR NO-SHOWS

I understand that sometimes you may have to cancel an appointment. Please give me at least 48 hours' notice, otherwise, you will lose your full booking deposit.
If you need to cancel, please give me a call (leaving a message) or use the online booking system. Please don't text, email or put a message on social media.
If you cancel with more than 48 hours' notice, your booking deposit will be saved as credit towards future appointments, within 3 months. If you require a refund, please email me and let me know. I will hold a £10 booking fee to cover the cost of the transaction fees etc.

MOVING OF APPOINTMENTS

Please be aware that appointments can be moved a maximum of twice within 8 weeks. If you choose to move your appointment a 3rd time you will lose your booking deposit and be required to pay a fresh deposit.

KEEPING TO TIME

On most occasions, I can allow up to 10 minutes, if you are running late. Any more than this your appointment is likely to be needed to be rescheduled or cut shorter to prevent me from running late with the following clients.
If you are running late, please call the salon and leave an answer phone message.

CHANGING OF SERVICES

Please be aware that reducing your service with less than 48hrs notice will still be charged as the service you have been booked for. If you would like a lesser service, please let me know at least 48 hours before your appointment.
If I recommend minimising the service you will not be charged for your full service.

NO SHOW

Please be aware that if you do not arrive for your appointment, you will lose your booking deposit, just as with a last-minute cancellation.
Multiple last-minute cancellations or no-shows may result in being banned from booking future appointments, as consistent missed appointments disrupt the schedule and affect other clients. Your understanding and cooperation are greatly appreciated.

ILLNESS POLICY

I completely understand that illness can arise unexpectedly. If you are feeling unwell, please give at least 48 hours notice to cancel or reschedule your appointment to prevent losing your booking deposit, as outlined in the cancellation policy. Giving notice allows me to offer your appointment time to other clients who may be waiting for availability.
If you are at the tail end of a cold or non-contagious illness and feel well enough to attend, l'm happy for you to come in wearing a mask to help keep everyone safe. If you're unsure whether you should attend, please contact me directly to discuss the best option.
Your health and the health of others are important, and I appreciate your understanding and cooperation.

PAYMENT DETAILS

Before we take your payment details to cover a cancellation charge or a non-refundable booking fee or advance payment, we will confirm:

• The service or treatment you have booked.
• The salon name, location and contact details.
• The total price (including any taxes) of the service or treatment booked or how the price will be calculated if an exact price cannot be given.
• The time and date of the appointment.

Non-refundable booking fees

A non-refundable booking fee of 25% of the cost of your service or treatment will be charged if you:

• missed your last appointment with us; or
• are a new client; or
• are booking online; or are booking for an appointment lasting more than two hours, such as hair colour or for a series of appointments.

The non-refundable booking fee will be taken when you book your appointment and will be taken off your bill when you pay for the service or treatment you have received. The non-refundable booking fee will be fully refunded if you cancel, as long as you give us at least 48 hours' notice.

If you give us less than 48 hours' notice but we are able to fill the appointment, we will either refund the non-refundable booking fee or put it towards the cost of your next appointment.

KEEPING TO TIME

If you are running late, we will do our best to fit you in, but we may not be able to provide the full service or treatment.

Thank you

Allergy Alert Test Policy

• We recommend a traditional AAT (allergy alert test) which needs to be done 48 hours before your colour service. This is where you come into the salon, we go through screening questions and as long as you “pass” these questions, we will apply a dab of colour as per our manufacturer's instructions. (This will be an unmixed tint behind your ear). Before every colour service, we will again ask you screening questions. As long as there are no changes we will not have to retest until 6 months following your initial AAT.
• The second option is a ColourStart passport, which will cost you £15. This needs to be done at least 7 days before your colour service. We will direct you to the ColourStart website, where you will be asked to answer screening questions. Once complete, you will share this with us online. We will then, as long as you have “passed” the screening questions, send you out a ColourStart test. Follow the instructions on the test. Again, share the results with us online. You will be asked to do the screening questions before every colour service As long as nothing changes. You will not have to re-do your ColourStart test.
• It is the clients' responsibility to ensure they have an up to date AAT or ColourStart test. If you arrive at your appointment without having a non-reactive test your colour service will not go ahead and you will be charged for the full colour service.

Complaints policy

Our priority is for you to be completely satisfied with the service you receive from us. We run a professional business, so we aim for the highest standards in everything we do. Complaints are rare, but we take them seriously, so we have a complaints policy and process we follow to make sure things are put right where needed and we learn from your feedback. PROCESS Tell someone you're not happy with the service you've received, either while you're in the salon/barbershop or as soon as possible after leaving. Calmly and clearly explain the problem. We will listen to your feedback and ask questions as necessary to understand why you are making a complaint. We aim to resolve all complaints within eight weeks. If you have already left the salon/barbershop, don't go to another salon as we have the right to see exactly what the service or treatment you received from us looks like. We will arrange a suitable time for you to come back into our salon and discuss your complaint in private. Where we think your complaint is reasonable, we will redo a part or all of the service or treatment again as soon as possible, free of charge. The work will be done by a different stylist, barber or beauty therapist if you prefer, although this may not be possible if the individual is self-employed. If we can't fix the problem, we may offer a partial or full refund depending on how reasonable we consider your complaint to be. ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION If, after following our complaints policy, we still can't agree on how to resolve the complaint to your satisfaction, as required by the Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes Regulations 2015, we will refer you to a certified alternative dispute resolution provider, Hair & Beauty Mediation. As mediators, they listen to both sides and help us work towards a fair and reasonable compromise which is acceptable to both parties. It is not legally binding unless both parties agree on an outcome, but it is a cheaper and quicker alternative than taking legal action. Please note there is a charge of £12 including VAT for the client and £30 including VAT for the salon. Hair & Beauty Mediation can be contacted by: Phone: 01234 831965 Email: mediation@nhf.info Website: www.nhf.info/complaints

GDPR

Privacy notice

This privacy notice explains how The Hair Lounge looks after personal information you give us or that we learn by having you as a client and the choices you make about marketing communications you agree we may send you. This notice explains how we do this and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

TOPICS:

• What information we collect about you
• How information about you will be used
• Marketing
• Employment
• How long your information will be kept for
• Where your information is kept
• Access to your information and correction
• Cookies
• Other websites
• Changes to our privacy notice
• How to contact us

WHAT INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

We collect information about you when you book an appointment for a service or treatment, visit the salon for a service or treatment, buy a product or apply for a job, whether contact is online, on paper, by email or over the phone.

The information you give us may include your name, address, email address, phone number, relevant history which may suggest that a service or treatment should not go ahead or certain products should not be used (eg allergies, pregnancy, skin conditions), payment and transaction information, IP address and CVs.

For clients under the age of 16, we will only keep and use their personal information with the consent of a parent, carer or guardian.

HOW INFORMATION ABOUT YOU WILL BE USED

In law, we are allowed to use personal information, including sharing it outside the salon, only if we have a proper reason to do so, for example:

To fulfil a contract with you ie to provide the service or treatment you have requested and to communicate with you about your appointments

• When it is in our legitimate interest ie there is a business or commercial reason to do so, unless this is outweighed by your rights or interests
• When you consent to it: we will always ask for your consent to hold and use health and medical information.

We will therefore share your information with:

• Providers of our salon software system: Ovatu
• Suppliers of our website The Web WorkShop

We have rigorous data protection and security policies in place with all our suppliers.

Some of the people working in our salon/barbershop are self-employed. Where software systems and reception facilities are shared, our self-employed colleagues will have access to your information.

We will not share your information with any other third party without your consent except to help prevent fraud, or if required to do so by law.

MARKETING

We would like to send you information about products and services which may be of interest to you. We will ask for your consent to receive marketing information.

If you have consented to receiving marketing, you may opt out at a later date.

You have the right at any time to stop us from contacting you for marketing purposes or giving your information to third party suppliers of products or services. If you no longer wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, please contact The Hair Lounge.

EMPLOYMENT

The information we collect about employees, the purposes it is used for and who it will be shared with is set out in our employment contracts and employee handbook.

HOW LONG YOUR INFORMATION WILL BE KEPT FOR

Unless you request otherwise, we will keep your information to contact you no more than four times a year for a maximum of 1 year from your last visit to the salon/barbershop.

After a year we will delete all your personal information, except for your name, relevant client history (eg allergy test records which we keep for 4 years) and financial transactions (which we are obliged to keep for 6 years).

Information about unsuccessful job applicants will be deleted after four months.

See our data retention policy for further information, including employee data.

WHERE YOUR INFORMATION IS KEPT

Your information is stored within the European Economic Area on secure servers provided by [insert software provider name]. Any payment transactions are encrypted. Sending information via the internet is not completely secure, although we will do our best to protect your information and prevent unauthorised access.

ACCESS TO YOUR INFORMATION AND CORRECTION

You have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you. This will normally be free unless we consider the request to be unfounded or excessive, in which case we may charge a fee to cover our administration costs.

If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information, please contact Tori on

We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate and up-to-date. You may ask us to correct or remove information you think is inaccurate.

You have the right to ask us to object to our use of your personal information, or to ask us to delete, remove or stop using your personal information if there is no need for us to keep it.

E-NEWSLETTERS

We email e-newsletters to inform you about products, services and treatments provided by our salon. You have the opportunity to unsubscribe from e-newsletters at any time.

E-newsletters may contain subscriber tracking facilities within the actual email, for example, whether emails were opened or forwarded, which links were clicked on within the email content, the times, dates and frequency of activity. We use this information to refine future email campaigns and provide you with more relevant content based around your activity.

COOKIES

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information. This is used to track visitor use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity. For further information visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org

You can set your browser not to accept cookies and the above websites tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, in a few cases some of our website features may not function as a result.

See our cookies policy here https://www.victoriawiltshirehair.co.uk/cookie-policy

OTHER WEBSITES

Our website includes links to other websites. This privacy notice only applies to this website so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy notices.

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY NOTICE

We keep our privacy notice under regular review and we will place any updates on this webpage. This privacy notice was last updated on 28/04/2021.

HOW TO CONTACT US

Please contact us if you have any questions about our privacy notice or information we hold about you:

• By email
• write to us at Victoria Wiltshire at BJ's Value House, Barnstaple, EX31 2AS
• You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office. Find out on their website how to report a concern: www.ico.org.uk/concerns/handling