Woman books waxing appointment in Kovan mall, arrives to find salon replaced with massage chairs
A woman booked a hair removal appointment at a salon in Heartland Mall Kovan, but when she arrived for her appointment on April 6, the salon was no longer there.
The shop unit where Pink Parlour used to be was instead filled with massage chairs.
Stomper MO had made the 11.30am appointment online on March 30 and received confirmation of her booking from Pink Parlour via WhatsApp.
“When I did the booking, there was no indication on their website that they were closed,” she told Stomp.
“Their bot still WhatsApped me to confirm the booking, but when I went over, the shop had changed to a different shop!”
What happened was the Pink Parlour shop unit at #02-36 had been taken over by a company called iFresh, which provides bill-operated massage chairs.
Unable to find the salon, the Stomper messaged Pink Parlour: “I’m at Heartland Mall for my appointment, but where the hell is your shop?”
The bot responded by sending her the address of the now non-existent Pink Parlour outlet at the mall. MO demanded that someone from Pink Parlour call her.
“Dumb company,” she replied to the bot, frustrated.
The Stomper was worried about her three waxing packages worth a total of $1,065 with the salon. She thought: “Pink Parlour closed down all their outlets without informing us and now all our packages are gone just like that.”
But that isn’t the case as Pink Parlour has another outlet at The Centrepoint, which is still operating.
In response to a Stomp query, Pink Parlour co-founder Derrick Seeto offered an explanation why MO was not informed of the Kovan outlet’s closure.
“We would like to clarify that an email notification was sent on March 23 at 7.31pm to all customers with existing bookings at our Kovan outlet from March 25 through to the end of April,” he told Stomp on April 9.
“However, we understand that due to the customer’s PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act) preferences, she may not have been eligible to receive email communications from us, which unfortunately could have resulted in her not receiving this notification.”
Mr Seetoh added that the Google business listing was updated on March 20 that the Kovan outlet would cease operations from March 25 onwards. A notice was also displayed in the Kovan outlet from March 20 and another notice was placed on the store’s roller shutter on March 25 during the shop unit’s reinstatement phase.
But if the Kovan outlet closed from March 25 onwards, why was the Stomper still able to make an appointment there on March 30?
“This booking was processed due to a temporary system glitch, as we are currently syncing and merging our database to our relocated outlet at The Centrepoint,” explained Mr Seeto.
“We regret this occurrence and have escalated the matter to our POS (point of sale) software engineer for urgent resolution.”
Pink Parlour also posted a notice on social media on April 9 about the system glitch.
As for the Stomper, Mr Seetoh said Pink Parlour has reached out to her on April 7 to apologise for what happened and offered a $20 treatment voucher as a service recovery gesture.
He added: “To further support her, we will also assist in arranging a one-way car-hailing service to our Centrepoint outlet for her next waxing appointment at her convenience.”
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