It’s the bad hair day that went from bad to worse for Kerryn Henry.
Her new hair extensions left her embarrassed and in so much pain she had to cut them out – and now she wants her money back.
The grandmother was forced to cut most of the extensions off her head after a week of hell – because the hairdresser who put them in claimed she did nothing wrong.
“I have no hair here,” she explained, pointing to her head.
“I have patches all in here and sores and I have no hair here.”
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Henry, 51, is newly single after splitting with her husband of 31 years.
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She wanted to feel good post break up, so decided to get a new ‘do’.
The grandmother bought keratin bond hair extensions online and took them to Emily Wallace at LUXX Hair & Beauty Studio in Newcastle, New South Wales, to get them put in.
Henry says Wallace got another girl to help, and she became worried.
“The whole time they were doing it, I kept telling them they were hurting me ’cause they were doing them so close to my root,” she said.
“Emily’s response was, ‘oh yeah’, it’ll be sore but it’ll be fine.”
Henry says she paid $695 for her color and the installation of the extensions, and went home with a throbbing headache.
“That night I was in so much pain I ended up taking Panadol, and Nurofen, and then I ended up taking Panadeine Forte because the pain was so bad,” she said.
After getting hardly any sleep, Henry reached out to Wallace for help.
“She just said, ‘it’ll be ok and you know to give it a couple of days’,” she said.
Henry went back to the salon to have them fixed a few days later.
“All she did was pick up my hair and said, ‘they’re fine, there’s nothing wrong with them,” she said.
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“I said, ‘I actually have sores in the back of my head’.
“She said. ‘no, that’s fine’.
“She made me sign a waiver.”
That Saturday, Henry messaged her again and said she wanted them removed that day because they were so painful.
She said Wallace told her she was fully booked.
So Henry enlisted the help of Hair Extension Specialist Jessie White.
White said that in her opinion, the extensions had been applied incorrectly.
“When she sat down and even moved her hair and pulled her hair apart and she said ‘ow’ and she was in pain. I thought: ‘this must be bad’,” White said.
“Definitely it’s the wrong application. They were way too close to the scalp so they were pretty much touching the scalp, which is a no-no.
“They were very, very tight and they had been overheated so they had melted all through her hair,” she said.
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White said she spent two and a half hours trying to get some of them out.
“There were sores, hair being ripped out, it was terrible,” she said.
Henry was so desperate to be free from the pain, she cut the rest of the extensions out the next day, leaving her with what she said was “atrocious” hair which she says she’s probably going to have to shave off.
Wallace also told Henry the extensions were not keratin, they were mostly plastic.
White disagrees and did a test to show the extensions weren’t the problem.
“When you light on fire a piece of synthetic hair, normally it just shrivels up like a piece of plastic would do if it’s been melted,” she said.
“100 per cent human hair will just singe, there will be nothing left,” White said.
When A Current Affair ignited one of Kerryn’s hair extensions, it completely burned, showing it was real hair.
Henry said firstly, she wants her money back, and she also wants the hairdresser to say sorry.
“I want an apology. And I want her to admit that she’s wrong,” she said.
A Current Affair approached hairdresser Emily Wallace with the hair and asked her what happened.
Wallace offered Henry $100 back in what she claims is a kind gesture. The grandmother is still waiting for her apology for her.
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