I had went to the JC Penney for the first time a couple years ago. All my friends had told me I should get a spiral perm so I decided to go in and get it done. My first clue that they are horrible was the fact that every other hair place at Southride Mall was booked solid except for JC Penney salon. I went in and the place was totally empty except for me. The very first think I did was ask her if it was going to ruin my hair. That was my primary concern because at that point, I had very healthy and shiny hair. She assured me that perms nowadays don't use as harsh chemicals as they used to. She had checked my hair a couple times and kept saying it wasn't 'done yet.' I took her word for it. I guess I didn't know how long it would take because the place was closing before she started to take down the rods. She was obviously in a hurry because while she was taking them down, she was just yanking them out of my head instead of rolling them out carefully. By the time she was done, the pain was so intense that I was close to crying.
My hair was soaking wet, I was close to crying and she advised that since it was past closing time, she was going to send me off without drying my hair first. It was the middle of winter and freezing outside. Since my hair was still wet, the smell of the chemicals was pretty overwhelming.

When my hair finally dried hours later, I saw the full damage that had been done. My hair was completely destroyed. You could see all the spots that she had torn my hair. It looked horrible! The worst part is, I went through all that and the next day, part of my hair was wavy and part of it was super curly. I looked like a freak. I couldn't wear my hair down for months because I was too terrified to have it fixed and have worse damage done. I understood that perms aren't going to work the same on everybody, but between the service and my icky hair, I was obviously upset. I called the salon and told them about it and the girl said she would have the manager call me back. Two days later, I still didn't have a call back so I called the actual store manager and told her about it. She was very apologetic but told me the salon manager would have to call me back but she would call her at home and tell her to call me the same day. The salon manager did call me later that day and told me that I would need to come in and show her while she was there to see if there could be any sort of refund. The hours that she was there were the same hours I worked so I asked her if we could make it a different time. She said no, I would have to come in during her work hours. Obviously I couldn't, so I just let it go. But I made sure to show everyone I ran into my hair and tell them where I got it done so they wouldn't go there.

A few months ago, I went to the JC Penney salon at Valley West Mall thinking 'Hey, this is a different salon and a different person so it will be okay.' When I go into my appointment, the woman is acting like she had something better to do the entire time I was there. All I needed was a haircut, not that difficult, right? Wrong. She gave me probably the worst haircut I've ever had in my life. And I've had some bad haircuts. The layers were too short and not blended. Luckily this time there were no chemicals involved so my hair didn't get fried. I don't know what I was thinking going back to JC Penney salon, but that is a mistake I will never make again.