36 hours and two sleepless nights after my first and last visit to Hair by Fairy I am still numb with shock.

Don't be fooled by the trendy location, this is not funky salon but a third-rate barbers and the woman who cut my hair (oriental looking, possibly Japanese/Korean) was not a hairdresser but a blagger making it up as she went along. I would stake my life on her not having had any sort of training whatsoever.

As another reviewer has already pointed out, the way the system works at HBF means that by the time the so called stylist sees you, your hair has already been washed so they have no idea what your hair is like. This cannot be a good thing. Combing through my hair, the first thing my 'stylist' said to me, in broken english, was, "you have hair extensions"

I don't and never have had.

With hindsight this should have been a warning of what was to come. When she asked how I wanted it cut, I showed her a picture that I had on my phone. She looked at it for literally one second, handed it back to me then went to work without once referring back to it. The haircut I got bore NO resemblance to the hair in the picture which was shoulder length. I'd figured that if it didn't work out, then I'd at least have some hair left to work with. WRONG! What I got was almost a short crop, with no layering, no texture, no style. It wasn't even cut evenly. Towards the end my head was in my hands and I could see in the mirror how appalled the expression on my face was, though amazingly the stylist seemed oblivious to this.

I should point out that the haircut in the picture had been carefully chosen and matched to the shape of my face and that I have very pliable hair. Over the years I have had my hair cut by everyone from Tony & Guy to the elderly Cypriot guy down the road. I hadn't expected perfection but what I got was by a long mile, the most horrific haircut I have ever had. For the first time in my life, I didn't leave a tip, but now I'm angry at myself for even paying for the cut.

Looking through the other reviews, I am finding it hard to reconcile the other reviewers experiences of HBF with my own. Perhaps some of them are not genuine, perhaps I was unlucky with the 'stylist' I got but even if that is the case you are taking a big gamble coming here.