Woman says she needs to shave her hair after bad extensions left her in pain

It was the bad hair day that went from bad to worse for Kerryn Henry.

Her new hair extensions bothered her and she suffered so much she had to cut them off – and now she wants her money back.

The grandmother was forced to cut most of the extensions off her head after a hellish week – because the hairdresser who put them in claimed she had done nothing wrong.

“I don’t have any hair here,” she explained, gesturing to her head.

“I have patches here and sores and I have no hair here.”

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Henry, 51, is newly single after being separated from her husband of 31 years.

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She wanted to feel good after the breakup, so she decided to change her mind.

The grandmother bought keratin hair extensions online and took them to Emily Wallace at LUXX Hair & Beauty Studio in the suburb of Fletcher, Newcastle, New South Wales, to have them put on.

Henry says Wallace asked another girl to help him and she got worried.

“The whole time they were doing it, I kept telling them they were hurting me because they were doing them so close to my root,” she said.

“Emily’s response was, ‘oh yeah’, it’s going to be painful but it’ll be okay.”

Henry says she paid $695 for her color and installation of the extensions, and went home with a throbbing headache.

“That night I was in so much pain that I ended up taking Panadol and Nurofen and then I ended up taking Panadeine Forte because the pain was so bad,” she said.

After barely sleeping, Henry asked Wallace for help.

“She just said, ‘It’ll be fine and you know, give it a few days,'” she said.

Henry returned to the salon to have them repaired a few days later.

“All she did was pick my hair up and say, ‘it’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with it,'” she said.

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“I said, ‘I actually have sores on the back of my head’.

“She said ‘no, it’s fine’.

“She made me sign a waiver.”

That Saturday, Henry texted her again and told her she wanted them removed that day because they were so painful.

She said Wallace told her she was complete.

So Henry turned to hair extension specialist Jessie White.

White said he believes the extensions were applied incorrectly.

“When she sat down and even moved her hair and parted it and said ‘ouch’ and she was in pain. I thought, ‘this must be bad,'” White said.

“It’s definitely the wrong application. They were way too close to the scalp, so they were just about touching the scalp, which is a no-no.

“They were very, very tight and they had been overheated, so they had melted into his 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 wounds, hair torn out, it was terrible,” she said.

Henry was so desperate to be free from the pain that she cut off the rest of the extensions the next day, leaving her with what she said was ‘excruciating’ hair that she says she’ll probably have to shave .

Wallace also told Henry that the extensions weren’t keratin, they were mostly plastic.

White disagrees and did a test to show the extensions weren’t the problem.

“When you light a piece of synthetic hair, it normally shrivels like a piece of plastic would if it had been melted,” she said.

“100% human hair will just scorch, there will be nothing left,” White said.

When A Current Affair ignited one of Kerryn’s hair extensions, it burned completely, showing that it was real hair.

Henry first said she wanted her money back and also wanted the barber to apologize.

“I want an apology. And I want her to admit she’s wrong,” she said.

A current caseThey approached hairstylist Emily Wallace with the hair and asked her what happened.

Wallace offered Henry $100 back in what she claims was a kind gesture. The grandmother is still waiting for her apology.

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