Further background

This gives some more perspective - the Yelp review my partner Josiah wrote several days after the piercing. I had to leave almost directly after the piercing, so he's been dealing with the shop since.

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Fatty's Custom Tattooz should be avoided like the plague, speaking from the experience of a dozen piercings and tattoos elsewhere. My interactions there surround piercings (not tattoos), and have to do with both piercer Hannah Cherry and owner Fatty. They come off as competent and knowledgeable at first blush, but their piercing knowledge is actually highly suspect. STAY. AWAY.

On June 20, I paid piercer Hannah Cherry to pierce my partner Angela K.'s tongue. When Ms. Cherry did so, she placed the barbell much too far back, directly through the glandular mass in Angela's sub-lingual frenulum. This is both unsafe and extremely painful. (See Angela K.'s review for further details and a link to the picture of the piercing.) Having two tongue piercings myself (done elsewhere), I could immediately see that Angela had been pierced incorrectly. I took Angela out of the store, sat her down outside in the shade and went back inside Fatty's.

I informed Ms. Cherry that the piercing had been placed too far back, and that this was unacceptable. Her response was noncommittal; at no point did Ms. Cherry even apologize, much less offer a refund.

I returned the next day, and the next, until owner Fatty was able to see me. My experience with Fatty was extremely disappointing, to say the least.

- When Fatty was told we had had a negative experience at his shop, he first suggested I didn't know what I was talking about. "What, so you've had a couple piercings and you think you know this one was done wrong? Is that it?" he asked me. I explained that in fact I have eleven piercings, two of which are in my tongue, and had gone through a lengthy examination of how far back they can go. He then told me he couldn't talk about it with me, that he could only talk about it with the person who had been pierced.

- When he was informed Angela was now in San Francisco and asked if he would speak with her by phone, he refused to talk to her on the phone, saying he would want to see the piercing.

- When I showed him a picture of the piercing (which I had on me), he claimed that all he was being shown was a picture of some person's tongue, and that he had no way of knowing if that was actually the person who had gotten pierced.

- When I gave up and told I had been given a date on the last time the autoclave had been tested and asked if he could confirm it, he refused to verify that I had been given the correct date, asking me to submit the request in writing.

- He furthermore stated that even if Hannah Cherry had lied to me about the date when his equipment was last tested, he wouldn't fire her because she had been with him for about a year and I was the first person to complain about her like this. This is not true; see other reviews to verify this.

At this point Hannah Cherry entered the room, claiming she had not pierced Angela too far back, and that she had not pierced Angela's frenulum. She continued to claim this until I showed her the picture of the hole in Angela's frenulum. She did not continue to claim this after seeing the picture.

Ultimately, Fatty refused to even apologize, much less offer me my money back. Even after seeing the pictures, he refused to verify the cleanliness of his equipment and he refused to verify or show concern for the truthfulness of his staff.

Although I have used Yelp for years, my experience here was so negative that it prompted me to actually join. I cannot trust Hannah to be competent, can't trust either of them to own up to their mistakes (even when presented with photographic evidence) and can't trust either of them to be honest and take concern for the health and safety of their customers. Just one of these would be enough to nix a shop, in my book. I wish I had known this before I went there. Stay. AWAY.