A woman who paid £440 for a tattoo on her arm was outraged after the ink didn’t turn out the way she had hoped, and the artist gave her a rude four-word response to her complaint
Not all tattoos have to have meaning, but they do have to at least look the way you expected them to, even if the design itself isn’t sentimental. You’re still having your body permanently inked, so you want your tattoos to look good, no matter if they’re deeply meaningful or just for fun.
But one woman from the US has been left outraged after she spent $600 (£440) on a colour tattoo on her bicep and was unhappy with the result. The woman said she didn’t comment on the tattoo while it was being done because she was “in shock”, but emailed the tattoo studio afterwards to complain.
In a video on TikTok, the woman showed off her “botched” tattoo – an image of a Nintendo DS console with “game over” written on the screen and some flowers adorning the corners.
The lines of the tattoo were clearly uneven, and the colouring appeared patchy, especially when compared to the other brightly coloured ink the woman already had on her arm.
She said: “I got a really botched tattoo and it’s a very long story, but basically, I emailed the shop afterwards being like, ‘Hey, I’m very unhappy. I didn’t speak up because I was so in shock. I need a solution here, like a partial repayment or another artist to fix it’.”
Warning: The below media contains strong language.
But when she got a response from the tattoo parlour, she was floored – as they “called her a liar”. She continued: “They gaslit the f*** out of me and called me a liar.”
She then asked commenters what they thought about the tattoo and whether she was right to complain.
Many said they were baffled by the quality of the ink she’d received, while some others said she should have told her tattoo artist immediately that she didn’t like the work.
One person said: “Is it supposed to look like a Nintendo DS made of hamburger meat?”
Another added: “I would go in person and confront the artists themselves, ask the shop mates what they think, and look them directly in the eyes. No professional artist could look at that and continue to gaslight you.”
A third posted: “This is why researching artists is so important … I don’t understand how people can get something permanent on their body without being positive about something.”
Some commenters even told the woman to “dispute” the charge with her bank to try and get her money back if the tattoo parlour continues to refuse to help her correct the ink.
Tattoo artists also responded with advice, claiming that she never should have paid $600 for the tattoo in the first place.
One person said: “Tattoo artist here! You have been had off with $600, that’s insane. Wait till it’s healed and reassess how you feel, as colour tattoos can look questionable when they’re flaky and healing. The linework is abysmal, and it’s very inconsistent.”
