What’s happened to Treatwell?

[brightgreenpepper]

I used to use the Treatwell (previously called wahanda) app to book hair and beauty appointments - i’m not particularly loyal to any salon and liked the convenience of being able to book online / last minute.

Recently there seems to be fewer and fewer salons listed and none of the local “naice” salons are on there any more.

Is this just an issue in my area or is it on the decline everywhere? I spent half an hour this morning trying to find availability of an appointment this weekend trawling through websites / phoning different salons, wishing I could have just done it in a couple of clicks!

Try That time, most seem to have switched there where I am!

I got excited then but alas That Time seems to be even more sparse than Treatwell here (London suburbs)

Everywhere in my area seems to use Fresha

Yes! Fresha as well, I couldn’t remember the name of that one!

looking at Fresha now…it does seem to have a few more places that don’t look like someone spare room, however numbers worse than either This Time or Treatwell - nothing in a 5k radius (bearing in mind this is London and you can barely move for salons, that is not good)

Is it that places are not listed at all or is it just availability. I wouldn't expect there to be much availability this weekend. The good places are booked up.

Treatwell takes a huge percentage of the payment. I imagine that salons which can manage without Treatwell leave the app.

I was going to echo the above, there’s not much money in it for the salons and the customers that use it aren’t loyal to them. No incentive for the salons

I suspect Fresha is just more popular - these apps seemed to come out around the same time and like all these things, the one with more features, that's easier to use and cheaper becomes the most used.

Plus they all use an initial marketing budget and finance to try and get established before whacking up the fees to their customers, ie the salons who use the platform and pay their commission, not members of the public.

It all feels a bit greedy and exploitative to me, trying to force people into using a third party that whacks up the cost for everyone for providing a product for which little real need exists.

No they’re just not listed at all

One salon near me used to list the Treatwell prices on the app, and then also direct you to their own website where everything was £5 cheaper 😂I think salons probably use Treatwell at first to get themselves seen by as wide an audience as possible and once they've built up enough of a customer base they leave it.