My father and I had been customers of Manuel and Brian for the past 5 years. From day 1, the communication and follow-up were always poor with them, but their work is strong so we put up with it. For ... Read More
My father and I had been customers of Manuel and Brian for the past 5 years. From day 1, the communication and follow-up were always poor with them, but their work is strong so we put up with it. For example, expect to text/call/email them at least 15 times before you even begin to make progress towards securing an appointment. I went to Brian last fall to talk to him about starting a large piece on my leg. We scheduled an appointment for December 2016. He asked what style I wanted and I said I want you to have complete freedom as an artist to do whatever you want. This is really any tattoo artist's dream, to have no limits on creativity. He laid the outline down in a timely manner, charged me 500 bucks and I scheduled a second appointment for February 2017. I was there on time for my February appointment, yet it took him an hour of screwing around, talking on the phone, smoking, and snacking before he was willing to start setting up. From there I finally laid down to start at 12:30. For the next 11 FUCKING HOURS I was stuck there and very little work actually got done. No exaggeration, Brian got up and took a break every 10-15 min the entire day and evening. He smoked outside, made phone calls, walked around, ate, talked to his friends. I have been getting tattooed for 18 years and I sit like a rock, so I, the paying client, definitely was not the one needing any breaks. I tried to make my next appointment at the end for 2 weeks later and he said "he needed to get back to me" because he was going out of town but was not sure what day he was leaving. I left swollen, emotionally thrashed from being there so long, and furious. By the way he charged me 750 bucks for that day of hardly anything getting done on my leg. I spent the next 3 months calling, texting, emailing, and heard absolutely nothing from Brian. I finally reached out to Manuel the shop manager and asked where he was and told him I have been waiting 3 months for some sort of communication and I felt forgotten. I also mentioned that I was getting married in August and I wanted the tattoo done before my wedding day so I said "if Brian does not want to finish it would someone at your shop be able to complete it." Manuel said he would talk to him. 2 weeks go by and I texted Brian again. He replies immediately with a snotty arrogant reply, saying "I heard you hit up Manuel to finish the work so if that is what you want go ahead." I said no I did not want anyone else to finish it but after 3 months of no contact, anyone would wonder what's going on. His response? "you know I am bad about my phone." Really? That's funny because the entire time I was there in February you were glued to your phone. He did not apologize for leaving me hanging at all. I left it alone, and then out of the blue he said "let's do May 24." I said ok sounds good. Fast forward to 10pm the night before the appointment, I texted him to confirm we were on for the following day. I said "I look forward to hopefully finishing this piece strong tomorrow, I will be there at 11:30 and need to be on the road by 8:30 because I work early the next day" and he replies "you can't tell me when to start and when to stop that's not how this works and if you can't stay all day then it won't get done." I said "I'm sorry, 9 hrs is not a full day in your opinion?" He then tells me "well I fucked up my truck and I have to go pick it up from a shop in LA tomorrow I can't tattoo you." I said "when were you going to tell me this update?" and he said "sorry I just got busy today." I tried a few more times to reschedule, he never got back to me. So Brian left me with a huge half finished piece on my leg, and a tattoo that was meant to be such a positive experience for me turned into a stressful nightmare. I ended up finding a different artist to finish it and I am happy with it but I would never recommend this shop to anyone. On top of that Brian started work on my dad and he made an appointment back in February for an appointment in early June, and thank God I checked his Instagram to see he would be tattooing out of town at an expo. He never made any effort to tell my dad this, it took my dad texting and emailing incessantly before he finally said "sorry I will be out of town that day." Inkfatuation has a handful of other artists there who are decent human beings and talented, but Manuel and Brian are two of the most arrogant and unprofessional people I have ever dealt with in my life. They may be the hottest show in town when it comes to Ventura county, but in the big picture they are nothing. The talent in LA an hour south blows all of them away. Chill on that ego guys, if you think you can get away with your shitty business practices forever, guess again. People will catch on to your bullshit and take their hard earned money elsewhere. Read Less