Bow Valley Massage Clinic

New ownership is terrible (North). Booked for Sunday at 10 am, therapist (who happened to be the owner) did not show up. Received a call from her 45 minutes later to bring my son back for a massage. My son and I returned and she was eating a cob of corn. During the massage, she took numerous phone calls, talked in Chinese through the door with her employee who was asking to go home. She asked to walk on my son’s back. What? I hope she has proper insurance on her business if she is thinking that is okay. She spent a lot of time massaging through the sheet rather than on the skin. Never have I asked for a refund on a massage, but I did. Unfortunately, the owner would not even return my emails or phone calls. Sadly, no one is left from the original ownership.

This review is for the South location. I booked an appointment for today at 9:15am for the first time at this place. Showed up 10 mins before the appointment as instructed and no one was there. Waited for over 25 mins and still no one showed. By the way the door was unlocked. I tried calling the north location but no one picked up. Few hours later I called them back to see what’s going on. The girl said she doesn’t know what happened but totally not concerned or wanted to rebook for me. She also told me she won’t charge me for the appointment. WOW! Thank you for not charging me for an appointment that you didn’t show up for!!! She never said sorry until the very end when I told her I will never try out this place again.
The massage therapist did leave me a message after saying they messed up and didn’t tell her she had an appointment at 9:15am today. I know people make mistakes but the way the phone call was handled will ensure I never give this place my business and has driven me to write this review.
The place itself which is located on th 3^rd floor of a gym is outdated and not somewhere I would want to go back to regardless of this incident. There’s so many other places you can go to for the same price but better service and better location.

You know it’s bad when someone goes out of their way to make a Unilocal account just to give a place a bad review.
Short Version: This place is awful. I wasted 2 hours and $ 200 trying to get them to work on 1 very easy to relieve pain issue. She basically did nothing for it, same pain and knots on the way out as when I came in because she barely touched them. Company doesn’t offer to make it right.
Detailed —
I booked a 2 hour deep tissue massage with the Bow Valley clinic to get rid of some serious knots and tension in the shoulder blades I had acquired from helping someone move a couple weeks back. I usually have problems with my shoulder blades, but this time it was bad enough that it was keeping me up at night and was causing me constant pain.
The girl who did them was really nice, but unfortunately not very good. I asked her to literally spend 75%+ of the time on my shoulders /​shoulder blades, and out of a 2 hour massage, she maybe spent 20 minutes total on them, and even then was kind of only running «over» them, not actively trying to release the tons of knots. She had asked if I wanted any work on my legs and arms, and I said no — or if she did, only a couple minutes max. She spent over ¹⁄₃ of the time on legs and arms.
The technique was not very good, also. She used her elbows for almost the entire thing, and somehow managed to make it hurt, but the kind of hurt where it seems to just be hurting the skin and other tissue, without really having much effect on the muscle. Have bruises today. Just seems to be new, and not really know what she’s doing.
Having had literally 100s of deep tissue massages, this was possibly the worst. I left with the exact same pain and knots in my shoulder blades as when I came in as she effectively didn’t touch them, and basically wasted $ 200. Complete waste.
I called their other clinic to book another massage with someone else for a day or two later, since the first one didn’t do a thing to help my pain. I booked a new appointment for a few days later, and mentioned my dissatisfaction from the first massage, and having completely wasted $ 200. I told them the girl was very sweet, and I don’t want to be a jerk, but I might as well not have gotten that massage. The girl on the phone was very nice and said she didn’t know what the owner would do, but they want to make sure the customer is happy and will do something to make it right.
I got a call this morning from the same massage therapist who screwed it up the first time, saying that they would offer me a free hour with her again. Obviously I don’t want to waste even more of my time with the same girl, so I decline. I call the office back and talk to the manager this time, who says the option is to take more time with the bad masseuse, or nothing. Awful. Really stupid move, too, since I just moved here and get regular massages, and had basically chosen them. Now I’ll be going elsewhere, and so should you.