The $180 Cancellation Fee Buried on Page 3 of the Medspa Contract

Paragraph 7(c). That was 2:50 on a Tuesday afternoon in January, a medspa lobby that smelled like eucalyptus, clipboard flat on my knee, and a consultant named Brianna two feet away reading my card number back to me while I turned to page 3 of the packet she had printed that mornin'. The packet was eleven pages. I had read one.

The headline math looked fine, which is how these things work. Four SkinPen sessions at $225 each, $900 total, aimed at the rolling acne scars on my right cheek that a dermatologist had graded moderate back in 2024. My annual skin budget was $1,000, set in a notes file the week after $2,300 of dental work in December, and the package fit under it with $100 to spare. Then page 3 added three numbers the pitch had never contained: $89 a month starting automatically after session four, a 12-month minimum, and $180 to cancel early. Page 3 had teeth.

Brianna had used the word commitment exactly once all afternoon, about showing up for sessions, not about anything I would be signing. The $180 number had not been said out loud by anyone in the building. The per-session discount only worked if my life sat still for five months, and mine did not.

the eucalyptus lobby

The consult was free and ran forty minutes, which at medspa pricing is the only free thing in the building. Brianna flipped thru a binder of before-and-afters, said the phrase collagen banking twice, and used the brand name SkinPen so frequently it began to sound like a family member. The target was the rolling scar cluster on my right cheek, visible mainly in raking light, which is the light every office has and no bar does. She advised the four-session package at $225 a session and cited, in passing, that most clients continue on a maintenance schedule afterward. I remember nodding.

the napkin math the consultant skipped

The day spa two blocks from my office sells a 60-minute facial for $95, and I had been buying those twice a year like a normal person before the scar thing got stuck in my head. Brianna's pitch was that facials touch the surface and microneedling rebuilds the structure, and the six-session scar protocol she sketched would run $1,350 at the package rate. Her math was not wrong about the mechanism. It was just missing the three numbers printed on page 3 of her own packet, and she had a pen in her hand the whole time.

paragraph 7(c)

Here is the sentence, close to verbatim because I have reread it enough to quote it. Membership in the Results Plan begins automatically upon completion of the fourth session, at $89 per month, for a minimum term of twelve months, and early cancellation carries a fee of $180. Below it was an initials line, already checked by someone holding the pen at the front desk, authorizing the card on file. I asked Brianna where in the consult that plan had been disclosed. She said it was standard. The clipboard went back on the counter at 3:07 and I spent $0 at that medspa.

the $200 single down the street

Dr. Ellen Cho's dermatology office does single SkinPen sessions for $200 with a nurse named Trish, no package, no membership, no page 3. You pay per visit like a mammogram, you rebook or you do not, and nobody reads your card number out loud in a lobby. The cheapest thing in the whole arrangement was the sentence Trish said at the first session: if you ever feel sold to in here, leave. I have figured about that sentence at every appointment since, which is prolly the point.

three singles and the cheeks

I booked sessions at week 0, week 6, and week 12, which cost $600 in total and came with 24 hours of redness and one spectacular bruise each time. Trish photographed my right cheek under the same raking light at every visit and laid the three photos side by side at the April check. The deepest rolling scars looked maybe 35 percent shallower against the 2024 grading chart. Progress, on a delay, with receipts.

collagen, on a delay

Dr. Cho clarified the mechanism in about ninety seconds and never once said the word banking. Microneedling makes controlled injuries, the skin rebuilds with more collagen over three to six months, and the mirror lies to you the entire time because the improvement happens underneath before it happens on the surface. Session four is booked for June 9 at $200, which will put my running total at $800, under budget, no contract. The medspa version would have charged me $900 for four sessions and then $1,068 for the first year of the plan that follows.

the fee Maya paid

My coworker Maya signed the same package at the same medspa in November, before I ever walked in. Her company relocated her to Denver in late February, and she ate the $180 cancellation fee in March, plus she forfeited the two package sessions she had not used cuz prepaid sessions there are nonrefundable. She paid $180 for the privilege of stopping a $89 charge. Her desk faces mine, and I heard the entire phone call, which was worth more than the free consult.

the pen, still uncapped

I did not sign that Tuesday, and the eucalyptus smell followed me to the car like a cologne I had not agreed to wear. Brianna's follow-up texts stopped after the third one in February. My card was never charged by that medspa, not once, and the $180 fee sits unspent in a fund that has since paid for a fourth session. The cheeks are maybe 35 percent better on the photo grid, with one more single booked for June. Paragraph 7(c) can keep its page.