My journey:
The beginning of my journey was kind of bad as well. I too, first went to a salon where they gave me a pretty bad piece. Looking back, I can't believe factories even make products that bad anymore. It was thick, there was absolutely no graduation in the hairline, and the hair was stiff. I didn't yet know how to reattach with care, so my first time reattaching I ripped a chunk out of the side because I put the glue too low and it glued the hair into my bio hair. Even so, people didn't seem to notice and I once got carded and turned away because they couldn't believe the picture was the same guy as me standing there with all that hair. People really are oblivious!
The next time, I ordered a custom from Northwestlace and when I took it to the same salon for a cut-in, the owner couldn't believe the quality and said they'd start ordering their own products from there (I don't rep NWL, I feel like they have their own set of issues). By this time, I had the learned experience of taking care of the unit, de/reattaching and maintaining my biohair to blend with it. Things finally clicked and I realized how cool this lifestyle can be!
Next, I learned how to cut-in my own systems and ditched the salon altogether. Once you can take total control of the process, you can really fine-tune the results -and quality- for yourself, not to mention save money. Now, I make my own systems, although if you wanted to really go that far expect investing a load of time and money to get started.
Check out the before/after pictures. One is from 2006, the other is from last year with a UTS from NWL. I think I look younger now!
Now for my advice:
Starting the wearing lifestyle can be extremely frustrating; there are many things to learn/practice, and not many local resources around to help. Finding good products is also challenging with so many bad companies out there.
There are a lot of negative stories when working with salons. They can be expensive, often they order inferior systems to improve their margins, and sometime their expertise is even questionable. Not to say all salons are bad, but it sounds like this one may be more trouble than it's worth. A good salon/factory should be able to take your hair sample and find an acceptable match, and also communicate the correct wave for your hair. That's pretty basic stuff.
I totally understand if you want to start out at a salon to have help learning the ropes. Perhaps there is another in your area? But, there are often much better options by ordering at a reputable online retailer and learning DIY through these forums and YouTube videos.
For online retailers, I've personally used northwestlace for a couple years.
@AxC123 recommends superhairpieces.ca and
@BaldBearded recommends oneheadhair.com . As they may mention, custom systems are not being fulfilled for a bit due to coronavirus, but they have stocks available. If you don't want to cut-in your own unit, Debbie has been doing fairly affordable cut-ins for a decade or more:
http://splitendshairreplacement.com/
As for education, this forum is quite helpful. I'd be willing to answer any questions in DM as well. The Northwestlace forum has a huge searchable archive of post advice (
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/northwestlace/search.php).
On YouTube, MyHairExperience is the best resource (run by Curtis). MGFord also has some worthwhile videos (
https://www.youtube.com/user/mgford3425/videos).