Here is the thing most men do not know, and nobody in the industry is in a hurry to tell them. In England, the licensing scheme for non-surgical cosmetic procedures has been written into law and has not been switched on. Until it is, a great deal of what gets injected into people in this country sits in a gap: not nothing, not properly policed either.
Which means the quality check is you. Not a badge on a website, not a Google rating written by somebody who was still numb when they typed it. You, in the room, asking questions.
So here are nine. They work on us as well as on anyone else, and we have deliberately not written them so that we come out looking good on all of them.
The nine
- What exactly is going into meAsk for the name of the product, not the name of the treatment. A treatment name is marketing. A product name is a thing with a manufacturer, a batch number and a datasheet. If the answer is vague, or if it arrives as a brand slogan rather than a product, that is your answer.
- Where did it come fromSourcing is not a rude question. Anything injectable has a supply chain, and the difference between a legitimate one and the other kind is the whole ball game. A clinic that buys properly will tell you where from without blinking.
- Who is doing it, and how many have they doneNot what course they went on. How many of this specific procedure, on this specific area, in the last year. Qualifications tell you somebody turned up. Volume tells you they have seen it go slightly wrong and know what to do next.
- Where does it actually happenA dedicated room, with the door shut, or the back half of somewhere else. Ask to see the room before you commit. Any clinic that will not show you the room is telling you about the room.
- What happens at nine o’clock on a Saturday nightThis is the question that separates clinics. If something swells, throbs, goes an unexpected colour or simply frightens you two days later, who picks up, and how fast. Ask for the actual number you would ring, not the reassurance that there is one.
- Can I see the aftercare in writing before I payWritten aftercare should exist before your money does. If it appears only after payment, or arrives as a verbal summary at the door while you are putting your coat on, that is a document that has not been written.
- What is the exitSome things wear off. Some things dissolve. Some things do neither, and the honest version of that sentence should be said out loud before you agree to anything. Ask specifically: if I hate this in a fortnight, what are my options, what do they cost, and who pays.
- What are you not telling meAsk it exactly like that, and then stop talking. The pause is the test. A clinic that has thought about the downside will fill it immediately, in detail, and slightly against its own interest. A clinic that has not will fill it with a compliment.
- What would make you turn me awayIf the answer is nothing, leave. Every treatment worth having has somebody it is wrong for, and any clinic that has never sent anyone home is not screening, it is selling.
Ask what they are not telling you, then stop talking. The pause is the test.
The one you should not bother asking
Do not ask whether a clinic is regulated and take a confident yes at face value. The honest answer for most non-surgical cosmetic work in this country, as things stand, is that there is no single regulator sitting over it in the way people assume. Insurance, training, product sourcing, complications pathways and premises standards are all things a clinic chooses to hold or chooses not to. Ask about those individually. They are checkable. A general yes is not.
For the record
Menhancements is not CQC-registered and does not claim to be. We work to CQC standards, hold our own insurance and written protocols, and we would rather you asked us about all of it than took our word for any of it.
How we answer them
Fair is fair. Questions one to four we will answer at consultation, in the room, without you having to push. Question five has a real number attached to it and we give it to you in writing. Question six comes as a printed sheet at the end of every session, not an email if we remember.
Question seven varies by treatment, and it is the one we spend the most time on. Some of what we do wears off entirely on its own. Some of it is placed in stages precisely so that you can stop after the first stage and think about it. That is not caution for the sake of it. It is because a decision you can walk back is a better decision than one you cannot.
Question eight is most of what our treatment pages are for. Every one of them carries a section headed What we will not tell you, and it is not a legal disclaimer in small print at the bottom. It is halfway up the page, in the same size type as everything else, because it is the part we would want to read.
Question nine we answer often, and it costs us money. Not every man who enquires should spend anything with us. When that is the case you will hear it at the consultation, before you have paid for a course, rather than four sessions in.
Take the list with you
Genuinely. Screenshot it. Use it on us and use it on the next place, and compare the two sets of answers rather than the two sets of websites. Websites are written by people like us. Answers under pressure are not.