UK Official Tattoo Academy Avis 

Would give no stars if there was an option. Paid for some piercing solution on line. It never arrived. Emailed them twice, no reply. Phone numbers do not work. Daylight robbery, should not be allowed to operate!! Do not send them any money or use them!!!

Back in August 2022, we decided to sign up a course with the official Tattoo Academy. We wanted to go to Amsterdam in November 2022 because it's within the Schengen area, whereas Ireland or London would have meant getting a visa. About three weeks away to the course and after paying the 400 euros deposit, we still hadn't heard anything from us. I sent them an email to check to be told the course in Amsterdam had been cancelled due to refurbishment of the office there. She told me they had tried to get in touch with us to tell us but couldn't get through.

This is weird and hard to believe because up to that point we had always been in touch numerous times with them via email without any issues. They also had my phone number so they could have called us. Also, did they just start refurbishing their office two weeks prior to a course ? The dates I picked were obviously available, and renovating an office is not something you decide at the last minute. I call bull%$* on that.

After that, Yasmin offered to take 500 pounds off the cost of the course if we went to Ireland or London. I first agreed to go to Dublin in February but then realised going there for two people, with our son, would way exceed the budget to go to Amsterdam. Also timewise, it would be too tight to get a visa to. So I sent them an email asking to postpone, ans since then it's been dead on their end. I tried to call them, sent a couple of emails asking for my money back, still nothing.

It was all smiles when we first signed up but after paying the deposit it all went south. Anyone thinking of taking this couse needs to read the reviews here and on Google too, stay away !

It took me a very long time to write this review, as I want to put this in the right way. I did the tattoo course in March. I was disappointed the first week, as the teaching style was simply the tutor reading aloud from the exercise booklet, word for word. There were no questions asked to check our understanding, and no interactive activities. We had 2 drawing tasks, one which was, "draw what you like", the second draw in a style of unfamiliar tattooing, but no preparation activity or research into that type of tattooing. No feedback at all was given on our drawings. I still don't know if they are suitable for creating tattoos from.

It took, at minimum, 30 minutes to start the actual course at the beginning of each day and after lunch, and closer to one hour. I timed this. During this time the tutor (Sunny in this case) told us stories about his escapades going out getting drunk, personal problems about deliveries and banks, and his lack of sex life. I wish I didn't know that. There were several breaks for Sunny to take a phone call, I know all about his favourite alcoholic drinks and have seen his personal videos of belly dancing during paid for course time. This is an expensive course and to lose at least one and a half hours a day on off topic subjects is disappointing, to say the least.

There was an entire afternoon dedicated to the transmission of HIV outside of the tattoo studio. Understanding the importance of cross contamination and the way blood born viruses are transmitted is an essential part of the course and absolutely vital, but such detail into one particular blood born virus was completely off topic, as the areas covered were the fact that HIV can be transmitted by various sexual practices, and the way the virus works after being transmitted, and not related to how we ourselves can stop the spread of the virus ourselves. It would have been more helpful to concentrate on eliminating the spread of blood born viruses in the particular field we were studying. Language such as "fisting" was irrelevant to tattooing safe practice.

We did not cover how long we should wait before touching up tattoos, different needle depths for thinner skin (actually, we were told it will always be a 2mm depth, but I am inclined to believe there is more to it than that).

I brought up my concerns at the end of the first week. It was difficult to do. Sunny said that it was intentional to not give feedback until now and the feedback was all coming. We didn't, however, get any feedback on those previous drawings, and the timings for starting did not change. He continued to buy time by talking about things such as his problems with getting a delivery or something, often leaving the room to take phone calls, while we were given no task to complete, and sat waiting while he finished the calls. My suggestion would be to inform students if there are urgent things which occur which means the tutor can't be in the classroom, so that something can be rearranged. Emergencies happen, which is absolutely understandable, but it is a paid for course, and so it would be a reasonable course of action to find a solution for the students.

Our tutor Sunny tried to encourage another student to tattoo herself rather than me (I volunteered as a model after her original person couldn't make it, as we were told we couldn't bring models due to COVID, and she wasn't informed that the plan had changed before the course), as tattooing me would delay us leaving on the exam day and getting to the pub.

Sunny is very generous with things like buying students coffee, and this is lovely if it's a choice he wants to make, but it's a bonus and doesn't compensate for the absence of teaching method. Now let me be clear here - you will see photos of me smiling on the website. I had comments throughout the course such as, "resting b*tch face," "put in a complaint and I'll fail you", and eye balling straight into my face. These comments were made in a joking manner, but they carried a hint of, "don't you dare criticise me", and I saw no improvement in the course. I don't feel it's an exaggeration to say that stories were flipped and changed to essentially gaslight the concerns I made. Hence the very confusing images of my smiling face all over the photos. I have thrown away my Tattoo Academy t shirt, as I simply can't look back on the experience with anything than bitter disappointment and knowledge that a course correctly delivered, with actual student interaction during the first week, would have been worth the money, however it was not the case. We were also asked to leave a 5* review. At the end I said whatever I could to just leave. It has taken me a long time to be able to write this, and if the business addresses the issues raised I'm sure they could work towards deserving the reviews our tutor was asking for.