I started to become interested in piercings a while ago and had my lip pierced at Wild Ink in Oshawa. It was healing all right and then I decided a short while later that I wanted to get my tongue pierced as well. I considered going to another piercing place in Oshawa just to see how they were. Then I decided I might as well go back to Wild Ink since everything seemed to be going alright and in the Shwa there aren't too many piercing places around and none of them have especially good reputations, and pretty much anyone with good sense will go to Toronto to get any difficult piercings done. Wild in is an alright place, it's small but it looks clean and the people there seem nice.
At A Glance Author anonymous Contact anonymous@bme.anon When Three months ago Studio Wild Ink Location Oshawa, Ontario When I had my lip pierced everything seemed alright, it was centred, wasn't too painful and I wasn't dying on the floor in a pool of my own blood. It started healing nicely and then I wrote a positive review about it. But then it stopped healing and stayed a bit sore and crusty and just would not heal. So I finally figured that it was the ring size, so I bought a new ring a bit bigger. The next day there was a huge improvement and in three or four days it was pretty well completely healed.
Now I thought, "Everyone makes mistakes" even though while the piercer was putting the bead in the ring she commented "You have a fat lip" Which I think should have been a hint to her that maybe it should have been a larger ring she was putting in. But I let it slide, it seemed pretty minor.
Then I decided to get my tongue pierced a month and a half later while my buddy was getting a tattoo. So the piercer got everything ready and then she marked my tongue and I took a look at the positioning and it looked okay. So she put the clamps on an stuck the needle through. The piercing didn't really hurt, but it definitely felt like the tongue is one tough piece of meat. After it she put the bar in, I told her that it felt too long. She said that was normal, too allow for swelling. But it felt really long to me. I couldn't even put my tongue into its normal "resting" position and touch my front teeth with my tongue because of the length of the barbell. But I thought she knew better so I left it. It was not too bad to eat soup and stuff for the first two or three days, and after that I could eat more solid stuff. And then I could finally stick my tongue out to take a real look at it.
Then when I took the first look at it. WOW! It was crooked. I'm talking really, really crooked. It was off by at least 1/8 inch probably a bit more. So then I figured I would let it heal and then head to Toronto to see if it could be scalpelled straight and just enlarge it to a bigger gauge. And if you are looking for a great piercer in Toronto go see Dan, I can't recommend him more (www.piercerdan.net). But since I couldn't get up to Toronto right away I had to wait. And probably about a week, give or take, I was starting to notice it was still sore and it felt like it was moving weird and had a large white bump on the bottom of my tongue. So then I took a closer look at it, and because of the size of the bar, or the angle or position, or whatever, the bar was actually cutting the bottom of my tongue. In fact it was cutting it a lot. There was no cut on the top of my tongue, just on the bottom, and on the bottom, it was cutting from front to back and and it was no longer a hole but a slit about 3/16 inches long which the barbell was moving in.
So at this point I was really pissed off at Wild Ink and their piercer. I didn't bother to go and complain because what were they going to do? Offer me a free piercing? But now I am revoking my previous recommendation for the lip piercing and replacing it with a "Don't go there". And the tongue piercing gets the "Don't go within 150 feet of the building" award. And on a side note my friend got totally ripped off for his tattoo, about $100+ of what any reputable shop would charge for the work, but thats another story for another day.
The sad thing is that there are only three places to get pierced in Oshawa so they don't really need to be that good because there isn't much competition. Where as Toronto you can walk three blocks and see four or five places to get pierced, so if one shop doesn't do quality work there are a dozen other places that will do good work within a few minutes walking distance. It's really surprising how bad some piercers and tattoo artists are, and yet these places can still stay in business. But I guess as long as there are anxious high school students with little money, and little choice of where to go to get pierced these places will stay in business, and keep taking peoples hard earned money in exchange for poor quality work. And if someone you trust tells you to avoid a certain place because of bad work, take their word for it. Don't waste your money.