The cotton thread would jam; parts would fall off, even the occasional whiff of the motor overheating added to the fiasco.

In mock frustration the salesman would throw up his hands in horror, then tell his disappointed audience that he just happens to have a demonstration model of the very latest ‘all singing, all dancing’ super model in his car.

In comes the new model which performs every programme known to man. The couple sit there in amazement. Out pops the order book and the £10 they were ready to pay now acts as their down payment for the latest technology with the rest on ‘easy payments’!

That’s how Switch selling works. You advertise one thing and sell another!!

Of course, the practice was eventually legislated against and banned.

The only favourable part of the practice was that at least the ‘victim’ got something that was generally top of the range for their money. Rather than ending up with a load of junk.

What's all this got to do with Hair Restoration I hear you ask?

Very recently I began seeing advertising from one of our competitors offering F.U.E. (follicular Unit Extraction) at incredibly low costs.

£2000 for 20000 grafts!! - That's cheap!

They also equated 2000 grafts to 4000 hairs, stating that 1 graft equaled 2 hairs?

Most people researching HTS will know that grafts differ in hair content. Some are single hair grafts, some 2/3 hair grafts, 4 /5, and even 6 hair grafts.

I kept staring at what they were offering, wondering why they had purposefully equated 2000 grafts to 4000 hair? Why would they stipulate 2 hair grafts like it was the norm?

Then the penny dropped!

It was so obvious and was starting me on the face. THEY HAVE DROPPED THE ‘SELECTION’ PROCESS’!! One of the key features of the F.U.E., technique.

The process that every surgeon and doctor worth their salt conducts. When they and their assistants took time to search for the grafts with the bigger numbers of hairs. To ensure their patients achieve as much volume as is possible.

GONE! THEY'VE SCRAPPED IT? - INCREDIBLE - I'M ASTOUNDED - YOU JUST COULDN'T MAKE IT UP!

They had stipulated 2 hairs per graft to cover themselves against any backlash. They had even advertised 2000 grafts = 4000 hairs like it was a ‘positive’ which to the uninitiated would seem like great value.

When in reality, without the ‘Selection’ process, 4000 hairs is about the lowest ‘harvest’ that one would expect from 2000 grafts.

When the F.U.E. Procedure first became an option, back in 2004, the I.S.H.R.S. (The International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery) gave the average content of the Follicular Unit as 2.1 hairs.

The expected harvest was around 2100 hairs from 2000 grafts. However, in later years the figures quoted by the I.S.H.R.S., have jumped dramatically to as high as 2.6. A figure the Society attributed to the more experienced surgeon’s.

So had the clinic in question retained the Selection process and had their patient’s best interests at heart, they could have increased their patient’s ‘harvest’ from an estimated 4000 hairs to a potential of up to 5200 hairs?

Added to which, they would have saved their patients valuable ‘donor grafts’ for any future procedure they may need.

I've met a good many former patients who have run out of donor grafts, leaving body-hair grafts as their only alternative.

At risk of repeating myself, to save time and money, this clinic have abolished one of the single most important benefits of F.U.E, the ‘key’ process of ‘Selection’?

They have replaced this process with ‘Ad Hoc’ extraction, simply to save time.

They are simply plucking the grafts out of the scalp like plucking a Chicken! No records of hair content. No planned usage of bigger grafts for maximum volume? Nothing. Just the 4000 hairs!

No wonder they're offering such low prices!!

As I said in my opening comments, they used to call it ‘Switch-Selling’ years ago? You advertise one thing and sell another.

What title would you give it these days?

As this is a ‘hair related’ blog, how about ‘‘Swatch Selling’?