Customer says nail salon owner insulted her weight after negative Yelp review

A negative Yelp review brought a nail salon negative attention following an incident a customer said left her toe infected. But a response to the review was what the customer said stung the most.

Meagan Ioakim was with a group of her friends getting their nails done at The Nail Forum on Rinaldi Street in September.

They knew one of their friends was about to get engaged and wanted to make sure her nails looked nice. Ioakim said her friend loved the nail shop and that was why she got her service there that day.

But the experience didn't go well.

"I had gotten cut during my pedicure and didn't get an apology or anything like that. And a few days later, it started to really hurt."

She noticed right above the mole on her right big toe, there was swelling.

"It got infected."

Ioakim posted about her experience and the infection on the business-rating app Yelp. Her review was found "helpful" by 39 people, but one user was not pleased with what she wrote.

She said a user named "Sako S.", which is the name of the salon's co-owner, responded to her review in a way that stung more than the cut on her cuticle.

The user wrote, "from the looks of your toe looks like you need to loose a couple of hundred pounds. It's all the weight. It's like a diabetic keeps eating candy and blaming the doctor for bad health."

At the time of her visit to the salon, Ioakim was 37 weeks pregnant.

Ioakim replied that she would post the response, which the user then replied for her to "Stay on your side of town. West Hills."

"I was just appalled that a business owner--a person would even say something like that to anybody, man or woman," she told FOX 11 reporter, Leah Uko.

The owners' attorney advised them not to speak on camera, but they spoke with Uko over the phone.

They insisted the person posting from that account was not Sako or his wife, Ana.

They explained that they became the new owners of the salon 10 weeks ago and brought in their own staff. They decided the manager was not a good fit and fired her.

But they forgot to get the passwords to the shop's social media accounts from her before she left, which they admitted was a mistake.

They believe the former manager was hacking their accounts and creating fake accounts pretending to be them on Yelp.

They apologized for what they said was miscommunication and apologized for the incident with Ioakim's toe and offered a refund.

Ioakim said she wouldn't return, but apologizing was a good way to regain her respect.

"If they were hacked, that's terrible," she continued. "If they're willing to apologize that's fine with me. It's the right thing to do."