Great quality tattoos, definitely need to improve ...

Great quality tattoos, definitely need to improve on overall customer service.

I decided on Big Brain after narrowing down my search for a shop to do a half-sleeve that I had been planning for a while. Read a lot of good reviews about the place and looked through some of the artists' portfolios, and everything look great. Called and set up an appt and was ready to go.

I live about an hour and a half out of Omaha, but I was willing to make the drive for the quality. Things went fine at first, had a few email exchanges going back and forth with some pictures that expressed the design in intent. I'm not personally artistically skilled enough to draw something up myself, but I had a friend who's drawn some tattoos in the past sketch some stuff up so I had a good start. I'm not going to speak negatively of the quality of the work nor the cleanliness of the shop, because it was top notch.

What was frustrating was the general experience. Whereas I understand that it is not uncommon to have to draw up some parts of the tattoo and/or adjust some of what's already sketched, every time I showed up for an appointment I had a fairly significant wait time while the artist while the artist was drawing things up (45 minutes was the shortest, 2 the longest, average was a little over an hour). Maybe I'm way off base, but my assumption was that if I set up an appointment for 12:00, I wouldn't be waiting until 2:00 before I was sitting in the chair. Totally get that I was the one that made the decision to get my work done at a shop outside of the town I live, but that wait seemed excessive. Specifically when I would see fast food orders be delivered for the artist. Just would think that with some better planning his lunch could have been scheduled around the appointment that had been set up for several weeks. That typically soured my mood when I had appointments there because I had to blow an entire day for the appointment, and spent a lot of time twiddling my thumbs in the waiting area.

Lastly, just wasn't ever comfortable there. Might have just been that I didn't "click" really well with my artist, but wasn't a lot of effort put into trying to have any sort of conversation during the sessions. I understand that I maybe don't have a ton in common with the fellas at the shop personality / interest-wise, but just would think that at least a little bit of effort could have been put into at least attempting to find some common ground. I tried to make some conversation which was met with little response. I have somewhat of a blank area on my arm that I was looking for some design ideas on. Asked my artist, "Any ideas on what to put in here? I'm kind of thinking I'd like to incorporate this in...." and got a response of "I don't know. Not really thinking about that right now." I don't know. Just thought that if we're spending 12+ hours sitting next to each other there could be a little conversation, or at the very least some guidance on tattoo design. I got the impression that it was a chore to help me out with design ideas or tattoo me.

Again, just might not have been the right fit for me. Giving 2 stars for the quality of the shop. Would be an unfortunate 0 if only the customer experience was being evaluated. Would highly recommend for their quality, but would certainly recommend you look elsewhere if you're wanting to have a good overall experience.