1. The treatment named before the problem is understood
You mention feeling tired looking. Within a minute a specific treatment and a price have been named. Nobody has asked when you notice it, what you have tried, what your history is, or looked at your face in good light.
An assessment produces a recommendation. A pitch produces one immediately.
2. The expiring discount
The price is lower if you book today, or if you have it now while you are here. This is the single most common technique in the field and the easiest to name.
It works by converting a considered decision into an immediate one, which is precisely what the guidance on cosmetic consent asks practitioners not to do. See consent and cooling off.
3. The package at a first visit
You came to ask about one thing. You are offered a bundle covering several, prepaid, at a discount, before you have had any of them.
Packages can be genuine value for treatments that require courses, but committing to a course of something you have never had removes the point at which you would have found out whether it suits you. The arithmetic is in packages, courses and memberships.
4. Product prepared before consent is finished
The syringe is drawn up, or the tray is out, or the area has been cleaned, while the risks are still being described. The physical setup has already assumed the answer.
This is often unthinking rather than manipulative, and it still has the same effect: saying no becomes socially harder at exactly the moment it should be easiest.
5. The plan that is longer than the problem
You raised one concern. The proposal addresses six, three of which you had not noticed and one of which you now cannot stop noticing.
Pointing out features a patient had not complained about, and then offering to correct them, is the mechanism by which a person who wanted one thing becomes a person who wants five. Professional guidance warns against exploiting patients' vulnerabilities and against creating concerns in order to treat them.
6. Flattery, and the wrong kind of encouragement
You would really suit a bit of. You have got great bones for. A little bit here would transform you.
These are pleasant sentences and they are doing work. A clinical recommendation explains a cause and proposes an intervention. A compliment attached to a treatment name is not a clinical recommendation.
7. Reluctance to let you go away and think
You say you would like to think about it. The response is another offer, a shorter appointment today, a reason why waiting is not necessary, or visible disappointment.
The correct response is: of course, here is the written plan, take your time. Anything else tells you what the appointment was for.
8. No mention of what it will not do
Across the whole appointment, nobody says a single sentence about a limitation. Every question is answered with a yes, and every concern has a treatment attached.
Every treatment in aesthetics has clear limits. An appointment that contains none of them has not been about your face.
9. The follow up that is not clinical
You did not book. Over the following fortnight a sequence of messages arrives: a reminder that the offer is still available, a photograph of somebody else's result, a note that a cancellation has come up.
Follow up after a consultation is reasonable and a message asking whether you have any further questions is a courtesy. What distinguishes the two is content. A clinical follow up asks whether anything is unclear. A sales follow up restates the price, restates the scarcity and does not ask you anything.
Notice also who sends it. A message from the practitioner who assessed you is a different thing from an automated sequence run by whoever manages the account, and the second one is usually not aware of what was discussed.
10. The appointment that was booked as a consultation and staffed as a sale
You booked a consultation. The person you meet is not the person who will treat you, does not examine you, cannot answer a clinical question and steers everything towards booking a slot with somebody else.
Some clinics call this role a patient coordinator and some do not name it at all. There is nothing wrong with an administrator arranging appointments. There is something wrong with an appointment described as a consultation in which no clinical assessment takes place, because that is the appointment that is supposed to protect you.
Professional guidance is that the person performing a procedure should be the person who obtained consent. An appointment structured so that neither of those people has assessed you before the day of treatment does not meet that expectation, however it is labelled.
What to do about it
Take the written plan and leave. Nothing needs deciding in the room. If the price changes as a result of leaving, you have learned what the discount was for.
Ask the three questions that are hardest to sell around: what will this not achieve, who prescribed it and have they assessed me, and what happens if there is a problem out of hours. The full list is in the questions to ask.
And if you feel uncomfortable, that is sufficient reason to stop. You do not need to justify it, and there is no obligation to complete a purchase because you attended an appointment. If you are considering where to go instead, our criteria guide is at how to choose an aesthetic clinic in Glasgow.