Bleaching Emergency- HELP!

Horrible, awful disaster, not on my hair but my poor partner's. He has been going to a top salon in London for root touch ups every 6 weeks post having his hair slowly and carefully bleached by them to a level 9/10, and toned silver, for the best part of a year now. They were doing a fabulous job and his hair was maintaining its structural integrity perfectly, it was thick and very strong/healthy. At home we were taking care of it with regular conditioning masks, protein treatments, Olaplex Number 3 and lots of coconut oil, organ oil and olive oil. All was plane sailing.

As the cost/hassle of travelling to London was getting a bit much (we live out in the sticks) so we decided to find him somewhere closer to home to have a simple root touch up. We wanted to be careful as I've had bleaching disasters myself at local salons and have a hard time trusting anyone other than stylists at top London salons with our hair now! We found a local Lifestyle Salon via the Olaplex website. Reviews seemed pretty damned good and they specialised in bleaching. The girl who did his hair had nice silver hair herself. What could go wrong?

Sadly he's been the victim of some very serious malpractice. He asked her just to do his roots and refresh the toner and to use Olaplex in the mix and be careful with the condition. She noted his hair was in fabulous condition to start with for level 9/10 hair. The London salon has always used Olaplex and a low volume developer and been as gentle as possible with his hair. When this lady applied the bleach to his roots he felt a great deal more itching and irritation than he has ever previously experienced. He noticed his black roots very rapidly go orange and asked whether it was normal. She said it was a higher volume developer than he was used to but not to worry as she had a close eye on it and gave him a comb to itch his scalp if it got to much. As soon as she finished the roots she muttered something about there being a few slightly darker tones in his ends and proceeded to apply the bleach to the entire lengths of his already level 9/10 hair! Bear in mind his hair was a PERFECT unbrassy, clean silver when he walked in the salon!!! She left the bleach on his head for at least 45 minutes plus. The roots seemed to have achieved a very pale blonde a great deal of time before she washed it off and all his alarm bells were ringing but sadly we just sometimes give professionals the benefit of the doubt! 🙁

She eventually washed it off and then applied "a mixture", he tells me, that stung severely and he had to ask her to wash it off (could it have been a bleach bath?!?!?) Then, she applied a toner (wella toner with developer.) After 10 minutes there was a little crowd of girls from the salon around him mumbling that the colour wasn't right. They applied more toner and left him for a good half hour. By the time it was washed off it was a very pale powder blue, not the metallic silver he had wanted. The stylist said she didn't understand what had gone wrong as she used that particular toner in her own silver hair all the time to great effect. He shrugged it off knowing I could fix it to a nice silver for him at home and presumed it was no biggie as, at least, his roots were done.

Fast forward to a few days later when he gently washed his hair for the first time. It MELTED off in his hands, literally, snapped and broke off. He had a total freak out, understandably. I have read all about bleach damage on this forum and have had bleach damaged hair myself but NOTHING like this. Please take heed from us, its a horror story what serious bleach damage can do, when you see it you realise how serious it can be and WHY people on this forum warn so hard against giving in to the temptation of further colour corrections on already bleached hair. Thankfully the roots maintained enough integrity (having only had one bleaching) to have not snapped off leaving him bald but the ends which were grossly assaulted with bleach and again with toner/developer are breaking off in chunks like candy floss. his hair was about 5" long on top (short sides) and very thick/strong to start with but now he has wispy strands all over his head where chunks of about 4" have broken right off and it looks an absolute state.

YES, we are taking it up with the senior manager of Lifestyle! BIG TIME! The girl was absolutely out of her mind doing what she did. It was a recipe for melted hair no matter how you look at it and even you most novicey home-bleacher would have realised you don't put high volume bleach on level 9/10 hair and leave it for 40 minutes! THEN assault it again with (potentially a bleach bath?) and more developer. I mean- WHY?! Why the hell would she do this? She even wanted to run hair straighteners though it in the salon after blasting it with a hot hair dryer but he said no.

I would really appreciate advice as to how to proceed with his hair. The first thing I did was slather his hair with coconut oil. We can't put on enough, it keeps drinking it and drinking it. Ultimately I think a serious hair cut is in order, if not a total buzz cut and he is devastated. He is desperate to save at least some of the length but I want to be realistic with him. Should we, at this stage, put a serious protein treatment in the hair to try and salvage what we can before he (inevitably) has to lose some length? With hair this compromised I'm terrified to do any further damage so thought I'd seek advice before proceeding.

I have got a whole host of treatments here including Aphogee two stage, Philip Kingsley Elasticiser, Joico KPAK.At the moment we are just going the coconut oil route as I don't want to wet the hair and cause any more damage than necessary. Should we reach for any of these at this stage? We are going to his regular barber tomorrow to cut off as much as possible but he was hoping to save at least a little of his quiff at the front. Is this a bad idea? We don't want the stands to unravel to the roots.

This is literally the most tragic bleach damage I have seen. He is a hair proud boy and you can just imagine the devastation. At least, in 6 months, he will have achieved a fair bit of his length back as his hair grows very fast. If this happened to me and I had to have a pixie cut on my not-so-fast growing hair I would go out of my mind. I was going to have my roots done here too and am SO RELIEVED I didn't but gutted I had to discover this at the expense of my boyfriend's once very beautiful hair.

Any advice or thoughts would much appreciated!

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He's now been refunded by the salon. Great, but he would have preferred to have not been refunded and have hair in the place of the money.  *ott* It burns your a**e when you realise that you could have done your own fella's bleach and done a better job but didn't want to risk anything going wrong so sent him along to a "professional"  :-

Game plan is to treat with warm coconut oil today.
Aphogee two stage treatment tomorrow.
Hair cut by his trusty local barber seeing what can be salvaged.

Thoughts on this plan please anyone? Is Aphogee going to be the best way forward? I thought that seeing as it was a seriously strong treatment it would be best to save what we can for now in our post bleach ER. We also have Philip Kingsley Elasticiser and KPAK. 

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