MUM Leanne Potter says she is disgusted that a tattoo parlour boss told her to ‘go f*** herself’ after she sent him a message saying her new tattoo had scabbed over.

The 30-year-old, from Lyneham, contacted the Facebook page of the business, Inkflicted, expressing concern that the mini pink heart on her finger was not healing properly and had almost disappeared.

But the mum-of-two was mortified by the response from Tony Covey, who runs Inkflicted at Aces High Tattoo Studio in Royal Wootton Bassett.

She says he started swearing at her, asking if she was on benefits and suggesting she was on the scrounge for a freebie and a new tattoo.

“Stop breaking the apprentice’s balls over a pathetic tattoo,” one of the messages read, which Leanne has since shared a picture of as well as her tattoo on Facebook.

She said: “It’s so unprofessional to speak to anyone like that. I was very fair with them.

“The apprentice that did my tattoo was lovely and that is who I was speaking to initially on Facebook.

“She was well-mannered but then the owner Tony started responding to the messages and it was just rude.

“It wasn’t too bad until he said ‘Are you on benefits?’. I thought it was absolutely disgusting. I’m not on benefits and my husband works full-time for the military but it doesn’t matter if someone is on benefits.”

She added: “It was the swearing at the end, which was awful.”

Leanne, who had the £10 tattoo done with another one on her stomach three weeks ago, was so taken aback by the response she did not reply and has not contacted the shop since.

“I don’t see the point in going into the shop to see him if that’s how he’s going to speak to me,” she said.

The shop has been running for nine years but neither Tony or any of his staff wanted to comment, saying the correspondence on Facebook were private messages between them and Leanne.

The tattoo parlour’s apprentice did offer to re-do the tattoo at a cost of £10, which they said would pay for the equipment used, and advised that because the finger is a sensitive area tattoos fade more quickly than elsewhere.

But Leanne was not happy paying for another tattoo in case the same thing happened again, adding that she should have been advised about that before she had it done.

She replied to the Facebook message: “I’m sorry but I’m really not happy with this or the reply. I never thought I would get a tattoo that ‘hasn’t worked’.”

She says she is more disappointed in the way she was spoken to.

“It’s awful,” she said. “I’ve got nine other tattoos so I know how to look after them.”