My friend's teenage daughter is currently paying her way through college with a variety of small money making schemes, including being an Avon representative. To encourage her I've been placing a small order during each campaign, one such order including a bottle of this Cherry Blossom Daily Refreshing Hair Mask which was (then) priced at around £3 but is now included in a fabulous offer where you can purchase five similarly priced products for just £4.99.

I tend to use hair masks regularly; my hair is long (although shorter than it was) and has the horrible tendency to knot up badly during washing, or whenever it gets just a tiny bit damp - conditioner (even the best of the best) isn't always enough to prevent this, so I've taken to using a hair mask at least three times a week in order to stop this appalling knotting and make brush time easier, less painful and kinder to my hair.

I wasn't completely taken with the fragrance of this Avon Naturals mask, the Cherry Blossom can barely be smelled at all and instead I found it to be more of a generalised creamy scent with just the lightest floral fragrance running through it. The hair mask has a nice small, don't get me wrong, but it's absolutely not what I was expecting and really would be a disappointment to anyone who was expecting a Cherry Blossom fragrance. This is sniffed out of the bottle, once applied to my hair there's barely and discernible fragrance at all and after rinsing - nothing!

I remember the day I bought this mask, I tried it out within an hour as I wanted to see whether it lived up to the claims it made (Hair mask revitalises hair to leave it full of body and shine - Avon book). I was, and still am, surprised at how thin the mask is as I squeeze it out of the bottle. It has more of a conditioner texture than a hair mask in my opinion and it's for that purpose which I now use it after discovering that it's pretty useless as a mask and simply doesn't have enough 'oomph' to do very much for my hair. It's not all that brilliant as a conditioner either to be honest, but at least I'm not wasting it!

The mask spreads nicely through my hair and I do think it's lovely to use, the fragrance is pleasant as I apply it and the product itself has a really nice creamy consistency. If you have long hair you'll find you use a fair bit per application but as rinsing is no problem at all this doesn't really matter, although the 200ml bottle is very small and using it daily as suggested by Avon you could find yourself using a bottle every week. It's recommended that you leave the mask on for a few minutes, which is something I always do even when using a plain conditioner, and then rinse. The period in which you're wearing the mask is fine; the mask doesn't weigh your hair down uncomfortably and even those of you with very long hair should be able to scoop and twist it onto the top of your head to prevent the mess of mask-smears every time your hair goes near anything.

After rinsing I can never really understand why I bothered using it. My hair is always as tangled as ever, it feels slightly dried out and doesn't have anything like the soft and silky feel it should be sporting after I've applied a hair mask. My hair most definitely does not feel 'refreshed' - it feels stuck together, knotted and extremely unhealthy. After brushing (and losing umpteen hairs in the unknotting process) I can see that although my hair looks smoother, this is no better than when I use any other conditioner plus my hair doesn't have the shine I've come to expect from a decent hair mask. But then this is most definitely not a decent hair mask.

I towel dry my hair and allow to dry naturally after brushing and undertaking the tiniest bit of styling, very occasionally using a hairdryer and even more occasionally going to the bother of getting the GHDs out. When dry my hair looks absolutely no different after using this Avon hair mask. It hasn't got shine, the extra body I was promised is non-existent and it feels slightly rougher to the touch (not a visible issue) than if I use a simple conditioner - in a word, disappointing.

I'm not going to recommend this based on my experience; maybe people with shorter hair have had more luck but I actually think hair length wouldn't really make much difference to the results gained from this product, it just feels to me like it's not fit for purpose and there are far better products available at a similar price or cheaper.