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My daughter has wanted to get her ears pierced for a while now and when she turned six I finally gave in and told her she could get them done.

My reasoning was that loads of her friends have already had their ears pierced, I was a lot younger when my mum had mine pierced and I think she's old enough to look after them now.

So, on her birthday this week, I took my excited little girl into Claire's Accessories in Princes Quay in Hull. I choose Claire's because they market themselves as the 'world's leading ear piercing specialists' and have been piercing for 40 years.

I'll start by being totally honest - I didn't research the price before we entered the shop. Naively or not I expected it to cost somewhere in the region of £20 - £30 to get a child's ears pierced. In hindsight, clearly I should have looked into this first.

(Image: Hull live)

I asked the assistant if we needed to make an appointment and was told we didn't, and was then handed the board of earrings to choose from, whilst the assistant pierced the ears of two other children.

Options on the board include all different colours and types including 18ct gold, 9ct gold, stainless steel and titanium earrings - to name a few. There were no prices alongside them.

At this point Jasmine was staring to get a bit nervous, so I admit my focus was on her, and not on price.

We weren't given any guidance, but 18ct gold looked good to me so when it was our turn Jasmine pointed to the ones she wanted. She went for the 3mm crystal 18CT gold ones.

The assistant invited Jasmine to sit down, got the paper work out and got the earrings out and showed us them. To be fair, at this point she did tell me they were £68.

I thought I'd misheard her.

"£68?," I said. "Yes," She replied.

I could tell she could see I was shocked, but due to the fact she didn't go on to tell me about any cheaper options, I wrongly assumed the prices for all the earrings must have been a similar price.

By this point there was no going back. We had already made the choice. I'd taken my coat off, my daughter had psyched herself up and was sat on my knee all ready, so I found myself muttering "that's fine." It would have been so embarrassing to ask if there was anything cheaper!

(Image: Hull live)

I'd gone for the 18ct gold ones because I perceived them to be the best ones on the list as I didn't want anything cheap in her ears - but I would have been open to know about other options.

Before I knew it the earrings were in her ears and I was £68 lighter. I must say, she does love them.

It's only afterwards I've looked online and can see prices for piercing at Claire's Accessories start from just £15 - so I do feel robbed that there is in fact much more reasonable options available that weren't pointed out.

It would have been helpful if the options were explained to us - but obviously it's my fault for not checking first.

If I was given the prices, I probably wouldn't have gone for the cheapest £15 stainless steel option - but instead of 18CT gold at £68 I might have gone for 24CT gold plated at £30.

I've canvassed opinion asking people to guess how much children's ear piercing costs and most people I've spoken to say around the £25 mark, so I'm sharing this in the hope of helping another parent not make the same mistake I did!

(Image: Hull live)

Claire's Accessories - it would be really helpful to have the prices on the board of earrings so parents can make an informed choice.

Or, at the very least, it would be helpful for staff to not just hand the board over, but to go through the choices and prices with parents first.

I can't think of anything else in life you buy which is not clearly marked with a price. Rant over!

What Claire's Accessories say

A spokeswoman said: "We're delighted to hear that you had your daughter's ears pierced with us, and we hope it was a great experience for you and your daughter - 'We make Memories' at Claire's so hope we lived up to our promise at our Hull store.



"From the information you provided, it sounds like you treated your daughter to a lovely solid gold crystal piercing.

"Our ear piercing services start at £15 for both ear lobes, £12 for a single - there are 4 stainless steel styles available at this price point, and this price includes the specialist ear piercing earrings, the piercing service, and our standard ear care lotion.

"For customers who'd like to change out their earrings more quickly than the six week standard solution time period, there is an option to upgrade to our exclusive rapid ear care lotion for an additional £10 with any of our piercing styles.

"We then have other precious metal options available, including 24ct gold plated stainless steel from £20-30, titanium from £22-30, 9ct gold from £35-50, 18ct gold from £48-68, all the way up to a 9ct gold diamond piercing earring at £90.

"Our prices are based on the cost of the metal, and the cost of any stones used i.e. crystal, cubic zirconia or diamond.

"Our ear piercing earrings are designed specifically for piercing at our specialist ear piercing vendor's state of the art facility.

"They have sharp points, and are individually packaged and pre-sterilised, and they remain that way until the point of piercing.

"It is the sharp sterilised ear piercing earring that pierces the ear, not the ear piercing instrument, the instrument purely allows the use of gentle pressure to push the sterilised earring through the ear for the piercing."

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