Author: /u/bela_the_horse

So my wife and I are looking to get a couple of smaller tattoos. We met with an artist at what we thought was a really quality shop, but I’m thinking that I’m getting taken advantage of at this point.

When we first met with the artist, we told him our ideas – 5 total tattoos, all about 3-4 inches with some color. He told us that he does either half day or full day sessions only, half days run $600 and full days run $1200. The artist told us that we could bang out all 5 in a half day, so we booked our half day, put down our deposit and sent him an email with our design ideas so he could come up with the tattoo layouts. We never heard back from them from email, until a different artist emailed us and wanted us to come in a different day which was pretty alarming to us. No, we booked a specific artist and a specific day and didn’t want them to shuffle us around. So they said OK, we could go into our appointment and they would show us some drawings and then we could cancel or reschedule.

So we went to our consultation, the guy was really cool and apologetic and said he would work up some quick designs. He came back out and then told us he couldn’t do everything in a half day session now, which is not what he had originally said. So we were talking about getting a matching couples fish tattoo, or the other 3 tattoos and trying to decide between them. And somehow I feel like I got talked into getting all of them at a full day. And when he came back out with the designs for the fish, we were expecting him to come out with an original design but it looked like he just scanned some of the pictures that we sent and added scales. And we specifically told him we wanted the fish to be more abstract and watercolor, not with the scales and detail. He tried to go back and add some of what we were talking about, and we left feeling sort of excited to be getting our tattoos that we’ve been planning and wanting. But then the cost of it all started to get to me. $1200 for 5 small tattoos? That they told me they could do in a half day and then pulled the old switcharoo on me? And then the designs didn’t seem like they were really trying that hard.

I’ve had a couple of tattoos in my day, but its been a while and I don’t know the Houston pricing very well. So what do you guys think? Am I getting taken for a ride here? Should I try to force them to refund me my $200 deposit? If they won’t refund me, does it make sense to eat the $200 and go somewhere else? I just don’t understand how it’s going to take a full day, and at that pricing it might just make more sense to go somewhere else more affordable since its smaller tattoos.