Before I opened Pearl Lane, I did something faintly embarrassing: I rang twenty local practices, pretending to be a patient, and asked one question. “How much is a filling?” Nineteen told me it depends, and that I should come in for a consultation. One quoted a number. I have told that story on our prices page since the day we opened, because it still strikes me as the whole problem with private dentistry in miniature.
What “price on application” actually signals
Let me be fair first: dentistry is genuinely variable. A filling can be small or large, simple or fiddly, and an honest dentist cannot promise one exact figure for every mouth. “It depends” is not a lie.
But there is a difference between “it depends, and here is the range with what moves it” and “it depends, so come in”. The first treats you like an adult making a decision. The second keeps all the information on one side of the desk until you are already in the chair – slightly anxious, slightly committed, and far less likely to say “let me think about it”. Whatever the intention behind it, that is what “price on application” does in practice: it moves the money conversation to the moment you are least equipped to have it.
People feel this, even if they never name it. It is why so many put off booking for months. The dread is rarely the drill; it is the unknown invoice attached to the drill.
The case for publishing everything
So we publish the lot – the £55 check-up, the £2,400 implant, and the £145 out-of-hours call-out we hope you never need. The same list is printed at reception. Same numbers, same order. Nobody has to ask, which matters, because asking about money out loud is its own small ordeal.
Publishing does three quiet things. It lets you plan – you can look at a range, look at your month, and decide when. It removes the suspicion that the figure was invented after the dentist saw your postcode. And it disciplines us: a published price is a promise, and promises in writing keep everyone honest.
There is a fourth thing, harder to measure. When the money question is already answered, the appointment itself changes shape. Patients ask better questions. They say “not this year” without embarrassment, and come back when the time is right, because saying no to a price on a website costs nothing socially. A surprising number of our longest-standing patients started exactly that way – they read the list, went away, and rang three months later.
How an estimate actually works here
Some of our prices are ranges – a white filling is £120 to £195, because size and position genuinely change the work. Here is how a range becomes your exact figure:
- At your check-up, we tell you what we found and what your options are – including “do nothing for now”, which is always listed as an option, not muttered as a warning.
- Before anything begins, you get a written plan with an exact price for each item. Not an estimate with an asterisk – the figure you will pay.
- The quote holds for 90 days. Take it home. Compare it. Sleep on it. Nothing about it changes because you paused.
- If we find something unexpected mid-treatment, we stop, explain, and re-quote before continuing. We never simply add it to the bill and mention it at reception.
- Anything over £500 can be spread over 12 months at 0% – the total you pay stays the same, to the penny.
If you’re comparing practices
Reading other websites tonight? Then use this, wherever you end up booking. Ask any practice three things before you commit: What is the exact figure for my case, in writing? How long does that quote hold? What happens to the price if you find something unexpected once you’ve started? A good practice answers all three without flinching. If the answers arrive vaguely, or only after a sales conversation about finance, you have learned something useful for free.
The honest downside
Does publishing prices ever cost us a patient? Occasionally. Somebody compares our filling to a cheaper one down the road and books there, and they never learn whether the cheaper quote survived contact with their actual tooth. We have made our peace with that. What we get in exchange is better: patients who walk in already knowing the cost, who can spend their appointment thinking about their teeth instead of the meter – and who tend, in our experience, to stay for years.
Transparency is not a marketing strategy. It is just the version of this profession we would want to be patients of.
– Dr Amara Osei, principal dentist