just had a run in with the maternity ward bounty photographer

[StateofConfusion]

And having previously defended them and loved my pictures of my eldest children todays 'rep' has made me agree they need to be removed from wards!

She arrived originally before breakfast turned on the lights and opened curtains waking me and the other Mum up, then continued to talk over the peadiatrician who was checking my dd over.

Eventually she sulked off but apparently came back when I was asleep (how dare I?) Last time she came back as I'd just settled dd and was eating lunch which had just arrived.

I said No photos at the minute thanks she got most insistant that its for security reasons?? (I'm going home today) and said she'd just lean round and take them, dd was asleep on my lap in a v pillow whilst I ate. I said again, not right now I'm eating she left brochures and went off muttering quite loudly.

I'm hormonal so ofc this has upset me, but not as much as the first time mum across they way! WHY are these people allowed to just walk around a maternity ward being so fucking rude!

I have just remembered about the Bounty book club too. Fair enough, it's not reps in a maternity ward. But I remember a rep from there hounded me by phone when DD1 was young. In the end I had to threaten going to trading standards as with every request to remove me from their database was just met with further calls. I recall arguing with him that I did not want to join the club (thanks to a heads' up on here) and he was ever so surprised as it was "free". Yeah, course it was.

Actually getting angry reading through these horrifying stories. My SIL has just paid out £140 on Bounty photo's. I'd heard of them with ttc but reading this is crazy! If one of them flung my curtain open I'd scream at her to get the fuck out and I mean scream! No matter how out of it I am. You can't take photo's of your own children at school plays but you can have randoms with a camera prowling the labour wards. I'm outraged.

DOn'r just complain to the hospital start calling the police.

The first time they are doing their job, although in a crappy way, at this point get their name and phone number, and tell them if they come back again it is harassement and you will call the police.

You probably would describe yourself as a sales rep if you worked for Venture. And I put Bounty even lower down the food chain than them.

All the job ads I have seen state that it's a commission & performance related pay 'salary'. Therefore it absolutely IS defined as a sales job. Wrt to their pho graphs skills... Experience is preferred but not essential.

Was that the book thing that was like a catalogue, with 'helpful' advice in?

I remember them as being basically loaded with ad's for very expensive baby equipment most of it not needed and most of the advice pages were actually sponsored ad's as well.

If so dreadful things useless to read unless your a first time parent who believes you need to spend £150 on a wipe warmer or some other bit of useless tat and all prams cost over a grand, and they don't even make very good fire lighters.

I'm guessing venture is a bit like double take?

If so the camera operators there do call themselves photographers and they are also performance and commission based pay.

I think it would be most cost effective for Bounty if whilst exploiting vulnerable post natal women for the details of their newborns that the sales reps popped upstairs to the geriatric ward and gathered data on those who were about to snuff it. I'm sure there's some extra cash to be made there. And we all know Bounty are all about the cash!

Frankly I'm outraged that these sleazy sales people are permitted to stalk maternity wards bullying women in order to meet their sales targets. Taxpayers fund the NHS, hands up who has agreed to fund the bullying and intimidation of new mothers.

I guess I just like to call a spade a spade Sock. You can dress up a job title any way you want. I am sure the Bounty rep here could say she was an Executive Photographic Memory Consultant, but she'd still be a sales rep, taking unasked for photos and capturing personal data which is then sold on to external companies. From vulnerable women who have just given birth.

If you google Bounty sales reps, there are loads of links to newspaper articles & forum debates about exactly this, some dating back several years.

Incidentally I'm not saying she should be there and I'm not saying she's not a sales person.

I think no one should be able to go round the wards doing this.

I'm just saying that its not unusual for someone who receives money because they take photos to call themselves a photographer, so she is not lying by doing so.

Xposted.

I agree with you that the company is scum there practices are horrible. But all the people that work there will not operate in such a foul way, some of them may not even know what the personal details are for.

I think its a practice that should be banned.

But I just happen to also think that its not really ok to go hell for leather and give verbal pastings to someone who as far as we are aware has never done any of the things people are talking about or has no power to change how the company does things.

It's like Chinese whispers this Sock

What I specifically pulled don't up on was her assertion that she is not targeted, not that she wasn't a sales rep.

Hmm, beacuse it's more hurtful for a sales rep to be given a pasting than it is for a new mother to be bullied by a sales rep desperate for another sale.

If you choose to work for such a company then you have to accept that their reputation will reflect on you as an employee.

My bounty lady was lovely. She just came by, gave me a pack and cooed over my DS. Didn't tell me to fill anything out, told me to take the free samples and bin the rest if I wanted. I was in for 8 days, she brought me a few packs round over the week. They do the bounty photography away from the post natal wards though, and you make the decision yourself if you want to contact them to get pictures done. No pushy sales people roaming the wards. Just one nice lady every few days handing out packs.

I was very lucky I think - Bounty lady just gave me the pack, didn't hassle me for details. I got a few wipes and some Sudocrem but I haven't been hounded with junk mail or phonecalls.There was a photographer who wanted to take photos, but thinking back I can't remember if they were from Bounty or some other company. In any case, I declined and whilst she seemed a little surprised, she didn't make a fuss.

But, having said all that, I had no idea how evil Bounty were, and if I had known I think I would have told them to shove their bag - it was crap anyway.

I will definitely be signing the petition when its available, the way some people here have been treated is outrageous.

Another one who was told I wouldn't be able to claim CB unless I gave my details for the pack. Luckily that was 2 days after birth when ds was out of SCBU, I was sentient, and bored as hell, so told her that wasn't true and pull the other one.

She said she'd "check with her supervisor", and stepped outside the room for a minute. Forgetting there was a window in the door. She then came back in with the form.

My birth plan with dd basically said "want to avoid pn ward, please tell Bounty to get stuffed so I don't have to". I was on the ward overnight, woman turns up, DH says your photos are crap, just give us the CB form. She laughed and did and buggered off.

My first antenatal appt the MW gave me the pack saying don't get too excited, the only useful bit is the plastic envelope to keep your notes clean. Which was great as I tipped coffers over it a few times. Tried turning it inside out for dd but didn't work.

The contents of the packs were even more crap this year than 2008 - down from about £5 of stuff to a single teabag!

WTR to the bounty lady who says that she is nice to all the mums - I'm afraid I think this can be a form of insidious blackmail as well. When I was on then ward, my DS was in NICjust acing just had surgery twice. I hadn't seen him since birth four days previously (when i had seen him for all of about ten seconds) as I was too ill to leave bed. The midwives on the ward really didn't seem to care that I had had a baby, or that I was so comprehensively apart from him. When the bounty lady came in and was nice and interested and wanted to ask about the baby who was apparently nonexistent to everyone else, I would have sold her my soul, let alone a few personal details. It wasn't until much later that I realised exactly what she had been there for and I think I was incapable of making an informed choice at that point.

Thankfully I had read the thread re bounty earlier this year, and was able to see her coming. She came round at 8am, and I'd only been on the ward 4 hours after a forceps delivery and third degree tear repair so was not in the mood to be bothered, so was quite abrupt. I did enjoy hearing everyone else's confidential information as she went round the beds!

One more thing

They are not allowed on private wards.
So hospitals must know they are disruptive.

I've posted this before under other names but here goes...

My dd1 died less than an hour after birth in 2005. I was moved to the postnatal ward despite my delivery mw doing her level best to keep me down there but they needed the beds. I had a manual removal of placenta and had a catheter in place. I was in a side room where the mw in charge insisted the door had to stay open so I'd spent the night listening to babies crying when my own had died. 9am rolls round, in bounces the Bounty woman, no knocks or anything and she congratulated me. I had to tell her my baby had died. She didn't apologise, she barely even looked me in the face and backed out of the room. I was alone and totally, completely distraught by the experience. I will never forget it, it was completely heartless. A wonderful bereavement midwife helped me to raise the issue and I got an apology from the hospital but not Bounty.

When my ds1 was born a year later, she went in for the hard sell, including claiming the photos were for security reasons (ie if my baby went missing from the ward they'd have a photo to release to the press... great thing to tell a brand new mother???) but I refused the photos. They were horrendous, ditto with dd2 and ds2. I had dd3 at home so the mw brought the packs round.

I've used the Bounty website (in desperation, for support after dd1's death, in my darkest hour in my defence but I made some good friends there in the end) and they just don't give a shit about anything except clicks. I've been banned countless times for ridiculous reasons (using the word dildo for example. Someone else was banned for saying tits) and the final straw was them allowing a long-term member to create new ID's and troll the buggery out of the site. Over and over. Whilst banning people who protested against it.

They are an awful company. They just want ££££££££ - they sell details quarterly, six-monthly or annually depending on how regularly the companies buying want to target people. Early Learning Centre used to buy quarterly, not sure if they still do as I no longer work for them but if I had known what I know now back then I would have been a flea in the Managing Director's ear - any company with any sense should stay far, far away from them.

Some truly awful stories here.

I was warned off them by my first midwife! First time round I gave them an address I was moving from shortly. Second time a fake address and (whilst playing on my iPhone) told her I didn't check emails and never used my phone. Said I did not wish to be contacted. When she pressed more I explained I was going to cloth bum, Breastfeed and do blw so all their tat was useless to me. That shut her up.

Dontbeatmeupitschristmas You've spent a lot on photos of your dc? Why? If you are being paid to take photos of other people's dcs, whether you pressure them or not, surely you must be great at it yourself or a professional? Why have other professionals take pictures for you and be charged lots if Bounty are so cheap?

After pfb dd was born, we waited about a month and happened to be in our town centre, walking past Woolies. For £5 we had a large picture taken of dd in dp's hands. Its beautiful that photo. The lady who took it was kind, considerate and asked what we wanted.

Yes, she took lots of pictures and we were invited to come back and have a look and then we had the option of buying others, but as good as they all were, that picture is my favourite of all dd's baby pics. No pressure on us to buy the rest, just smiles and off we went.

Unlike Bounty, who feel they can lie and scam people who are vulnerable, reduce them to tears and who, hand over fist take shite pictures and then, on the odd time they take a half decent picture get the babies names etc wrong.

Threw Emma's diary in the bin as blatant advertising and no use whatsoever.

The Mw told me in the hospital the bounty last would be coming round but I was under no obligation to her. Wish they had told her that. She was there outside visiting hours, harassing and totally thick skinned. When I said she couldn't have my details and I didn't want a bag she said she would just get them off the Mw as I HAD to hand then over it was part of the deal.

She wouldn't leave me alone even when I was crying she still said heres the form, it won't take you a minute. I chucked it in the bin and she got it out and held it for me. I pushed her hand away- Told her to go away in hacking sobs - dh appeared as he works very strange hours and they said he could come if he was very quiet outside visiting.

He crept up behind her and was very menacing:) in telling her to leave me alone. He did moan at the Mw too, but they were uninterested in the extra stress they cause. Funny, when the Mw are banging on about pnd and being as relaxed as possible.

I'm appalled by this. Surely the issue is why hospital management think it's ok to let non nhs staff into maternity wards, and that these non nhs staff can approach women with no supervision, at any time, regardless of their medical state. Pulling curtains aside! There's a basic security and privacy issue.

How dare hospitals agree to this completely unacceptable practice for payment! How can it be legal? Where's the respect for patient dignity and confidentiality? I get angry about car parking but this is a whole other league!

Why doesn't any of this get reported to the Information Commissioner? It may breach the Data Protection Act, misleading people about what the data is for.