MNHQ here: Bounty Mutiny (get Bounty and commercial reps off wards) - UPDATE

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

Thought some of you would be pleased to hear that as the petition to ban commercial reps started by Lauren Harris has passed 10k signatures, the government had to provide a response.

In it, they praise Ipswich hospital for introducing:

'a system where mothers are only approached by a commercial representative if they indicate that this is something that they would like. Mothers can show their preference by placing a card on their bedside table. This is a good example of how Trusts can put processes in place to give new mothers clear control over their interaction with commercial representatives.'

They go on to say:

'The Government is considering how to clarify guidance, so that that the interaction between commercial representatives and new mothers on NHS wards is consistently more positive across the UK.'

So, a small step but hopefully a good one. For the GDPR mavens among you there's also some commentary on that issue in the response on the petition page (please let us know what you think!)

Please do sign the petition if you feel strongly about this - every signature demonstrates the strength of feeling on the issue, and if the petition reaches 100k it will be debated in Parliament.

If you've already signed, you could:

1. write to the hospital where you had your baby (or the hospital where you will be having your baby, or would have your baby at if you had a hospital birth). Bring the response to their attention (they may not be aware of the petition), and point out that the Government has clearly indicated hospitals should have this sort of opt IN system and that other mothers should be left alone.

2. Tweet/share a Facebook post to East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (@ESNEFT on Twitter) to commend Ipswich hospital on its policy, and tag in your local hospital trust asking them to do the same.

3. Tweet/share a Facebook post with the Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) asking them to prioritise new guidance for trusts on this issue.

If you have any ideas for other useful actions to take please add them here!

Thanks
MNHQ

Yes the hospital trusts do get money for each bounty sales pitch signed up to. It's around £4 per signing if I remember correctly.

I complained directly to bounty as she lied and told me I had to sign up to get your CB forms.

Funnily enough it's actually really difficult to complain to bounty.

I got a reply apologizing and saying they sacked her.

It is so so WRONG to have very vulnerable 'patients' being sold to.

Needs to end.

This thread shows the unneccesary trauma being sold to post natally can do.
In any other medical setting this would not be allowed.

I am going to find out the names of the people (probably men) on the board of bounty and tweet them this thread.

If they have a shred of humanity they will surely change it to an opt-in system.

Not holding out much hope though.

Signed and shared.

Some of these are UNBELIEVABLE, so sorry for pps who had the reps be so horribly insensitive when their babies were poorly, etc. I posted about this on another thread but I had the rep try to bother me after I'd just pooed myself post birth (marvellous) and my baby was screaming for a feed. I literally said, 'Please go away, I have just pooed myself and my baby is hungry' (past caring about dignity and thought surely they will fuck off if I mention poo) and the rep didn't miss a beat and tried to pressure me into signing up so I could get my child benefit form. Reader, I did not sign up. They came back every single day and I kept saying no, so in the end I just told them that I'd had it all done with another of their colleagues and that finally stopped them.

Absolutely, completely and totally unacceptable that they're allowed to swan around trying to sell you things when you're just trying to recover and bond with your baby. And as someone else mentioned, most of us have smartphones now so spending £100+ on some photos and three nappy samples seems a bit ridiculous.

Off to sign the petition now breathes

Another person whose baby was in NICU and was crying on the ward when the Bounty rep pulled back my curtains. She left without a word when I said 'no, no, just go away' but as nobody in my bay had their baby with them, I'm not sure why she came in in the first place.
I was on Transitional Care bay this time and wasn't bothered.

I'm in Ireland so I've no experience of this. Is this really a private company that just land on the post natal ward to take photographs? How can that even be allowed? Can anyone just walk into the wards? In the hospital I work in, you need to be buzzed into the post natal ward, so only visitors to the patients are allowed in. How absolutely awful

Hi hate Bounty and everything they stand for. I also know first hand how much income hospitals generate from allowing them access. After my last baby I left my (grown up) daughter watching her sleeping brother while I did a spin round the ward (c-sec wanted to prove I was mobile so I could go home). When I returned the dreaded bounty pack was on the bed. Luckily my daughter had managed to fend her off enough not to take the pictures. I grabbed that pack and followed the rep down the ward to return it to her. "Oh but you need it for the child benefit forms" and "there's free nappies". My response was "bullshit" "I'm using cloth" and "nothings free in this world". Felt good and also made sure the midwives saw me up and about and we went home that afternoon!

any other medical setting this would not be allowed
Indeed!

I'm utterly shocked at this massive vendetta against Bounty Reps.
They did not pounce or try and convince me. They merely came and asked me if I would be interested.
Had it not been for the bounty rep I would not have had any professional photos of my newborn baby. They are so reasonably priced and natural compared to studio prices.
I do not support this petition in any way, shape or form and I think it would be extremely sad for some parents who actually appreciate them to remove them from hospitals.

@firsttimemumma89 when I had my varicose veins done I was delighted with the cosmetic result but the ward staff didn't arrange for Kodak Kenny to come and take a photo of this wondrous event. Neither do I want Bounty Barbara tripping in when I've just delivered my baby. If I wanted professional newborn pics I was capable of arranging that myself and preferably at a point where I wasn't certain if one cough would lay the contents of my abdomen all over the ward floor.

Im.not sure Bounty reps are professional photographers firsttime , my dsd mum is a bounty rep she isnt a trained photographer and all the photos i have seen taken by bounty reps are not anything special , not any better than anyone could take tbh .

firsttimemumma89 there is overwhelming experience here of predatory selling practices... You are literally one of the handful of people/posters who haven't experienced it. Surely you see there's a need to change approach when this underhand targeting of vulnerable patients in hospital beds is so out of control?
Your 1 experience doesn't negate that.

I think someone from Bounty management has found this thread
Maybe we could spread the service hospital wide I mean I would have loved a photo of my appendix scar tastefully taken immediately post-op
Or of my 1year old son in HDU after surgery I’m sure in the right lighting he’d have looked grand #makingmemories

@firsttimemumma89

HAVE YOU EVEN READ ABOUT WHAT BOUNTY REPS HAVE DONE TO OTHER WOMEN? Or are you too self-absorbed and wrapped up in your own PFB to give a shit about anyone else?

I had a straightforward delivery, a healthy baby, and didn't have a bad experience with the Bounty rep BUT after reading the horror stories over time being on MN not just in this thread I can see how awful other women's experiences have been with them. I signed the petition awhile back because of that But also because non-hospital staff have no place on a postnatal ward outside of visiting hours nor do commercial reps period.

You wouldn't get a tena lady rep on the gynae wards post surgery, neither would you get ambulance chasers or wheelchair sales reps on a trauma ward so why have bounty reps on a postnatal ward? The first time around I can't even remember if I dished out my details as I was too unwell and the second time around I had primed dh to tell her to shove it or I would.

Iirc it's something like £1 per person per sign up for a bounty pack and £5 per person per photos the NHS gets. And there is even a section on the Bounty website about how to prepare for your new born baby's first photo ffs.

Having read what people write...... I think they just jump on the band wagon and make it out to be worse than it is.
If you don't want it then say no. Simple. Don't create all this negative press when there are alot of parents who like having them on maternity wards.
They are CRB checked and are employed, they are not just random people walking onto a maternity ward.
I absolutely love my bounty photos and when I have another baby, if idiots such as the anti group on here have stopped them I will be extremely annoyed. Its totally unfair

Some people really don’t get empathy do they

They’re not allowed at my hospital at all so I’m not sure I understand why the opt in system is a good solution. The hospital can and should just say no.
Opt in still somehow implies that you’ve got to let Bounty in to the wards as if they have some weird kind of right to be there.

@Firsttimemumma89, I'm really pleased you came across a pleasant non pushy rep but this has cropped up again and again on this board and others over the years. It's clearly a problem & I doubt people are exaggerating the impact being treated as a captive audience and subjected to hardsell has had on them at point where they were supposed to be recovering from serious injuries or loss or dealing with very ill babies.

People are reporting being browbeaten and lied to, being asked insensitive questions, having their privacy disregarded and their wishes and requests to left alone ignored. This has remained constant, Bounty have not addressed this. Even if this is a minority of reps, letting this behaviour stand reflects badly on the company ethos and should not be rewarded with continued access to wards. But hey, you got some photos!

they are not just random people walking onto a maternity ward.

They are unwanted, uninvited strangers selling for profit on a hospital ward outside of visitor hours who

a) Don't clearly highlight their commercial agenda and

B) target vulnerable women touting false information (e.g. you need them to get access to child benefit forms).

In fact, Firsttimemumma89, your post has fvcked me off so much, such a lack of empathy, that I am actually going to follow this up directly with my local hospital. I always meant to but your post has given me the shove to prioritize actually doing it and making sure women's voices are being heard. Thanks for the reminder.

Firsttimemumma89

Well aren't you a joy.

I dont think they are emplued actually firsttime i think they work on commision only (i read up on the company quite an eye opener) which is probably why so many are pushy.

I don't care if they come with MI6 vetting, a police firearms license and a Blue Peter badge, being DBS checked or not isn't the issue. They are let into wards with the complicit say so of senior nhs staff to SELL to women. They are there to harvest your data. A canny picture is neither here nor there. Bounty pay in the 4 figures to nhs Trust’s to be allowed access to the wards. I've always found it an abhorrent practice even without the horror stories.

a) Don't clearly highlight their commercial agenda

They really REALLY don’t.

The last ones I had were very nice and polite and cooed over the babies. But they were also on the ward outside visiting hours, wearing uniform-type clothes, saying they were “Here to check if you’ve had your Bounty bag yet?”, and when someone else in my bay asked what one of those was they said “oh it’s your freebies and your child benefit form.” If you didn’t know who Bounty was you’d have assumed they were hospital staff.

Also it was outside visiting hours and I was trying to rest! Why should commercial reps get to cut into patients’ recovery time?

The fact that some mothers may have had a positive experience with Bounty is not justification for NHS trusts to continue to enable the intrusion of commercial sales peoples on maternity wards.

Even following a "text book birth" (if such a thing exists) many women are tired, emotional and vulnerable.

This is not an appropriate setting to "flog your wares".

What I find particularly abhorrent is the use of child benefit forms to legitimise why a woman should need to have contact with a Bounty representative when this is patently untrue.

Cards on bedside table are not the answer when the result is that your privacy has already been violated by the "rep" drawing your curtains/entering your room to see it.

If Bounty want a presence in hospitals then it should be outside of the wards where people who want to engage with them can do so and new mums can make bedside appointments with Bounty reps at a time of their choosing.

Access to a mother without an invitation should be banned. In other words it should be an opt in system rather than opt out (as a minimum - ideally I'd like to see it banned altogether).

As pp's have said, if such practices were allowed on Cardiac wards for example there would be utter outrage.

It shows yet again fundamental and institutional level of sexism that women are allowed to be targeted in such a way for financial gain by NHS Trusts.