Serious advice please. Found shrapnel in our baby's nappies.

[M6L11]

Nicko_12345 said:

Doh, helps if I read before posting ?? sorry!

No worries, easy mistake. As it happens we're not the only ones. Here's a lady from earlier who also complained to Pampers that her baby was injured by metal in their nappies:

Link here.

[M6L11]

That's red tops for you, they've lifted it from the media agency... I can assure you I haven't been anywhere near as dramatic lol.

[M6L11]

senorblm said:

Well to bring a bit of balance it hasn't been too dissimilar a response from you has it? Your wife's post on facebook is just as sensationalist talking about septicemia whilst providing no actual useful information to people like the batch number, just getting people to share an ambiguous post.

Large companies deserve (a lot of) stick at time but I do feel for P&G in this because they now have to deal with a social media st storm full of misinformation being shared like fact and absolute truth. As mentioned they responded within 9 minutes of being informed and are following established procedures to resolve it, not really much more that you can ask them to do really.

The product code has been shared on Facebook many hundreds of times, once we were made aware of it. It's printed in tiny letters in the nappy itself, we couldn't find it. Amazingly since it went to press trading standards have gone from being too busy to allocate it for the next week to having officers in two counties working on the case and asking if we still have the nappies....

[M6L11]

Sorry for the bump, but we have an update.

After getting a professional photographer to take detailed photos we sent the nappies off to P&G via their doorstep collection courier. We had an email yesterday announcing the end of their investigation, and the gist of it is that:

• The nappies do contain shards of sharp metal.
• A machine on their factory floor suffered mechanical failure at 10.32 on 17th July 2015.
• The part was replaced, but pieces of the old part were left in the machine.
• Said pieces then shattered into nappies, which we subsequently purchased.
• Despite passing '500 sensors and metal detectors' the shards went undetected because of their 'small size and unique angle'.
• P&G are very sure ours are the only nappies to be affected, and all the others are completely unrelated(!).

We've been offered a tour of their factory in Manchester (erm, no thanks?!) and a donation to a charity. They have failed to release any statements or acknowledge the problem publicly to confirm the truth of our allegations. Not that surprising for a company looking to minimise bad PR from the outset, but we have in the interim received everything from hate mail (including a doctor who accused us of hurting our baby intentionally for 'compo') to death threats and a threat to blow up our house with us all inside. All of the nastiness on the stated grounds that we are clearly lying compo/sun-seeking chancers and child abusers. The general public are such lovely people.

ETA: Asda never did reply to us about the whole thing. We chased them several times, supplied contact details three times, and never heard a peep back.

Thanks to those who responded positively to the thread. I honestly half wish we hadn't bothered.

Edited by M6L11 on Friday 28th August 09:21

[M6L11]

surveyor said:

It does not seem like a real effort from the Manufacturer. You'd have thought 6 months of nappies would be more appropriate... I suppose there's a level where they don't want to encourage fraudsters, but equally where there nappies have gone out carrying shards of metal for whatever reason, and where it's caused injury they should be aiming to make a real and genuine effort to put in place some restitution in whatever format is appropriate - not bartering.

A good example was the Alton Towers crash. Their reaction was a really good example of how to minimise bad PR. I'm guessing the Nappy company are a little annoyed that you went to the press.

As for hate mail, I was initially surprised, then thought actually meh - if you invite the Daily Star and Mail into your homes I'm not that surprised.

I wouldn't care for free nappies after this. We didn't speak directly to journalists or have anyone at the house, it all got released by a single media agency. None of which is an excuse for the vitriol and death threats received. C'est la vie.

[M6L11]

Vaud said:

If he is a UK doctor then report him to the GMC...?

Well in hand...

[M6L11]

daddy cool said:

Show us the letter then (blank out the names & addresses, natch)

That was to my wife on Facebook, she even posted it on the Pampers page. I'll wade through and screenshot it if my wife hasn't already.

[M6L11]

Sheepshanks said:

My view would be that a lot of the reaction is a response to the almost hysterical tone set by the OP's OP - and that tone was carried through elsewhere.

Having said that, Pampers response, bearing in mind they've identified the problem, is somewhat surprising. That's the kind of response you'd expect if they claimed to have found nothing wrong.

Hardly hysterical. Angry, furious, concerned; yes. If you found out your baby was injured because of third party negligence you'd unwittingly been complicit in, you'd feel pretty bloody terrible as well.

SpeedChick yes we're well aware of the other cases and have liaised with the parents involved. P&G insist they're all separate isolated incidents and only ours was caused by their factory.

[M6L11]

PurpleMoonlight said:

Yes it is.

Child gets a cut finger because the parent left a sharp knife accessible and nobody hears about it.

Child gets a cut bum because of some metal in a nappy and it's all over the net and the press.

Accidents happen, both in life and business.

What strange things to say. If a parent leaves a knife out and a child is injured, there aren't another several million people potentially with the same knife unknowingly sitting on their table. Talk about a strawman. 'Accidents' (or indeed negligence) do happen, but if you can prevent further harm that's pretty much the sensible and decent thing to do. The manufacturer clearly weren't all that bothered, but we had several mails from people who had found metal in their nappies before use after seeing our story. That's potentially less injured babies so damn straight it was all over the net and the press.

ETA: I love how a multi-billion dollar global corporation put out piss poor products, but I'm the one constantly defending myself and my actions one way or another. If half the energy was directed at P&G they might have actually pulled their fingers out.

Edited by M6L11 on Friday 28th August 16:15

[M6L11]

PurpleMoonlight said:

And yet your priority was not to protect those other children as your first phone call was not to alert the manufacturer.

Strawman indeed.

You wanted your 15 minutes of fame, now you have to live with the consequences.

No it was to Trading Standards. How irrelevant eh? Quit trolling. Ironically I hesitated posting here precisely because of the mentality of most of the replies. We turned down interviews with three newspapers, four magazines (four figure sums) and a TV interview. (ETA oh and a BBC radio 4 interview). Yes, 15 minutes of fame indeed. Perhaps your viewpoint says more about you than us. Thanks for your input.

[M6L11]

spats said:

Seems like you might be after your own 15 mins of fame for being a completely obvious troll.

To the OP, no one deserves death threats or doctors accusing you of things either over something like this which was not your doing. This is exactly why I wouldn't let the press anywhere near my family. All they want is headlines, its totally ridiculous.

To be fair the press coverage was fairly unbiased and factual (Daily Star dramatic lulz aside). It reached most of Europe as far as Greece, the USA (New York) and Australia with nary a bad word. The only idiots came out on Facebook and, ironically, PH.

[M6L11]

berlintaxi said:

FFS, they had a manufacturing accident and unfortunately you got a pack of nappies with a few bits of metal in, they've investigated found the cause and dealt with it, how is that piss poor? I don't know what you do for a living but obviously you have never made an error of suffered an unforeseen incident whilst doing it, must be great to be Mr. Perfect.

I would classify any baby product designed to press against intimate areas while simultaneously containing hidden metal shards to be 'piss poor'. I'd also call a system of '500 sensors, cameras and metal detectors' that can't... um... detect metal.... to be 'piss poor'. Your definition may vary. If I changed a broken piece of metal machinery on such a production line I'd bin the contents of said production line, not carry on shoving them into packaging for sale.

I didn't claim to be Mr Perfect I said if half the trolls and naysayers in this thread directed even half the nonsense I've endured towards P&G and Asda they may have actually pulled out their finger. Give your wooden spoon a rest. BTW how is telling us they've found the cause 'dealing with it'? They've acknowledged it but they've issued no statement, no recall, and miraculously decided that no other packs of nappies were affected, just ours, even without seeing them.

[M6L11]

I'm asking a mod to close this thread. I'm spending more time replying to nonsense and repeatedly defending myself than actually dealing with the issues at hand, which is ridiculous. Thanks again to the constructive posters.

[M6L11]

berlintaxi said:

What would you like them to do? They have addressed your issue, and obviously carried out adequate investigations to be convinced it is a one off, I am sure if they felt they was a problem they would issue a re-call, either accept what they have offered and move on or continue to whine on here just because some people don't share your view that this is the sky falling in.

I've said no such thing. You really must have nothing better to do.

[M6L11]

PurpleMoonlight said:

Probably best.

You clearly don't cope with criticism very well.

It'd just be nice if it was fact based. Not one reply to my factual rebuttals, just more ad hominem bullst. PH is supposed to be a community, not a kangaroo court.