Water Babies
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Exploitative
Our 10 months old son really enjoys his swimming lessons. Unfortunately, we are changing companies following the discovery that Water Babies is exploiting the pandemic to profit. Several parents began a circular email after Water Babies announced that there would now be a mandatory £175 fee for the underwater photo shoot. Firstly, it’s worth noting that this shoot was included in the price of the lessons – it was part of the selling pitch, in fact. Therefore, a couple of us had assumed that the resultant photos were also included. Apparently, they are not, and although that may have ruffled a few feathers, we didn’t think to much of it at the time. Subsequently an email goes around saying that now the purchase of all photos would be mandatory to save the parents the ‘dilemma’ of deciding which ones to choose (if any). One of the fathers who works in invoice financing used a very apt analogy; he said that he may tell clients about other financial products that may be of interest to them, but he doesn’t then add £10k onto their invoice to save them the dilemma of actually making a choice. The thing that’s really upset people (myself included) is that they tried to say that’s it to keep people covid safe by not having to be in the same room as the parents to show then the photos. Yes, I’m completely serious. The notion of sending low-res watermarked proofs to parents is not something they thought of, apparently. The irony is that in exploiting covid for profit, they’re also exploiting parents at a time when everybody is trying to be a little more careful with money. For many parents, simply cancelling the shoot was sufficient, but we really didn’t want to give any more money to this company so decided not to renew next term.