An Ile Perrot mother who recently gave birth is furious after someone called her up offering accidental death insurance for her baby.
“I went into a spiral of, ‘Oh my gosh, my baby is going to die,'” said Megan Sapla.
It happened on Monday. Her kids were napping when her cell phone rang. It was a telemarketer.
“She was very excited, she asked me how old my baby is, what his name is, told me, ‘Oh, I love that name!,” Sabla recounted.
The salesperson then offered something that made her skin crawl.
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“This month we’re doing free accidental death insurance for infants! I was like, ‘Uhhh sorry, what?’ She’s like, ‘Accidental death insurance! It’s free for a whole year!’ I was in utter shock,” Sabla said.
The telemarketer on the other end of the line explained she got Sapla’s number through a contest she had entered.
“She’s like, ‘Even if its free you won’t take it?’ I was like, ‘No!” Sapla exclaimed.
The mother explained that with her first child, she went through an intense bout of postpartum depression and anxiety.
As soon as she got off the phone, her mind went to a dark place.
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“I was thinking now that I didn’t take it, my kid’s gonna die,” Sabla told Global News.
She took to Facebook and shared her experience with a mom support group. To her surprise, she wasn’t alone.
“A lot of people had received this call, either during pregnancy or early postpartum,” she said.
Consumer protection lawyer Jeff Orenstein isn’t surprised at all.
“When you enter a contest, you are putting your information out there. It is expected that information will be used for different purposes and one of the main purposes people are collecting all this private information for is for marketing purposes,” Orenstein explained.
Sapla said the company that placed the call was Industrial Alliance.
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In a statement to Global News, they apologized and called the situation “deplorable,” saying they will look into the call and that it did not correspond to their standards of quality and respect.
For her part, Sapla says she will be much more careful with how she gives out her information.
“I won’t be entering into contests,” she said.
It’s a lesson the lawyer hopes others take to heart too.
“Be very protective of your private information,” Orenstein said. “You should attribute a lot of value to it.”
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