Baby shop wins TV3 battle

A local retail outlet has won its fight against TV3's Campbell Live, which had portrayed the shop as unethical, leading to a drop in sales from the bad publicity.

Campbell Live secretly filmed the owners of children's store Baby Solutions without their knowledge or consent while doing a story about a woman who was refused a refund for baby clothes after she miscarried her child.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority found that the programme, which aired in November last year, had violated the shop owners' privacy, and had breached standards of fairness and accuracy.

Bev Hodson, who co-owns Baby Solutions with her daughter, Donna Fackney, said they were delighted their complaint to the BSA had been upheld.

They said that they noticed a downturn in sales after the programme aired in November.

"People just weren't coming through the door. They would walk past and look in and keep walking."

Mrs Hodson said she was not surprised their complaint had been upheld.

"If we had broken the law we could have understood that we wouldn't have a chance, but we hadn't broken the law."

She said the programme was presented in a one-sided way, causing people to form an opinion about the situation when they didn't know all the facts.

They claimed they had offered to take the cot and mattress, worth about $500, back and sell them on behalf of the customer but never heard back.

"We were very sympathetic towards the customer in helping her the best we possibly could at the time. We know we did what was legally right, to the best of our ability to sort it out for her," said Mrs Hodson.

Mrs Fackney said their store, like many others, had been affected by a general business downturn in the past 18 months.

"There just wasn't the money to be able to provide the refund, so we did the next best we could for her. We had people lined up ready to look at the cot."

Mrs Hodson said the situation had been "horrible, but nothing that we can't cope with".

The co-owners said they would like to thank their loyal customers and friends for their support since the airing of the programme.

The BSA said Campbell Live had made no attempt to contact the store for comment on the situation before filming them.

The report said Campbell Live's approach to the story was more about the "visual impact of a confrontation as opposed to being a genuine attempt to obtain a considered response to their decision to not refund the customer".

TV3 was ordered to pay $500 for the breach of privacy and $750 in legal costs.