Mum's pram stolen at Butlin's - before being returned with 'sticky note'

Yahoo

a day ago

A single mum says she was left feeling 'scummy' after her family pushchair was pinched during a holiday at Butlin's. Sophie was visiting the Skegness resort with her two children and some family friends when someone stole her son's pram from the buggy storage outside the swimming pool.
Sophie was left struggling to get her 10-year-old daughter and four-year-old son back to their holiday apartment. She asked Butlin's staff for help - but claims she was shut down, being advised to spend £21 renting a replacement for the remainder of the holiday.
But, to her surprise, her son's pushchair was found three days later - along with a sticky note reading 'loaned for 5 min, sorry + thank you'.
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"It was more the inconvenience of it," explained Sophie, 38. "I'm disabled, so is my daughter. We came out of swimming carrying a heavy bag of wet clothes and had to phone Butlin's for someone to come and help me because I only made it half way back to the apartment", reports the Manchester Evening News.
"My daughter, was overly distressed by the situation. We had to hire another one. They wouldn't even look at the CCTV."
Sophie, from Derbyshire, explained she proposed implementing a ticket system for collecting the prams to prevent any being taken, but claims the firm 'aren't interested'.
"Three days after it went it was thrown over the swimming pool fence into the external pram park with a note saying it had been borrowed for five minutes," she explained.
"A mate of mine discovered it and when we went to retrieve it, we heard over the walkie talkies that another pushchair had just been nicked, it's a regular occurrence."
The mother expressed her discomfort at having the pram back after it had been used by someone else.
"I felt utterly violated," she confessed. "My little lad's pram had been in someone else's flat and they'd been using it. I felt so grubby using it."
Sophie, who visited the holiday park in mid-May, posted about the incident on a Butlin's Skegness Resort Facebook page, sparking outrage among other parents.
"Scum, it's high time Butlin's installed CCTV or even provided security in buggy areas," one parent commented.
"How on earth can someone think that's acceptable behaviour," questioned another, with a third adding: "The real question is why has someone who clearly needs a pram come on holiday without one? It's incredibly entitled behaviour and I'd be livid."
A spokesperson for Butlins chose not to comment on the incident.
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