Co-operative Funeralcare

The Co-operative Funeralcare has helped generations of families through difficult times, providing care support and reassurance when it matters most.

The Co-operative Funeralcare has become the country’s leading funeral director because of the high quality of care we deliver through our people working at a local level, who are backed by resources and expertise that only a trusted national organisation can provide.

The Co-operative Funeralcare offers a genuinely local funeral service backed by the strength and reassurance of a unique, caring organisation. Our top priority is to provide the best possible services for our clients and to invest in the communities that we serve. 

It must be true; it says so in the Northwich Guardian. 

The dolts at The Co-operative Funeralcare have quarried another groundbreaking wheeze. Undistracted by the implosion of Thomas Cook, with which Co-op Travel ill-advisedly merged earlier this year, the blue-skies thinkers at Effcare have cooked up a… wait for it… headstone plan (which they inflatedly call a memorial masonry plan). 

Yes, now you can buy tomorrow’s gravestone at today’s prices. More than that, you can compose your own epitaph and choose the style in which the lettering will be gritblasted by an indifferent machine. 

This is a  thoughtful thing to do. When we die the cognitive powers of our nearest and dearest will, as you know, be paralysed by grief or summick and they’ll find it impossible to express a preference for any hideous shade of imported Chinese or Indian granite let alone be able to come up with something to say on it. In the words of The Co-operative,  “The plan ensures family members are not left with the emotional and financial burden of making these decisions at a very difficult time.”

Asked why the service thought people would want to write their own epitaphs rather than leave it to their loved ones, a spokeswoman said people were increasingly wanting to make personal additions to their own funerals.

She said: “The feedback we are getting is that people want more specific things and they want it to be a celebration of their life. We are getting people to take that one step further … making it more personal and more about you.”

So there you have it. Left to our descendants, our epitaphs will lack both a personal and a celebratory touch.

The thinking is obviously flawed and illogical. Taken with pre-need  plans, this gravestone plan is just another way of shutting out the bereaved from creating fitting memorial events for their dead.

A word to the dying. Say what you’d like, write them a cheque, then butt out; you’ll be dead. This does not apply if there will be nobody close to you looking after things when you’re gone. 

Will anyone, we wonder, explain to those who take out one of these prescriptive plans that the wishes of the living are not legally enforceable after they’re dead? What will the Co-op be saying to people who say ‘We don’t like it; we want something else’? 

Dismal press release here. 

Back in April I reported the story of the undertaker who forged a client’s signature on a cremation form  and then had the body cremated without their knowledge. The body was that of a 26 week-old boy, Sonny. His parents had wanted to dress him and put special items in his coffin. Read it here.

Sonny’s parents, Mr and Mrs Lau, asked me to publicise the case because they don’t want anyone else to suffer as they have. We can’t know what it feels like to have gone through what they did; such a thing is unimaginable. On top of it all they had to contest the obdurate lies of the undertaker.

Now, with the support of their local MP, they are asking the Ministry of Justice to require two signatures on an application for cremation, and for those signatures to be witnessed.

In an email to me Mrs Lau says, “Co-op need to be named and shamed. They had no respect for us and did nothing to support us throughout this ordeal … Fingers crossed I will be able to raise awareness prior to some legislation being introduced. I wondered kindly if you could blog the BBC report on your fine blog. I know it’s repetitive but think that the court report never captured the pain that we endured for the 9 months. I do get upset every time I talk about what happened to us but I gather strength knowing that everything I do is for my son.”

Read the full BBC report here.

The Co-operative Funeralcare’s trading profit last year (2010) was £46,000,000, achieved from 100,333 funerals. They performed 4000 more funerals than in 2009, and profits are up £7.7 million.

£9.5m was invested in vehicles and £11.1m in funeral homes.

Bond sales were up 29 per cent on 2009.

Funeral Excellence Scores, calculated from the consumer survey below, stand at 91.5, which is 0.5 higher than the target score.

1. Did you receive all the information you needed at the time of the arrangement?

2. Did you feel that we had fully explained to you what would happen on the day of the funeral?

3. Did we contact you to confirm the arrangements before the day of the funeral?

4. How would you rate our service… At the time of the arrangement?

5. How would you rate our service… On the day of the funeral?

6. Would you use our services again?

Funeral numbers for this year aren’t as good as they might. They are 435 down on last year and 1060 fewer than budgeted for. Week 14 has been better, though. Numbers are 324 better than last year, though 160 fewer than budgeted for.

Pre-paid funeral plan sales are healthy. 8919 have been sold so far this year, 2287 more than budgeted for and 2318 more than last year.

Source: weekly bulletin sent to all Co-op branches, 15.04.11.

I am innumerate. Do these numbers say anything to you?