If you are out celebrating this weekend, spare a toast to the lucky managers of Co-operative Funeralcare, who have just banked their annual bonuses.
For those in Bands 3 and 4, that’s £2,500 — £5,000.
For those in Bands 1 and 2, who are on a long-term incentive plan, that’s serious moolah.
The Good Funeral Guide salutes all those hardworking families who have made this possible.
This advert appeared in the Liverpool Echo. This is what it says:
The Fairways Funeral Plan is individually tailored to meet your needs. Everything featured in the [yawn] Fairways Funeral Plan is fully guaranteed no matter how high prices rise and we’ve created flexible payment plans to suit any budget.
So even in uncertain times, you can rest assured [nice pun, boys!] everything will be taken care of.
The Fairways Funeral Plan is only available from carefully selected Funeral Directors which meet the highest standards of care and quality.These are funeral experts and are available to call 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
You can probably read the names of the handpicked familyalike undertakers underneath the text. Liverpool’s finest. The only ones who match the incredibly high standards set by those who administer the FFP. This is exactly the sort of information that funeral consumers need. There are lots of funeral directors in Liverpool. But only these made the grade. The rest are clearly sub-standard, below par, simply not good enough, quite possibly crap.
It is a matter of sheer coincidence that all the familyalike funeral directors named in the ad are members of the Fairways Partnership, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Co-operative Funeralcare and an organisation for which I cannot find a website. Odd, that.
I have a nice window sticker I send to GFG-recommended funeral directors with lovely calligraphy by my lettering hero Ieuan Rees, the man who taught me to love the Welsh. I think I shall have to ask him to do me another bearing the words DENOUNCED BY THE GOOD FUNERAL GUIDE.
The ad above has been reported to the NAFD and the ASA.
One must be careful what one says. And before one says it, one must try and resist distraction.
I had intended to say a few words about Co-operative Funeralcare. Yes, again. Because they’re worth it. They are The Enemy. (Hello, Co-op lawyers, see if you can find anything actionable in what follows.)
But, as I say, I got distracted. First, my attention was wrenched to deplorable behaviour at the premises of Chittenden’s Funeral Service, Folkestone. Chittenden’s is owned by the Fairways Partnership. The Fairways Partnership is owned by Co-operative Funeralcare. Once upon a time the Chittenden name was a source of great good will, for which, doubtless, a great deal of good money exchanged hands. Why buy a good name only to bespatter it with shit, we must ask ourselves.
Six members of Chittendens were charged in Sept 2010 with all manner of misconduct. The usual sad stuff. Forgetting to take a baby to be buried. Driving a hearse at 130mph. Worse, I’ve heard. Enough. You can read about it here.
It makes it very difficult to keep topical tabs on these conglomerates when they trade under other people’s names.
In Wales, Rees Davies and Son were charged with the duty of taking Baby Gabriel into their care. They took the placenta instead, and a funeral was held, and a burial, and all the while Baby Gabriel was in a Moses basket in a fridge at the hospital. Rees Davies and Son are members of the Fairways Partnership, which disputed the conclusions in the hospital’s report into the matter. Read about it here.
Back to Funeralcare, proud owners of the Fairways Partnership. What do you think they thought of SAIF commissioning that price comparison survey in Feb 2010? Well, obviously they weren’t pleased. At the time, there were lawyers’ letters and talk of pressure being put on SAIF suppliers to consider their, er, best interests.
Once again the air is full of talk of this. How many SAIF suppliers have failed to renew their subscriptions?
I’m on to this, treading carefully. If there are any funeral directors out there, or suppliers, or anyone else who has personal experience of what’s going on, please contact me in strictest, guaranteed confidence and tell me more. Ring if you wish: 07946 714 063. Email:Charles@goodfunerguide.co.uk.
When will Funeralcare’s lawyers come for me? I often wonder. I have no money, so nothing to lose. And I have one great consolation. ‘If,’ says someone who has written to me, ‘they do come for you… they’ll probably pick up the wrong one!’
It’s been a dispiriting couple of days. Once again the damned Co-op Funeralcare has re-announced the obvious in yet another self-serving survey and, incredibly, reaped a rich harvest of column inches in the UK’s newspapers. You’ve almost certainly encountered some of it.
I wasn’t going to rise to it. At this time of the year I’d rather turn my sights to sunnier things. But I suppose I ought to write about it because I know that a number of you come here for second-hand news. Second-hand news is me.
If you want to find out what the Co-op sent out to all those flat-bottomed hacks too idle to go out and find news stories of their own, click here. It may be a good idea to have a sick bag to hand.
The survey is endorsed by venerable academic and ‘funerary historian’, Julian Litten. What on earth he thinks he’s doing lending his name to this garbage I can’t think. This ‘ere celebration of life trend, it’s all down to Princess Diana and Jade Goody, apparently — some sort of copycat effect, I suppose. FFS.
As Paul Hensby accurately points out, the damned Funeralcare has established itself as the thought leader in contemporary funerals. Ha! All the while, SAIF only whispers the findings of its Ipsos MORI price comparison survey. And where are the celebrants’ trade bodies?
Enough. Is Co-operative Funeralcare systemically incapable of delivering what people want? That’s a rhetorical question; they read this, they have lawyers.
Here’s a question sent to money-problem solver Margaret Dibben in the Guardian. It exemplifies the utter crapness of funeral plans and the business methods of the People’s Undertaker.
Two years ago, after the untimely death of a young friend, I took out a bronze cremation plan with The Co-operative Funeralcare. I discussed it on the phone, received papers to sign and started paying £19 a month by direct debit.
I have recently lost work and am trying to cut my outgoings. When I asked The Co-operative how much longer I have to keep paying, I was told until I am 90. This was not explained to me. I am now 57 and in excellent health. If I cancel the policy, the Co-op will keep the £456 I have paid in so far.
Here’s part of the reply:
You have 33 years until you are 90 which means, if you live that long, you have to pay another £7,524 in premiums. The average cost of a funeral today is £2,700. Your only choice is to waste the £456 or keep paying.
Read the entire piece here.
Here is a hubristic report from the Co-operative College in Manchester on a fact-finding mission from South Africa. The mission came hard on the heels of helpful research by our own, dear Co-op into the ‘exorbitant’ cost of funerals in South African townships.
A much needed reduction in expensive funeral costs could be on the cards for residents in South African townships following a visit to the UK by a team from South Africa. After a week studying co-operative funeral provision in the UK, they are planning to set up co-operatives in Johannesburg to provide an affordable alternative to existing undertakers.
Said Stirling Smith, International Programmes Manager at the Co-operative College (SA): “it was great that our South African visitors could see for themselves how a co-operative business can be commercially successful and ethical. I must also thank Funeralcare for the arrangements. Nothing was too much trouble for them and they were very generous with their time and resources.”
Good luck to them. A funeral in Soweto costs the better part of a year’s wages.
Over here, in the light of the recent Ipsos MORI price comparison survey, we find that there’s still plenty of room for an ‘affordable alternative’.
Read the Co-op announcement here. Who do they think they are kidding?
Partners Mike Konigsfeld and Tom Brandl in Cologne, Germany have designed a coffin for gay male funerals. If you look carefully you can see that it is festooned with muscly naked men.
There’s no doubting the business sense behind the idea. As Mike says, “People are cutting back in the recession but the one group of consumers who still have high spending power are gay couples and very few people are designing for them in this market.”
Yes, there’s money to be made. Which is perhaps why, in Britain, the only gay funeral service I have come across, Pink Partings, is ‘partnered’ by our old friends Co-operative Funeralcare who, as they say, and we believe them, “operate in accordance with the values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.”
Over in the US, Service Corporation International (SCI) the multinational deathcare conglomerate which, here in the UK, begat Dignity, is in hot water. Again. One of its funeral homes, trading under the name of Stanetsky Memorial Chapels, mixed up two bodies. When they realised what they’d done, it seems that they illegally exhumed the one they’d already buried (it had enjoyed a good Jewish funeral first), and reburied it in the right place. Read the story here.
Were we to generalise from this in the light of our experience in Britain we might easily reach the conclusion that big chains of funeral directors are especially susceptible to Wrong Body Syndrome. Not all, mind. I’ve never heard of our Dignity making that mistake.
Yet I think we might agree, nonetheless, that even when they don’t make egregious mistakes, big chains are systemically incapable of giving the grieving public what they want. They know this, of course. It’s why they trade under the names of the families they’ve bought up. It’s the vital point the financial journalists always miss when writing about the trading position of Dignity, talking up the attractiveness of its shares. The market, they say, as if it were an unravished bride, is ripe for consolidation. Orthodox economics teaches us that consolidation’s what’s best for markets. But funeral consumers want small, intimate, private and personal. They want boutique. If they can have that at a lower price than the big beasts charge, they who enjoy economies of scale which they do not then pass on to consumers, it’s win-win for consumers all the way. Dignity shareholders urgently need to know this.
Again over in the US, “At least seven funeral homes say Robert Christiansen, director of Christiansen Funeral Home in Greenville and a cremation service in Wyoming, engaged in “cybersquatting” by registering variations of their Internet sites.” He then had all traffic to these sites redirected to him. Darkly devious. Read it all here.
If we are to generalise from this, those of us who know the funeral industry would probably agree that over here in the UK we, too, are aware of some pretty dark arts in the matter of marketing. And I use two examples of US malpractice simply to show that there’s nothing peculiarly British about the British way of undertaking.
Let’s come home, now, focus on the matter of transparency of ownership and celebrate the victory on 22 September 2010 of Daniel Robinson and Sons over LM Funerals trading in Epping as DC Poulton and Sons. Daniel Robinson complained to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) about three press ads:
The first press ad stated “SERVING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY SINCE 1888 … DC Poulton & Sons is one of the area’s longest established funeral directors, proudly serving the community for over 120 years”. The ad also featured an image of Howard Poulton.
The second press ad stated “Serving the local community since 1888 … DC Poulton & Sons is one of the area’s longest established funeral directors, proudly serving the community for over 120 years!”.
The third press ad also featured an image of Howard Poulton and stated “The Original and Traditional Funeral Directors Caring for families since 1888 …With over 70 years combined experience, Mr Howard Poulton, his Funeral Director Peter Wright and their team of funeral professionals are available to assist you”.
Daniel Robinson & Sons Ltd challenged whether:
1. the claims “Serving the local community since 1888” in ads (a) and (b), and the claim “The Original and Traditional Funeral Directors Caring for families since 1888” in ad (c) were misleading because they understood that the company that owned Poulton & Sons was established in 2003; and
2. the image of Howard Poulton gave the misleading impression that the business was still family run because they believed that Howard Poulton had retired.
The ASA upheld 1 (above). “The ASA noted that the certificate sent by DC Poulton showed they had provided services to the residents of Epping since 1890, but noted it did not state the type of services being offered. We considered, therefore, that it did not constitute evidence to demonstrate that they had been in business as funeral directors since 1888 as claimed. We also noted that the company had been acquired by LM Funerals in 1997 and that they had continued to operate under the name DC Poulton since that time. We considered that the claims “DC Poulton & Sons is one of the areas longest established funeral directors” and “The Original and Traditional Funeral Directors Caring for families since 1888” implied that the company was still owned by the Poulton family, that ownership was “original” and unchanged, which was not the case. In the absence of a prominent statement making clear that the business was owned by LM Funerals, we concluded that the ads were likely to mislead.”
The ASA did not uphold 2 (above): “We noted that Howard Poulton was still employed by DC Poulton and involved in the business and had not retired. We therefore concluded that the ads were not misleading.”
The ASA directed: The ads must not appear again in their current form. [Source]
For all that, DC Poulton continues to make this claim on its website: “D. C. Poulton & Sons was founded in 1888 as a builders and undertakers”.
Transparency of ownership is a hugely sensitive issue in the funeral industry. Independents rage about it, the big beasts chuckle at their impotence, and all the while funeral consumers are, basically, conned. They find out too late, if at all.
Some local authorities, bless them, try to warn consumers with this no-holds-barred text on their websites: “There has been a decline in recent years of the local family operated funeral director. Few people notice that large firms now own many family funeral directors throughout the country. The new owners may not be disclosed on shop signs or Letterheads. These firms may continue trading upon the inference of the caring qualities and local connection of the old family firm. Similarly, older people tend to reflect upon the past socialist principles of the “Co-op” funeral services, which may no longer apply.” [Source] I especially approve of the way they consign the Co-op’s socialist principles to history.
On 14 August 2008 Birmingham Trading Standards officer Derek Hoskins, in a letter to SAIF, detailed the laws concerning transparency of ownership:
“from 26th May 2008, the true ownership of a business must be conveyed to a consumer before he makes a transactional decision. I.e. if a company is trading as “I’M A SOLE TRADER FUNERALS LTD.”, is owned by “NATIONAL FUNERALS UK LTD”. The customer has the right to know whom they are really dealing with BEFORE they make their choice.” [Full text here]
It’s only fair and right that they should, of course. But is the law working as Mr Hoskins thinks it ought? No. The wolves continue to parade themselves in sheep’s clothing.
How do the big funeral chains get away with camouflaging themselves as they do? I hope a reader with a good legal brain will enlighten us.
At the same time, I very much hope that the ASA judgement above will renew the determination of independent funeral directors to look very closely at the ads of their wolf competitors and take them on with renewed zeal. You don’t just owe this yourselves, you owe it to consumers, too.
And should you need any more impetus to do that, consider this: Marks and Spencer are thinking about entering the market. Read and despair here.
Everyone looks at other people differently according to what they do. Hairdressers scan your hair, dentists your teeth, snobs your shoes… Undertakers? Why, they measure you for your coffin of course.
Surveying a funeral, the preoccupations of an undertaker are quite different from those of anybody else. Ordinary folk take in the procession, the flowers, the demeanour of the close family (grief bravely borne if they’re doing it by the script). But undertakers want to know who got it – who got the job. Their beady eyes home in on the registration plate of the hearse and decode the letters. Ah, CDF 1, Change and Decay Funeral Service (dignity assured, Daimler fleet, open 24 hours). They scrutinise the demeanour of the conductor (that watch chain’s a bit over the top), they log the condition and cleanliness of the cars and the aspect of the bearers. Who supplied that coffin? One of Wainman’s?
It is from this viewpoint that they will regard the funeral of lovely Claire Rayner, who died on Monday. As the chair of the Co-operative Funeralcare Forum (2002) Claire abetted this admirable organisation in its mission to bring about a “major shake-up in the UK’s funeral provision” and meet the “need for more information to help people make every funeral special.” So will she go with Co-operative Funeralcare? Why not?
What could possibly go wrong?
Claire was also a president of the British Humanist Association. It’s no surprise, then, that she will have a humanist farewell ceremony. This may pose a problem for the celebrant (if they use one), a problem which is becoming increasingly common. Humanist celebrants have, most of them, always gently outlawed hymns from funerals. Now they’ve got a new ontological problem with their clients. For though they may profess themselves to be hardened atheists, they later reveal a fuzzy belief in an afterlife of some sort, a freestanding heaven where no one’s in charge, a cake-and-eat-it sort of a place. Atheists are not the rigorous (left-leaning, often puritanical in the best sense) rationalists they used to be. They just don’t like, I don’t know, authority figures?
Whatever, Claire, who revealed a capacity for inconsistency when, as a lifelong republican she accepted an OBE, uttered these last words: “Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I’ll come back and bloody haunt him.”
Only joking, for sure. But Claire, I hope you will.
Thanks to Tony Piper for popping these mischievous thoughts into my head
