funeral cost

Here’s an unusually well-written blog: THE MY WIFE HAS CANCER BLOG. Had. She died on 29 March, and its author will shortly be wrapping it up.

It’s a very good, if sometimes difficult, read. And there’s an interesting post on funeral costs. We’d find it hard to do anything like that so cheaply in this country, where direct cremation has yet to catch on – and a memorial service instead of a funeral.

There’s a touching little slide show put together by a friend of the author, whom he describes as a ‘computer genius’. It doesn’t take a genius, of course. He could have used Animoto. And if he’d really wanted one created by a genius he’d have gone to Louise at Sentiment.

WARNING! This blog may disappear without warning at any time. Don’t worry! It’s because Blogger is discontinuing its server (or somesuch). It will transmigrate to WordPress and be resurrected as something altogether user-friendlier. Service will be suspended for no more than a few days.

No UK funeral director ever went far wrong by slapping a more or less stonking margin on the price of a coffin. Coffins are much cheaper to make than almost anyone would realise. An oak foil veneer MDF coffin with a trade price of £50 looks to any uneducated eye as if it’s easily worth £250. This being so, most funeral directors ‘bury’ some of what they call their professional fee in the cost of the coffin. It makes them look like better value.

It doesn’t necessarily make them exploitative however bad it may look (when you find out). They are spreading, not adding, remember. And UK funerals are not so expensive that people want to bypass funeral directors by whatever means they can. Over here, we can have a decent funeral for a little over £2,500. In the US it’s difficult to reel away with any change from £6,000.

There’s nothing to stop anyone here from saving themselves a few bob by buying a coffin direct from the manufacturer – if they can find anyone to sell them one. Most won’t. In the US, however, there’s more urgent demand and a growing online marketplace. You can buy a coffin (okay, casket) at Walmart and Costco.

Because US undertakers also ‘bury’ some of their professional fee in the cost of the casket, it embarrasses them financially when any client proposes to supply their own. There’s an amusing recent tale in a Chicago paper of a dodgy sod of a funeral director who throws all manner of preposterous objections in the way of a client who discovers she can save $1,600 by sourcing her own casket and burial vault. You can read it here.

UK funeral directors price their services and merchandise in such a way that they could never make a living if people did not buy a complete package. This is why the itemised price lists of the majority are not itemised in a way we understand by itemised. If, say, you tell them that you will not need bearers to carry the coffin, then ask how much that will be off the bill, there’s every chance you will be told that bearers are part of the professional fee (you’ll pay for them anyway).

There are precious few truly itemised, fully transparent price lists out there. So let’s hear it for Paul Sullivan, a brave new start-up in Dover, whose price list is as transparent as it gets, whose coffin prices are very fair and whose bearers are optional. See it here.

You can pick from Paul’s list, jot down the figures, do the maths. You’ll get only what you pay for. Hurrah. This is very empowering for clients. Paul and his ilk might even like to go a step further and offer what Basic Cremations of Milton, Ontario, provide on their website. They call it a Quote Builder. You check what you want, it keeps a running score and, at the end, gives you a bottom line. I love it. See it here.

The reluctance of so many UK funeral directors to take to the Web has become risibly absurd. People expect to be able to price shop online. Wakey wakey!

I was going to wait for a major distracting event – a natural disaster, a royal wedding, the execution of Lord Ashcroft – but I figure this afternoon’s as good as any for burying good news, so here goes: the results of the research conducted by Ipos Mori on behalf of Saif into funeral costs (with thanks to all those moles out there who blew their whistles).

Ipsos MORI chose 50 towns across the UK and mystery phoned one of each in all of them: one independent funeral director, a Dignity FD and a branch of Co-operative Funeralcare. Not quite 150 responses, though. One Co-op branch refused to give a quote over the phone, one Co-op and one independent didn’t pick up, and one Co-op number was ‘unobtainable’.

The funeral quoted for in every case, with itemised charges, comprised: cremation; transportation of the person who had died from hospital to ‘chapel of rest’ (a fridge to anyone else); a hearse; a following limousine; time to visit the person who had died; simplest coffin; and professional fee.

The results are un-mind blowing, they tell us nothing we didn’t know already, but it’s quite interesting to see the numbers. This research will only achieve real value if its results are loudly and relentlessly broadcast to funeral consumers.

The average overall cost of the above funeral is £2648 (there are regional variations). The average Dignity quote is £2916, the average Co-op quote is £2675 and the average independent quote is £2353. In 40 of the towns investigated Dignity gave the highest quote; in 9 of them Co-op gave the highest quote and in… Yes, well done, you did the math. Inasmuch as Co-op and Dignity enjoy considerable economies of scale, they have to be making far more money per funeral than almost any independent. Instead of bagging tomorrow’s market today by flogging pay-now-die-later funeral plans, they could exterminate the independents with a brief but savage price war.

As it stands, the funeral industry remains probably the last in which the boutique, bespoke provider can do a cheaper job than the mass producer – where the Morgan is cheaper than the Micra. It makes no economic sense. But do independents do funerals better? It would take altogether more elegant research to establish value. This Guide has done no math on this, but tells anyone who cares to listen that the best independents do the best job by a country mile – and the worst are as bad as it gets. Caveat emptor!

I don’t go with the prevailing price obsession where funerals are concerned. I go instead with value for money measured by personal service, and I do think consumers need to be much more savvy. If Dignity, capitalists red in tooth and claw, can get away with charging that much, good for them; they are operating within the rules of the market. The Co-op, on the other hand, is answerable to its foundational principles and, I believe, falls far short of them. As to the independents, I have met many who are worth far, far more than they charge, and I wish there were a greater recognition of the value they add.

There’s price and there’s value. And the greater of these is value.

As the new year comes storming out of the blocks, so does the Good Funeral Guide, cheeks flushed by a few days in its rocky, island holiday home. So too does Reaper G, of course, for this is his busy time of the year. No seasonal best wishes for you, you pale loiterer. But to all readers of this blog, may I extend my best wishes for a terrific year of unalloyed happiness and uninterrupted success. Go forth and gather it in.

To start us off, here’s a guest post from David Barrington, a funeral director in Liverpool. His beef is with the high prices charged by the big funeral chains. Thank you, David.

As an independent funeral director I take pride in the fact that I offer a caring and personal service at what I hope is a fair price. My firm is not the cheapest in my area but it is also far and away not the most expensive; that particular honour goes to the larger companies. And that is the subject of this post. Why in the funeral business does the opposite happen to other sectors of the economy?

In most areas the general rule of thumb is that if you are a very large company you can use economies of scale to ensure that your charges are lower than your competitors’.

So hypothetically if a company did let’s say 10,000 funerals a year, then you would pretty much imagine that they would have the buying power to keep their costs down.

Why then do the two large companies near to me offer a simple funeral service for over £500 more than I can? That is for a no frills service as specified by the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) Code of practice. Once you start adding in extras like limousines, better coffins, etc, the gap grows buy cialis online in new zealand astonishingly.

But what is more astonishing is that families go back to them without getting other quotes to see how much other funeral directors are or what sort of service they offer in comparison. One of the main aims of the bigger companies is to reduce the market share of the independent sector. If they succeed in this then there will be no incentive to keep prices down.

Now, bearing that in mind if you went into a funeral directors to make funeral arrangements and told the arranger you were looking for quotes from other funeral directors. If that arranger then told you to go to the other funeral directors and get a written estimate from them and they would match the new price or alternatively go £50 lower, how would you feel?

How can a company take that much off their price without compromising the quality of service provided? Would you feel you were getting a better deal or would you ask how they can manage to cut the price by that much and still provide the same quality of service? And what of the families who don’t shop around?

Is it really acceptable in a caring profession to ask a family who is in a vulnerable and emotional state to go shopping round funeral companies? Wouldn’t it be better to be able to justify the price you charge and stick to it?

We are not selling washing machines or televisions, we are offering a service that celebrates a person’s life. It is so important that the funeral director you choose empathises with you, offers you choice in the service that you want and a fair price.

A happy and healthy new year to you all.

David.