Yes, we can
A few weeks back I lazily asked whether a private entrepreneur could open a crematorium in this country. I say lazily because I hoped someone would know the answer and spare me research time. I supposed that only local authorities can get permission from the Secretary of State to build a crem. I was wrong, […]
Life Ain’t Always Beautiful
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 […]
Dead reckoning
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 […]
Saif-breaking
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 […]
Playing Saif
I’d hoped to have a sprightly little post for you yesterday on the matter of funeral costs. The trade body representing the interests of independent funeral directors, Saif, commissioned Ipsos MORI (how apt, that MORI!) to research funeral directors’ charges. A friendly funeral director emailed me to tell he’d just got the report, would I […]
The wages of solicitude
We worry about our football clubs. Many are encumbered by stonking debts. Manchester United owes £716 million. What of our big undertaking businesses? Well, Dignity Caring Funeral Services has just published figures which provide the current answer to that question. And the answer is (sit down, please, and clutch your whisky) that Dignity are leveraged […]
The Co-operative reports 21% increase in funeral plan sales
No funeral director, however brilliant, can stimulate an appetite for their product – because we pass their way but once. But a funeral director can sign up tomorrow’s customers today by the ingenious means of selling them a pre-need funeral plan. Pre-need plans look like a very good bet. They’re inflation-proof. And they are easy […]
Take it to them!
It’s widely known in the funeral business that the prices charged by Co-operative Funeralcare and Dignity are on the whole higher than those charged by their independent competitors – the family businesses and new start-ups – so many of them passionate ex-Funeralcare employees who tell me they learned everything about what not to do at […]
The Bill
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 […]
Vast cars
What is this thing with undertakers and their hearses and limousines? Are we talking customer focus here, or idolatry? I really don’t know the answer—I mean that. As the UN climate talks in Copenhagen reach their climax, and at a time when people are finding it more and more difficult to stump up the […]
