funeral cost

Transparent funeral pricing (Disinfectant part 2)

8 December 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: death and funerals, funeral cost

 

How can you give people clear simple information about the likely cost of the funeral they are organising?

It sounds easy but in practice it can be the hardest thing in the world. How do you listen, share, sympathise and support people in all sorts of distress? How do you help them start to shape the funeral they need to create and, at the same time, in all the emotion of the meeting, keep them up to date on the cost consequences of the choices they are making?

Vulnerable and bewildered, people are rarely at their best as consumers. It is a situation ripe with opportunities – for the outstanding and exceptional support the best provide and for the uneccessary additions and charges that the less scrupulous slip in.

But there is an alternative. A couple of weeks ago we featured a TV advertisement for Basic funerals of Canada. You can find it here if you’d like a refresher.

Basic Funerals, as part of it’s internet based approach, also has a page that allows you to calculate the cost of the funeral you are buying. The page is here. This is a screenshot.

We believe that this is emerging best practice. Without pressure it gives people the chance to look at costs and make choices. It is wonderfully transparent.

There are UK funeral directors who are also leading the way. Although they are not internet based service providers they are using their websites to help their customers do their research before they walk through the door.

Have a look at these sites for an idea of what can be done:

Sullivan and Sons of Dover: http://www.sullivanandson.co.uk/Costs.html

Kingfisher Funerals of St. Neots: http://kingfisherfunerals.co.uk/estimate.html

Powell and Family of Droitwich: http://www.powellandfamily.co.uk/funeral-cost-calculator

Peace Funerals of Sheffield: http://www.peacefunerals.co.uk/Lowcost.html

Richard Ward Funeral Services of Enderby: http://www.rwfs.co.uk/prices_comparisons.php

Of course, once you start this internet pricing, it allows you to draw comparisons with your competitors. Richard Ward does it. 

These can’t be the only ones. In our mission to celebrate the best in the funeral industry, who else is out there using their website to provide real information and real choice? Or using other methods we’re not aware of? Let us know – we’d love to write their names large.

The best disinfectant part 1

6 December 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: funeral, funeral cost, funeral directors

There’s no beating around the bush here: funeral pricing must be more transparent.

Most funeral directors are careful, honest and, often, painfully aware of the costs that people face when someone dies.

They run businesses, but know that they are also offering a service that affects people’s well being at the deepest levels. For the best FD every death is more than a transaction, it is also an event that they become a partner in, sharing, with the people involved, some of the intensity of the occasion.

Sometimes this makes them bad businesspeople (and better human beings?). We all know of Funeral Directors who reduce or waive fees for children’s funerals for example.

But there are others who are less scrupulous, willing to pass uneccessary costs on to the customer. This is bad – obviously – for customers, but it is bad for people who work with Funeral Directors too.

We’ve heard, for example, of surcharges added to celebrant’s fees or ‘adminstrative’ charges for booking unusual services or vehicles. Understandable you may say, but in one instance the surcharge raised the cost of the service from £650 to £1,000.

The worst part is that these add ons are rarely declared to the customer. Instead the itemised bill simply states the total cost. It must be great to be able to blame someone else for your own high charges.

Here at GFG we believe sunlight is the best disinfectant and that means being open and upfront about what you are charging. Watch this space.

US Funerals Online Seeing a Huge Increase in the Number of People Looking to Compare Funeral Prices

25 November 2011
Charles
12 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors

Posted by Charles

Are there, we wonder, any lessons British undertakers can learn from this article on PRWeb:

Many funeral homes today have their own websites, but most of these seem to have forgotten to include information about the one thing that is on most people’s mind. How much does a funeral cost? There is no other industry that hides their prices in the way the funeral industry does. Research conducted by US Funerals Online revealed that over 80% of funeral home web sites do not disclose actual costs.

Nicholas Ille, owner and founder of US Funerals Online, said, “Gone are the days when families would just order the services from a funeral home, without even inquiring about the costs.”

Baby boomers are becoming increasingly interested in doing things their own way, which can also be driven financially. Why have expensive funerals when the money would be better being left to our children? As people live longer their senior years can now be one expense after the next, care homes, nursing homes and hospices all come at a hefty price, and then comes a final bill that needs to be paid.

Over the past 18 months, US Funerals Online has been working closely with local family-owned and operated funeral homes across the U.S offering a low cost funeral option. “We believe that every family in America should be able to locate a low cost funeral provider, if that is what they choose” says Nicholas. The US Funerals Online web site lists all funeral homes by city/state and clearly identifies the low cost providers, including their price. By including all funeral homes in our directory, this makes comparing costs between different funeral homes, only a phone call away.

Could something like this happen in the UK? Why not?

Here at the GFG we don’t obsess about price, we obsess about service. And transparency. British undertakers’ websites are, many of them, as dire as it gets when describing their service offer, far far worse than any other commercial sector. They are amateurish and subliterate. They rarely talk to you, the reader, they talk about us and about ancestor Albert, founder of our barnacle-encrusted undertaking dynasty — here he is conducting a funeral in 1921 (cue hazy b&w photo of bow-legged man leading a bloated Austin down a high street). Dammit, WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME NOW??

When these undertakers do talk about their clients they talk about them as if they had nothing in common with the punter reading the website: “We recognise that our customers are individuals and each will have their own ways of coping with bereavement.” Tcha! Where’s the human being behind that? Oh, there he is in a Gilbert and Sullivan top hat with his big black cars fanned out behind him. HOW MUCH DO YOU CHARGE?!??

All undertakers know that more and more people are shopping around.

Those undertakers who are upfront about their prices are doing very well.  

As are those who come across as human beings like us. Hint: people do business with people. 

Undertakers: go figure.

Funerals-Online here.

Funeral spend has plunged in Ireland

16 November 2011
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funerals in other cultures

From the Irish Independent an alarming trend (if you’re an undertaker) and a familiar issue:

Undertakers say the average cost of a funeral has dropped by almost 40pc in the past five years.

They say cash-strapped families have had little choice but to compromise on funeral ceremonies by foregoing extras that they once took for granted, like flowers, music and limousines.

At the height of the boom, an average funeral would cost €6,500. But it wasn’t uncommon for upwards of €10,000 to be spent up on laying a loved one to rest in lavish ceremonies.

However, it appears bereaved families are more dissatisfied with the service they are receiving from Ireland’s 600 undertakers. According to the Irish Association of Funeral Directors, which represents 250 funeral directors, there has been a “marked increase” in the number of complaints this year.

Many of the complaints relate to the lack of transparency about invoicing, an issue that could be resolved if the industry were better regulated, Mr Nicholls [of the IAFD] believes.

He insists standards will only improve once the industry is regulated, forcing all undertakers to adopt higher standards, improve training and provide transparency in their invoicing to clients. “There are no barriers to entry and no licensing in an industry responsible for the burial or cremation of up to 30,000 people a year,” he said.

Whole article here. 

Final solution

4 November 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral cost

It is only eight o’clock pm here at GFG HQ, yet it’s already some 15 minutes since we sounded the hooter and nudged our horny-handed workforce into the weary, black, wet November night. We like to feel that we are kindly, enlightened employers, for whom wellbeing issues come first.

At the desk of one of our interns, R Cratchit, we found a discarded Daily Mail.  Leafing through it we found this appeal in the This Is Money section:

I have been saving for five years to build up some money to pay for my funeral. I always felt that I didn’t want my family to have to pay for my send off and have built up a pot that should more than cover it.

I told a friend about this and they said I was mad. They pointed out my grown up children are not poor and thought they would have no problem with paying for my funeral.

My friend said I should spend the money now and enjoy it while I can – they even suggested going on a cruise.

I don’t know what to do, should I keep my funeral pot or blow it?

The Mail would like to know what you think. If what you think is sufficiently impressive it will use your response in a followup article. So, if you have strong feelings about what this man should do with his death stash, click the link here. 

Fair comment?

25 October 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: death and funerals, funeral, funeral cost

Posted by Vale

Here’s a story from last Friday’s This Is Local London website. 

Teddington campaign group launches petition against spiralling funeral costs

 Campaigners have encouraged people in the borough to sign a petition against rocketing funeral prices.

The campaign group Fair Funerals aims to raise awareness about the sharp increase in prices in the past few years and the treatment people have received from some companies.

The Teddington-based group consists of five members who have all had their own negative experiences with funeral firms.

The group has been promoting its campaign in Twickenham, Richmond and Kingston and plans to finish in six weeks.

Founder David Ambaye said: “We want people to be aware that there are two big players in the industry who are controlling almost all of it. It’s a bit like having the industry making the rules for itself. From talking to people on the streets, the main feedback is that they are not aware this is the case.”

Mr Ambaye and his sister Lina Ambaye were inspired to create the group after an experience with a funeral firm following their father’s death.

He said: “When our father died, we ended up dealing with three different companies who we thought were three different firms, but they were all owned by the same one.

“The body ended up being treated badly and we couldn’t sue as the company that had dealt with it was sub-contracted and you cannot sue a sub-contracted company.”

Prices in the industry have increased by 42 per cent in the last five years with a 22 per cent increase in 2009 alone.

The group was aiming to get 1,000 signatures so it can take the petition to Parliament.

For more information, visit fairfunerals.org.

Who are the real rotters here?

14 October 2011
Charles
11 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors, Social Fund Funeral Payment

Is this a Welsh thing, or is it beginning to happen all over the UK? In Wales, according to a BBC news article, the number of public health funerals is alleged to have doubled in a decade.

This is contradicted by the view of the Local Government Association. In a survey dated 2010 it reports:  

The number of public health funerals held by local authorities has remained broadly consistent across the last three financial years (2007/8 to 2009/10) … Two fifths (40 per cent) thought there had been some increase, the top three reasons being “higher numbers of people dying with family and friends unwilling to contribute to the costs of the funeral” (59 per cent of respondents); “higher numbers of people dying with family or friends unable to contribute to the costs of a funeral” (56 per cent); and “higher numbers of people dying with no friends or family” (49 per cent) … A calculated cost per public health funeral revealed that, on average, funerals cost £959

Whatever the truth of the BBC’s assertion, there may be evidence that, in Wales, there is growing reluctance of undertakers to arrange funerals for families who are skint.

It is difficult not to sympathise with the undertakers. They carry plenty of bad debt as it is. When they agree to arrange a funeral for a client who is making an application to the Social Fund for a Funeral Payment, they have no guarantee that the application will be successful. So slow is the Department of Work and Pensions in processing these claims that the dead person will have been dust-to-dusted long before verdict + cheque come through. For an undertaker, taking on such a funeral is a gamble. You can see why they might not like the look of the odds, the more so in an age where money owed to an undertaker is no longer necessarily seen as a debt of honour.

At the same time, to turn a family away is to risk considerable damage to a reputation for caring community-mindedness, the cornerstones of an undertaker’s good name. The BBC news article highlights this:

Joanne Sunter, from Portmead in Swansea, said she was turned away by four funeral directors because she was unable to pay a deposit of hundreds of pounds up front.

“I was heartbroken. My mother was in a mortuary rotting and none of these people would help me,” she said.

Note that Ms Sunter does not direct her anger at the DWP. But then it’s not clear that she is eligible for a Funeral Payment. If she isn’t, then where does responsibility for her plight lie?

A little while ago Nick Gandon, in this blog, sparked discussion about the way the Funeral Payment is administered – here. If funeral directors were to come together and refuse to take on applicants to the Social Fund, then, as Norfolk Boi had it, “The DWP would have to solve the situation they have created” – by making up its mind a lot faster.

The Minister for Work and Pensions, Steve Webb, has another idea, according to Teresa Evans. He’d like to substitute the Funeral Payment with a crisis loan, relieving pressure on the Exchequer and loading debt onto the poorest in society.

Teresa thinks the best way for the Welsh to bring their undertakers to heel is by taking matters into their own hands and doing everything themselves. There may be two schools of thought about the feasibility of that.

I can’t find any recent figures on successful applications for a Funeral Payment, so it’s hard to know if there’s been a sharp increase in recent years. I have only been able to discover that between 1988-89 and 1993-94 awards increased from 37,000 to 72,000 with a corresponding rise in expenditure from £18.4m to £62.9m. I guess the number continues to rise.  

Which is why I have found my mind wandering towards what I can only shamefacedly describe as a conspiracy theory.

We live in an age where fecklessness is under attack by all political parties. Tories talk of a ‘culture of irresponsibility’ and Labour talks of a ‘something-for-nothing culture’. Lib Dems presumably say something halfway between the two. They all agree on the need for instilling some social discipline in what’s come to be known as the underclass.

Note that Steve Thomas, chief executive of the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA), reckons the trend towards public health funerals is going to grow. He adds: “Now, it’s not a trend any of us would welcome, but it does reflect the nature of society and probably the problems we have in the economy at the moment.” Note the order in which he lists those two trendsetters. We can take it, I think, that when Mr Thomas talks of “the nature of society” he is referring here to 1) an increasing number of feckless people wilfully neglecting to make financial provision for a funeral and 2) a “higher numbers of people dying with family and friends unwilling to contribute to the costs of the funeral” . If that is so, ask yourself what is the likely effect of publishing Ms Sunter’s photo. If this is the look of applicants to the Social Fund it is not necessarily a good look and may even be a stigmatising look.

So here’s my conspiracy theory. Is the DWP, by making the applications process such a gut-wrenching nightmare, hoping to shock and shame the poor into setting money aside like they used in the good old days when the man from the Pru would pop round on a Friday evening and collect their two bob?

If so, it would seem to be discriminating against the deserving and the undeserving poor alike.

Over at WhatDoTheyKnow.com they’ve been making masses of FOI requests for information about public health funerals. Find them here.

Are you in or out?

13 October 2011
Charles
14 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors, funeral plans

It’s not often that you see a funeral entrepreneur on Dragon’s Den, but last night’s show shone a brief spotlight on an enterprise which, in an industry unaccustomed to innovation, is likely to elicit responses ranging from ‘It’ll never work’ to ‘Tcha.’ Theo Paphitis ruled himself straight out, no messing. But it turns out that death spooks him.

It’s one of those online planning sites (you know, the ones that never make it) with a twist. It’s more than a just passive repository of funeral wishes. It’s also a service comparison website which enables consumers to find the funeral director who’ll give them what they want.

The idea is that you plan a funeral online (with plenty of help), and your plan is then sent anonymously to all funeral directors in a geographical radius set by you. The funeral directors respond with a quote and a pitch. They name a price and they also say why they think they are best for the job. They can link to their website and anything else that makes them look good – third-party endorsement, a video clip on YouTube, whatever. You then choose the funeral director who seems both nicest and best value, and from there on it’s face-to-face and personal. If it doesn’t work out, you go back to the website and choose someone else.

How does it pay for itself? This is the bit that funeral directors are going to hate. You buy a coffin from the website at a cheaper price than you are likely to be able to buy it from a funeral director. The website pockets the margin.

Want to know more? Go to the website and try it out for yourself. It’s called CompareTheCoffin.com. Yeah, yeah, what’s in a name?

Is it likely to catch on? Don’t ask me; I don’t have a business brain. But I’d hazard a guess it stands a good chance of establishing a niche. More and more people are shopping around for a funeral. CompareTheCoffin does all the legwork for them and still almost certainly enables them to make a saving. It seems to have something of the win-win about it, for best funeral directors, too – but, as I say, don’t ask me.

I must declare an interest, though. When the originator of CompareTheCoffin, Steven Mitchell, approached me at the conception stage and asked me to write some text for his website, I did some drilling down, not in a Paphitis way, but into the ethics of it. I satisfied myself that, yes, this is an ethical business idea, Steven is a good guy, as is his web developer Akmal (this is a rare partnership between a Jew and a Moslem), and I set about earning a few meagre pence as a day labourer.

Whether or not CompareTheCoffin is a runner is something you are in a far better position to judge.

After last night’s show the CompareTheCoffin website came under what looked like sustained cyber-attack, which may perhaps be rated flattery. If it’s back up after its drubbing you can find it here. Catch the Dragon’s Den show here. 

Cash for corpses 2

11 October 2011
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, funeral cost

You heard it on the news? You read it in your newspaper? The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has published a report calling on the government to find out of people like the idea of getting a free funeral in exchange for donating their organs.

Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, says: “The possibility of sparing relatives the financial burden of a funeral might encourage more people to register as donors.”

The report rules out offering people an up-front cash inducement in exchange for agreeing to donate an organ or two sometime down the line.

The whole scheme is so fraught with contradictions you wonder how it ever saw the light of day. The point being that those who agree to donate organs cannot be sure where or how they are going to die; unless a person dies in hospital in pretty good health, their organs are no use.  No use = no funeral payment.

So no potential donor is going to be able to bank on a free funeral.

Which means that donors would be mad not to make provision for their funeral anyway. They may even do the dumb and trusting thing and buy a funeral plan or other financial product.

So when the cheque for three grand arrives, what does it go towards? Furnishings? White goods? A plasma TV?

It’s a turkey, Professor Dame Marilyn. And don’t give us this talk about rewards for altruism. Altruism is by definition its own reward.

An interesting thing about this report is that no one has picked up that it is not the first time the Nuffield Council has flown this kite. It first flew it in April 2010.

Guardian report here. Telegraph report here. Daily Mail report here. 

The things they say

26 September 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral directors

 

Over at the Connecting Directors site in America a funeral director observes:

Never trust a funeral director who says, “This is the last thing you can do for your loved one.”

What other upselling tricks and wiles do our native undertakers possess? Including facial expressions?