Other funeral ‘homes’ are also available…
Dying Matters, the former NCPC coalition, now under the wings of Hospice UK, sent out an e-mail bulletin this week with an update on this year’s Dying Matters Awareness Week, presumably to most of their 32,000 members. Top feature in the bulletin was the large Co-op logo and blurb shown above. The neat hook of […]
Help yourself to some of this
When John Taplin of Open Prepaid Funeral Plans first proposed that we work together to create a GFG funeral plan I told him to f*** off. Not in so many words. I was icily polite. I was practised in the art having previously spurned the seductive sweet talk of another funeral plan pedlar which wanted to fly me […]
Dog eats dog. Move on, leave them to it
Here’s the hot news: “… we can today formally announce that we have initiated legal proceedings against the UK’s largest provider of pre-paid funeral plans, Golden Charter, seeking substantial damages for their actions against Safe Hands Funeral Plans.” Yes, the Yorkshire terriers have gone for the throat of wee Big Dawgie, and they ain’t stopping […]
The product that has turned every sadness into a sales-op and every funeral into a retail event?
“The ‘buy now, die later’ brand of package deal has meant a lost connection between the sale of funerals and the delivery of them, and with it the loss of face-to-face accountability between buyer and seller that used to provide reliable consumer protection. Now the recipient of the services (the bereaved) and the provider […]
Apocalypse? What apocalypse?
There’s a wide and growing measure of agreement that the next big scandal to hit the funeral industry is going to centre on pre-need funeral plans. On the one hand, there is intensifying anxiety concerning the robustness of trust funds. There are dark and disturbing rumours flying around about plans coming in underfunded. On the […]
The scandal waiting to happen — again and again
Some of you will not be surprised that the following story involves Andrew Baker. It doesn’t end with him, guilty or not. When it comes to the mis-selling of pre-need funeral products, we ain’t seen nothing yet. From the Gloucestershire Echo: Andrew Baker, aged 50, who lives in Pebworth near Honeybourne in Worcestershire was arrested […]
What the…
An undertaker passed on to us the email below. Anybody know anything about Liviana? It’s difficult to believe that any outfit marketing itself in such sub-literate terms could achieve any sort of credibility. The netherworld of pre-pay funeral plans just got murkier. Dear Sirs , Just a quick introduction email from me today. Allow […]
What price peace of mind?
It’s been another very bad day at the office for the financial product known as the funeral plan, demonstrating its attractiveness to cheats and scammers. Sooner or later some devious little twerp is going to do a runner with a shedful. Some reckon they know who that twerp is. Yorkshire Asset Protection, a financial services […]
Funeral plans and the ‘peace of mind’ delusion
It may be that the media are beginning to wake up to the inadequacies of pay-now-die-later funeral plans. The Times has a piece today which, chances are, you won’t be able to read online because you haven’t got a key to the paywall. So I’ll summarise. It highlights third-party costs that funeral plans generally do […]
‘Everyone has a plan til they get punched in the mouth.’ – Mike Tyson
Of all the products dreamt up in the secret, black and midnight minds of financial services sorcerers, the pay-now-die-later funeral plan must rank as one of the rankest. It stinks. It’s idiotic. A funeral plan purports to benefit consumers by enabling them to buy tomorrow’s funeral at today’s prices (or thereabouts). But it wasn’t invented […]
