SAIF

Indy undertakers on the counter-attack

12 October 2010
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare, Dignity, family funeral directors, funeral cost, funeral directors, Plan your own funeral, pre-need plans, SAIF

Saif’s  IPSOS-Mori price comparison survey published in February 2010 was dynamite. It showed that independents are generally cheaper than two big beasts of the industry, Co-operative Funeralcare and Dignity. Had Saif got the message out to the funeral-buying public it would have hit the big beasts’ bottom line bigtime.

But the message never got out, not in a big way – an eyebrow-raising non-occurrence considering the price obsession of British funeral consumers. Saif didn’t bang the drum and blow the trumpet. A number of its members are cross about this. All that money to create a weapon of mass destruction only for it to hastily hidden under a bushel. What a waste, they said.

Is Saif dumb or did it have its tongue cut out? The story cannot be told for fear of litigation. There was a rumour swirling that one of the big beasts put pressure on Saif’s suppliers to take sides: either you ditch your indies or we’ll ditch you. I don’t think we can attach any credence to that.

The advance of the clunking conglomerates has been inexorable. They have circumvented the nobody-does-it-better claim of the independents and fought the war instead on the unpropitious battleground of financial planning, employing expert messagemakers to seduce consumers with sweet-talk about empowerment. As a result, the future now belongs to the big beasts: they’ve got the paid-up pre-need plans to prove it. It’s been a strategic masterstroke. Who wants today’s car, phone, anything tomorrow? No, we want the upgrade, next generation, as-yet-undreamt of. And yet… the funeral planners have conquered obsolescence . Hats off!

How to reverse this? By playing the big beasts at their own game? Golden Charter is fighting the good fight pluckily enough, but is beginning to look like the British army in Basra. In any case, there are far, far better ways of making provision for funeral expenses, ways which do not disempower those left behind.

No. The way forward is to get back onto the battleground of value for money, quality assurance and individuality. At a time like death people want to be looked after by a brilliant boutique business, not Funerals R Us. It ought to be easy enough.

It will need concerted action, though. Ay, there’s the rub.

So it’s really good to see a togetherness initiative come out of last week’s discussion of the new Co-op website MyLocalFuneralDirector. It was sparked by Nick Armstrong. He spotted that the Co-op had failed to buy mylocalfuneralservice.co.uk and yourlocalfuneralservice.co.uk.

“I’ll give you a guess who has just bought them. I’ll get a list of independent funeral directors on there as soon as I work out how to do it. Ill post back on here when I have a template up and running.:-) … It won’t be a quick thing as I want to get it right but it will be honest that’s for certain! If anyone has any ideas on compiling the database easily please let me know.”

His challenge was taken up by Andrew Hickson:

“Nick, here’s an idea off the top of my head. Follow it up, ignore it, change or work on it, I shan’t be offended by any of them!

It seems that there’s a fair bit of animosity and dislike of the website that is being discussed here, so, how about we, ourselves, research and compile a database? By this, I mean every reader and follower of this blog, each contributing what he or she knows.

I’d be surprised if between us we weren’t pretty well-informed of the true identities of a huge number of companies.

An immense task, and one which would require every contributor to be really focussed. But, very exciting, and think of the satisfaction when it was complete.

I’d be happy to help out wherever I could, so do let me know your thoughts!

This could be big if we all made it so … the start of a collaboration of FD’s willing to challenge the boundaries of the truth with which we all contend on a daily basis?”

Nick has responded:

“Hi Kingfisher. I’m game. Any help on content etc would be appreciated as well as any help with compiling a database. Thinking of a searchable google map with premises photos and branch info might be a good start. Bit more interactive than a list.

I’ve been doing one on my website with local churches, cemeteries etc. http://tinyurl.com/2v54rzz

I’m happy to build and host the site(s) and any info would be greatly appreciated.”

So there we are then. The go-to man is Nick: office@funeralhelp.co.uk.

Let’s make common cause!

Sods’ law

16 June 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Co-op, Co-operative Funeralcare, funeral cost, National Association of Funeral Directors, SAIF, scandals

The funeral industry is right to be wary of those who claim to scrutinise it on behalf of consumers. After all, Jessica Mitford did much injury to the American funeral industry with an exposé which held it up to ridicule and focussed on price at the expense of value, and so was actually of very little use to consumers.

Jessica and her muckraking merrymaking aside, the UK funeral industry was always going to find scrutiny hard to bear both because it is unaccustomed to being held to account and because parts of it  suffer from a degree of complacency, self-importance, even, induced by customers who come through its doors, hold their hands up and say, “Tell me what to do.”

The Good Funeral Guide is guilty of having had some fun at the expense of the funeral industry. Any consumer advocate is going to be adversarial at times, and resolutely non-aligned, of course. And in the interests of readability, this blog aims not to be solemn but challenging, thought-provoking, tail-tweaking, humorous, deadly serious, thoughtful, silly and sometimes downright maverick. Entertaining. If it’s earnest you want, join me at the University of Bath on Saturday for the CDAS annual conference, entitled A Good Send-off. It won’t all be dull. Melissa Stewart of Native Woodland is speaking.

The approach I have taken to the funeral industry is to hold it to account from time to time and, where possible, engage in constructive dialogue. Where the trade bodies, NAFD and SAIF are concerned there has been very little of that. Emails are not replied to or even acknowledged. If this makes me, sometimes, waspish, who’s not to understand?

Yet my main thrust has been not to expose rottenness but to spotlight what’s best in funeral service, to sing the praises of the unsung heroes – to show consumers the way to the good guys so that they needn’t worry themselves about the bad and the awful. Those good guys are invariably independents.

For this reason I tend to be slow to respond to beastly goings on. That’s why, in the matter of Co-operative Funeralcare’s response to the SAIF IPSOS-Mori price comparison survey, I have been slow out of the blocks. I don’t get a bang out of giving Funeralcare a drubbing once in a while. It is a wearisome duty conducted on behalf of funeral consumers, socialism and the ideals of the Rochdale Pioneers.

But this latest business is as bad as it gets.

Even though the SAIF price comparison survey would seem to be 100% quantitative and 0% qualitative, even though it talks about what consumers need to know, SAIF has, along with at least three of its members, in the words of SAIF ceo Alun Tucker, “been issued with papers from the legal team representing The Co-operative Funeralcare. The documents relate to the wording in various items of SAIF literature and the content of some advertisements that members have placed in their local press. I will not comment further at this stage, as we have placed the papers in the hands of solicitors for a response to Funeralcare’s claims.”

I think we all know exactly what we reckon to that. There is no reason to overexcite Co-op lawyers by putting our thoughts into words. Justice is only very, very distantly related to the Law. They hardly ever see each other, never at funerals.

There’s worse. There are allegations from others in the industry that SAIF-affiliated suppliers of merchandise and services are coming under pressure to think carefully about who they do business with – a threat to the viability of SAIF as a trade body. Who is applying this pressure? And, as a writer to SAIF Insight, the trade body’s magazine, says, what if all this were to come into the public domain?

Well, it is in the public domain. And we reckon we know what it’s all about, don’t we? The funeral industry is not a hermetically sealed world like the illegal drugs trade. This is a matter which belongs to wider society; it needs to be aired; it is of material interest to all funeral consumers, the very people the funeral industry and the Good Funeral Guide together seek to serve.

It is because we share this common purpose that I believe we should talk to each other. We won’t always agree, but that’s not the point. So I hope I shall hear soon from spokespeople at SAIF and the NAFD.

My sincere thanks to all those of you who have contacted me with information and told me what you think. Where do we go from here?

If you want to leave a comment, please be very, very careful how you word it.

Co-op lawyers please note: I signed my house over to my wife when I cancelled my smile bank account. I am penniless. (It’s true, too, but I’m throwing it in also for readers who are members of the NAFD. They’ll see the joke.)

Vile and baseless rumours

15 June 2010
Charles
No comments
Categories: Co-op, Co-operative Funeralcare, funeral cost, National Association of Funeral Directors, SAIF

Yesterday I reported that rumours are swirling in Funeralland concerning the response of the People’s Undertaker to the release of the IPSOS-Mori funeral price comparison commissioned by the independent funeral directors’ trade association, SAIF — a survey which revealed Co-op charges to be, on average, higher than those in the independent sector despite its enjoyment of significant economies of scale.

I thank all those of you who have contacted me, confidentially, to talk about these rumours.

I am pleased and relieved to be able to report that these rumours are indeed baseless. There have been no instances of heavy-handedness concerning industry suppliers Wilcox Limousines, Lyn Oakes the clothing people, or a leading and excellent firm of funeral directors.

Just as I thought!

No official comment yet from SAIF or the NAFD. But I watch my stats. I know who’s looking. I said to them, when I emailed them yesterday, that I am only doing what any conscientious consumer advocate would do. I’d far rather sing the praises of the best, that’s where my emphasis lies, but I have to maintain an overview.

Anything in it?

14 June 2010
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Co-op, Co-operative Funeralcare, funeral cost, SAIF

Perhaps the most important recent consumer information to reach the public domain was the SAIF IPSOS-Mori  price comparison survey (26 Feb 2010) which showed that  “Average funeral directors’ charges are highest for Dignity funeral directors and lowest for independents. Co-operative Funeralcare branches fall between the two.”

SAIF wouldn’t share these results with the Good Funeral Guide on the grounds, that, though we make a better case for independent funeral directors than most, we were adjudged not to be fit and proper recipients. Good news will out, though. We soon had that clean linen being aired on this website. Since then, SAIF has quietly aired it on its own.

Why the shhh!? I’d have thought that SAIF members pay their subs to have this sort of information trumpeted at full blast. As we go into an era of cuts lots more people are going to be looking for a cheap funeral. Every financial journalist in the country would have picked up on a brightly-worded press release.

One possible reason has reached me in the form of swirling rumours. I say rumours and, for the benefit of Co-op Funeralcare’s lawyers, I repeat: rumours. Allegations. Baseless, doubtless.

These rumours centre on the response of Co-op Funeralcare to the release of the SAIF survey. They are ugly rumours.

Does anyone have any solid, verifiable information they’d like to share?

Don’t leave an anonymous comment below. I couldn’t trace you through it, but others, possibly, could. Contact me direct: Charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk. Arrange to phone, if you prefer. You will just have to trust that I shall treat anything you say in strictest confidence.

It would be good to stand these rumours up or knock them down, as they deserve.

Chasing the money

14 June 2010
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: funeral cost, National Association of Funeral Directors, Probate, SAIF

Sometimes a google goosechase can take you to interesting places.

Where did I start? I wanted to find out the current average price of a simple funeral. I found a Guardian article which concluded with a tranche of good advice from Anne Wadey, author of the Which? publication What To Do When Someone Dies. Which?, we remind ourselves, is a consumer advocacy charity. At the foot of the article was a recommendation (not by Anne Wadey, oh no) of probate specialists Final Duties. Heard of them? You have now. Read this article about them in the Guardian here.

The NAFD has its own pet probate specialist umbrella-ed under its Bereavement Advice Centre (BAC), a not-for-profit organisation. Spin Profiles has this to say about the BAC:

The Bereavement Advice Centre claims to have been welcomed by a variety of organisations from health, funeral, legal and advice sectors and their policy committee oversees development of the service and includes clergy, hospital bereavement support, legal, care home, medical, funeral undertaking and local government representations.

The BAC publishes a leaflet called “What to do when someone dies“, which is widely available in registrars, where people go to register a death, and in some hospitals. The leaflet publicises a helpline which has been accused by solicitors of promoting BAC’s commercial owner ITC Legal Services. An article in the Law Society Gazette in June 2009 drew attention to the “financial links” between the Bereavement Advice Centre and ITC Legal Services. The article says the link has “come under fire from solicitors”. Patricia Wass, a partner at Plymouth firm Foot Anstey and chairwoman of the Law Society’s wills and equity committee, is quoted in the article as saying that she is concerned that registrars ‘up and down the country’ are giving BAC’s leaflets to people when they report a death. This might imply that local authorities sanction BAC’s promotion of ITC’s commercial interests.

Over at Thisismoney, here’s what they have to say on the matter: Registrars, GPs, hospitals, churches and funeral homes are all handing out leaflets advertising the Bereavement Advice Centre. The official-looking document appears to be for a free independent advice service. But those that call a free helpline or visit the website are pointed towards ITC Legal Services, one of the biggest probate providers in the UK. ITC’s fees can be much greater than similar services offered by local solicitors. In one case, a reader was quoted £2,400 by ITC, almost three times more than a local solicitor … Despite claiming its fees are competitive with solicitors and can be half that charged by banks, ITC’s charges can be hugely more expensive than services offered by trained lawyers. This is because the firm charges a percentage of the estate, unlike solicitors, which tend to charge an hourly rate. In Manchester, this ranges between £140 and £250. ITC charges from 2.5% for estates worth between £5,000 and £19,999 to 1% for estates worth £230,000 and above … Stewart Acton, 59, was given one of these leaflets when he went to Sale town Hall to register the death of his mother, Sheila. Thinking it was an official leaflet, he phoned the Bereavement advice centre. Days later, he was visited by a woman from ITC. Mr Acton says: ‘The girl said the firm would take care of everything and that if I went to a solicitor it would take a long time and the costs could be astronomical.’ The charge for ITC’s services was £2,400. Mr Acton got in touch with his neighbour, a solicitor, who said he would charge just £850 for the same service. He says: ‘When your mum dies, your head is in the clouds and you just go with it. These people are just coffin-chasers.’

The Head of the Bereavement Advice Centre is… Anne Wadey. The author of the latest edition of What To Do When Someone Dies would hardly seem to have impeccable non-aligned credentials.

I learnt something else interesting from Spin Profiles: In 2002 Helen Parker, editor of Which, commented: “We want to see all funeral directors in the UK signed up to a standard code of practice. The code should be monitored and enforced by an independent body.” In response, Alan Slater, ceo of the NAFD gave this assurance: “We are currently mid-way through the process of improving our code … Once finalised, the new code will be sent to the OFT.” The NAFD’s Slater said this in 2002. But as of February 2009, the NAFD code of practice has not been approved by OFT. In fact, none of the funeral trades associations’ codes of practice have been approved by OFT. Approval would mean that the codes of practice would be blessed by the Consumer Codes Approval Scheme, offering a much greater degree of assurance to consumers.

In search of better news I googled ITC Legal Services. Has it cleaned its act up? Oh dear, it hasn’t. Here’s a depressing story dated 9 June 2010.

To the consumer, this all looks very murky. I must now fire off emails to the NAFD and SAIF and see what they have to say for themselves.

PS Who is the informant behind these Spin Profiles, I hear you ask? It is none other than the indefatigable Teresa Evans. Hats off, please!

Playing Saif

17 March 2010
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, 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 like him to send it to me? I told him not to go to the trouble: I’d get it from Saif itself.

I rang Saif on Monday afternoon. I was promised the report by email. Nothing. I rang in a reminderly way on Tuesday morning and was promised a call back. Nothing. I rang once more in the afternoon. My request was being scrutinised, I was told, by the brightest and best at Saif, and the conclusion seemed to be that the Good Funeral Guide, a resource for consumers, dammit, is reckoned not to be a fit repository for such information. It seems that they don’t like references to “your dead person”. The only acceptable term for a dead person is, I am told, “the deceased.” I am still waiting for official confirmation of this from someone called Alan, and I confidently expect to have to wait ’til the Crack of Doom itself.

I dislike velveteen euphemisms that insulate us from the reality of things. I especially buy cialis bali dislike that hush-and-awe, neuter word “deceased”, the way it slithers and hisses. This is not everybody’s position. There is no vocabulary that will satisfy all. Too bad. We use words in this country both to assign meaning and to set ourselves apart, and there’s something both marvellous and detestable about the ways in which we do it. What a pity it is that we cannot use the plain words of our language to stake our place in neutral territory. As things are, meaning comes in shades of the most delicate, deadly hues. I shut the door, she closes it. We inhabit different worlds.

Everybody’s friend is nobody’s friend. Against the sanctimonious self-rightousness of Saif I would set the words of one O Hetreed, who wrote this to me: “Thank you for this excellent website. It’s been really helpful at a difficult point and refreshingly free of cant and bogus solemnity.” I was even more gratified when I found out who O Hetreed actually is.

I’m cross with Saif and disappointed. And amused, of course. I know what the Ipsos MORI report says, but I’m not telling you. Do you find yourself beginning to suppose that it can only reveal that independent funeral directors exhibit an appetite for exploitation which borders on depravity? I couldn’t possibly comment.