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 Funeralcare.
Funeral consumers don't know about this. They don't do price comparison shopping. And considering most of them buy just two funerals in their lifetime, and most of them don't have any recently comparable experience, they just assume hopefully that the prices charged by everyone are about the same. They assume that Funeralcare, with its ethical trumpeting and working class roots in will be on their side.
Caveat emptor! And here let's exonerate Dignity. Dignity's in it for the money. It's making lots. Well done, chaps! Don't necessarily like you for it, but realise that the rules of the game are capitalism, and that you play hard and, er, fair.
Why do so many independents moan about the higher prices charged by the big boys yet do nothing to get the message out? Because it would look undignified? I don't know that it would look less dignified than boasting about how cheap your low-cost funeral is as you do at the moment in your coded way.
In Nottingham, the eminently respectable and excellent AW Lymn make no secret of their competitive pricing structure. They break it down and spell it out graphically. Way to go, I'd reckon.
I'm grateful to blog follower Andrew Plume for this intelligence. Thank you, Andrew.
Go to the AW Lymn website. Click on the package prices pdf at the foot of the page, right-hand side.
Labels: Co-op, Dignity, funeral cost
posted by Charles Cowling at
20:51
14 Comments:
Well, of course we should compare prices and services, quite right Charles - and good for AW Lymn in making it all plain - but I was startled by the £845 for services in the crem chapel. FDs do what,exactly, in the chapel? The black cars etc are billed separately, so at the crem - they are generally but not always supportive and considerate with the family, then they and three of their people walk in with the coffin (on a trolley, usually), and lift it onto the plinth aka catafalque. ALL the rest of it is done by the celebrant/officiant, vicar or whoever, charging usually between £75 and £150.
Whereas the FDs do the caring and preparing with the body, the bit that many of us don't much want to do, and charge a small sum for that.
The ceremony usually takes half an hour!I like and respect most of the FDs I work with, and I'm not into FD-bashing, it's a difficult job - but I'm puzzled. Have I misread something? If not what is the £800+ charge at the crem FOR? I think we should be told, as they used to say in "Private Eye."
I can see why there needs to be transparency, but this itemisation can go to far in in my opinion. I am uncomfortable with the idea of charging someone each time they visit their dead relative. When we are dealing with an unexpected death, we encourage family to come again and again.
We have a flat charge, which covers all of our professional services including taking the service if wanted. This does mean that the straightforward, simple funeral subsidises the complex ones, but we are comfortable with that. If a funeral turns out to be four times as much work than when it started out, we do add an extra charge, but this is incredibly rare. We are, of course, cheaper than the Co-op by a long stretch.
Gloriamundi, what they mean by service in the chapel is their professional fee. It's a shame they are so cremation-centric. This is clear, but a bit formulaic.
It should be remembered that price should not be the only consideration when deciding which funeral director to use. The standard or service and facilities is important and in many ways more important than simply the price. A W Lymn pride themselves on the standard of service and options they offer to clients and simply try to give the best value with a multitude of options to ensure that clients only pay for what the want. They will not however cut standards simply to reduce price. Gloriamundi's comments on the Professional Fee for a service in the crematorium chapel need some clarification. This fee is not just for that service but for all the professional fees invoved in arranging and conducting the funeral, if the services brochure rather than the simple price list is reviewed it will be clear what is included. If the service is in church followed by cremation the five staff members are involved for considerably longer than when the service is all at the crematorium and this is reflected in a different level of charge for the professional fees with a church service prior to cremation.
Nigel, I approve in principle of your pricing transparency; however, it would take some time and research to make exact comparisons between funeral directors, simply because each has its idiosyncratic pricing structure. The bottom lines you show are the only clear price indicators without actually interviewing each FD separately.
Gloriamundi: look at the items compared, and see how one FD's charge for one is covered by another's for an overlapping item; for example, removal and care at Baguley's is covered in 'chapel fee; care & preparation at Co-op covered in 'removal fee', and so on. Presumably, £845 covers items that are not itemized individually...
All this would be perfectly acceptable if recently bereaved people behaved like level-headed consumers. You wouldn't wait till the first day of your annual leave, and rush to the first travel agent you see and say: "I've got to go on holiday tomorrow, where am I going and how much will it cost?", but that's a bit like the way we buy a funeral. Nigel's point about quality of service being the first consideration is on the button, and I believe the ones who will survive into the coming century are those who provide first a caring service, then a product. We've all got to cover our costs, whether it's by one funeral subsidizing another, or each paying for itself, or a combination. And no, Rupert, we can't charge people for grieving in their own way. What we can do is accompany them on their early bereavement journey, provide what they need from us with love and without reserve, and hope we can pay our own bills from what we're obliged by a commercial culture to charge them, while demonstrating that we care.
Thanks for the clarifications, gentlemen - it would be simpler then if a professional fee was the heading, would it not? Rupert talks of a fee inclusive of taking the service if wanted - and if not?
If you ask a good secular officiant (let's avoid labels and jealousies for now) they will tell you that a family visit takes about 1.5 - 2 hours,+ travel time, writing time (a day?), checking back with the family, sorting music, printing a fair copy, and running the ceremony, taking full responsibility for all that happens in it. That's what a typical fee of £130 - 155 is for.
Now there's no reason at all why the right sort of FD shouldn't do those things and lead a ceremony, though many would, I'll hazard a guess, be bad at it, and wouldn't want to do it anyway. But - sorry to be cheeky - how can you charge for taking the ceremony if you don't actually carry out the tasks I've listed? If you simply "disburse" that amount to an officiant, fine, but that alters your fee structure for yourselves, doesn't it? And if you charge for the officiant and your bill includes an amount to cover your services if you had taken the ceremony, then, er - aren't you double-charging? Or is that the sort of thing Rupert means when he talks about a simple funeral cross-subsidising a more complex one? That makes sense, I guess.
Hey, this is your business, not mine, but it is a puzzling one sometimes, and dealing with a recent bereavement, as Jonathan points out, is not a time to be puzzled. Nor, I agree, is it a time to rush into choices about the funeral. His final half-paragraph I find enlightening and encouraging.
One good funeral director I've often had work from commented to one (fortunately well-heeled) family: "Don't you worry about money, let's do the fuenral well."
Seeing the unfathomable fee structures in the funeral profession, I have to admit he had a point.
We don't use other officiants. If it's not myself or my wife, it's a vicar or family. We take the service, and do all the things that you list. Apart from writing the service and actually taking it on the day it is no extra work. By the time we have had the first visit with a family, a relationship has hopefully begun to develop between us that means there is no need to bring in someone else.
It's not so much that people who who use our services but don't use us as officients are paying for something they didn't have, rather we don't charge to take the service. Or is that just too many double negatives in one sentence to be forgivable?
I feel that I must give some explanation to both Gloriamundi and Jonathan as to why funeral directors prices and charges now appear to be so complicated when it would appear that all the bereaved need to compare prices is the “bottom line total”.
Prior to the first investigation of funeral prices by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in 1979 (if my memory serves me correctly) funeral directors generally priced their funerals on their price list, estimates and invoices as packages. These included all the elements that most families typically expected in a traditional funeral. Usually being the transfer and care of the deceased, the preparation, dressing in a shroud, viewing and use of the chapel of rest, provision of a hearse, limousine and bearers on the day of the funeral, all the professional charges and a plain coffin with appropriate fittings and lining. Extra charges were made simply for additional limousines or a better quality or more elaborate coffin.
The OFT decreed that pricing in this way was unacceptable as it meant that the bereaved were often paying for services included in the package that they did not require. For example the deceased may be dressed in their own clothes, the family may provide their own bearers or the limousine may not have been required. The OFT therefore insisted that it became a condition of the “National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD) Code of Practice” that all pricing was itemised and that the only package allowed was one defined by them as the “Basic” funeral which all funeral directors then had to offer.
The intention was that families could compare the charges of differing funeral directors by comparing the “Basic” funeral package but this was very misleading. The OFT insisted that this package must be very simple and therefore many of the services that families would expect to be included were not. For example it specifically excluded any out of hours transfer, any viewing, a service in church and any limousines. Thus families were not able to compare the price of the funeral they actually expected without working from the itemised price list. Clearly package pricing was easier for families to understand but funeral directors were precluded from offfering packages.
This is not actually all bad news as any good funeral director will happily discuss the individual requirements and calculate a price from their price list without obligation and without charging for services that would be include in a package but are not required by that particular family. Further families should not feel compromised or under any pressure to use any particular firm.
Clearly if a death occurs during the night it is not possible for the family to always obtain a quotation before seeking the services of a funeral director to move the deceased. In these circumstances however the family have only contracted with that funeral director for the services of the transfer. When they meet with the funeral director, specify their requirements and receive a quotation they are at liberty to reject that quotation and to use the services of another funeral director provided always that they pay the first funeral director for the services already completed. Further if the funeral is arranged in the house (and even if a contract has been signed) the family has a statutory right under the doorstep selling regulations to cancel that contract during the cooling off.Once again they must remember that payment will be required for any services provided before they cancel.
Thanks again for the clarifications.
Rupert, no worries about double negatives, I see your point, and I guess you'ld say you are experienced, skilled and confident enough to give any sort of secular funeral asked for - besides, maybe for some families it would be a bit of a relief not to have to meet and form a relationship with another stranger to sort out the ceremony, when they've already spent quite some time with you.
I can see this could be a way ahead for some sorts of FDs, though as I said above, some I know wouldn't want to, couldn't and certainly shouldn't do what you do.
The OFT seems, with the best of intentions, to have made things difficult for you. Thanks for your detailed and clear explanation, Nigel.
We tend to characterise funeral elements by the traditional items (limos, hearse, bearers) - judging by some of the links I've followed up recently, and Charles' own thoughts, I wonder if the usual family expectations will become increasingly less usual? Are we heading for less restraint, less black, fewer big cars etc, or is this just a small minority thing?
Just found your company website, Rupert. It's miles away from the websites of the FDs I've worked with, and offers a sort of supported independence and choice which we don't seem to see much of round here. Says it all - but my final question above still applies, I think.
Nigel, I take your point about no obligation, but the OFT (2001) report mentioned that "92 percent of [bereaved] people visited just one funeral director". People don't want to shop around, especially if they have to enter the premises to have items and costs explained. "Price is the last thing you want to mention; you're plunging in feet first, but you're too upset to ask any more questions than you have to." (ibid)
My comment about the bottom line still stands, in view of the complexity not so much of individual FD's pricing structures as of the mental gymnastics needed for comparison between one and another, due to lack of uniformity. (Even I had difficulty comparing prices on your site, and I'm not distracted by the death of my father/wife/brother.)
Funerals aren't like baked beans; you can't buy the same product in two places because each undertaker has her individual style and approach. But you could tot up identical elements (removal, transport, celebrancy, professional fee etc) and get a rough idea if we all priced our services individually under similar headings. You could also see whether you were obliged to have (or pay for) things you may not want, such as a hearse or a vicar for instance, without having to embarrass yourself by asking.
Have a look at the Green Fuse website, where you will find a detailed breakdown of options and prices, with explanations, as displayed in the window of the premises. I think you'll agree that if we all used one equally clear system (not necessarily the GF one) comparisons would be more manageable. But then, we are all independent businesses, so why should we? The only answer to that is, 'for the clients' sakes'.
Having said all that; you, Rupert and I all seem to agree that it's not the cost that matters to people but the treatment they receive. It's just that if we make ourselves visible in every way, they can see for themselves that they are being guided rather than led.
Oh, and Gloriamundi, 'the usual family expectations' are for the funeral to replicate ones they've been to. There was a time when people's expectations were satisfied by only one TV channel, for example, but imagine going back to that now! Time will change.
There is a UK web site that is being launched to try and address the funeral price comparison issue. www.funeralprices.co.uk
Consumers should be able to use the internet as a tool to find out prices easily from local funeral homes, without being faced with the sales pitch.
Although this is not fully live yet, the concept is most definitely one that I can see working as the internet continues to become a vital price comparison tool.
What do you think?
One to watch. Thank you for flagging this up, Fisher_Girl. Please keep us informed of developments.
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