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.

Holiday reading

This blog is going on holiday for a week to enjoy fresh sea breezes, long walks and real beers in real pubs. Pubs! The highest proof of the existence of God!

I shall of course be packing some holiday reading, none of it death related though, as we know, Reaper G does have an importunate way of pooping most everything.

I shall also be asking Amazon to send me two books and, were I you (I know, I know, the record shows clearly that I am not), I’d be seriously considering doing the same.

What are they?

First up, Thomas Lynch’s latest. Apparitions and Late Fiction. Read a review here and another here. Now buy it.

Second up: How the World is Made by John Michell. This is the work he was desperate to finish before the cancer did for him last year. Beautiful man, beautiful mind. Buy, buy, buy!

Bye. See you all next Monday.

The Good Funeral Guide
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