This advert appeared in the Liverpool Echo. This is what it says:
The Fairways Funeral Plan is individually tailored to meet your needs. Everything featured in the [yawn] Fairways Funeral Plan is fully guaranteed no matter how high prices rise and we’ve created flexible payment plans to suit any budget.
So even in uncertain times, you can rest assured [nice pun, boys!] everything will be taken care of.
The Fairways Funeral Plan is only available from carefully selected Funeral Directors which meet the highest standards of care and quality.These are funeral experts and are available to call 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
You can probably read the names of the handpicked familyalike undertakers underneath the text. Liverpool’s finest. The only ones who match the incredibly high standards set by those who administer the FFP. This is exactly the sort of information that funeral consumers need. There are lots of funeral directors in Liverpool. But only these made the grade. The rest are clearly sub-standard, below par, simply not good enough, quite possibly crap.
It is a matter of sheer coincidence that all the familyalike funeral directors named in the ad are members of the Fairways Partnership, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Co-operative Funeralcare and an organisation for which I cannot find a website. Odd, that.
I have a nice window sticker I send to GFG-recommended funeral directors with lovely calligraphy by my lettering hero Ieuan Rees, the man who taught me to love the Welsh. I think I shall have to ask him to do me another bearing the words DENOUNCED BY THE GOOD FUNERAL GUIDE.
The ad above has been reported to the NAFD and the ASA.
