Legal, decent, honest and truthful?

Charles 13 Comments
Charles

You probably can’t read the ad above; the print’s too small. It 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.


13 Comments

  1. Charles

    A similar advertisment appeared in The Evesham Journal on 27th January, and again 10th February (today). To suggest that Fairway’s funeral plans are available to only carefully selected funeral directors that meet the highest standards of care and quality is totally misleading. I’m also concerned that the public may see this advert as a third party endorsement of the funeral directors listed; of course that is exactly what Pairways wish people to think.

  2. Charles

    I could of chosen a few more stronger words about the bull shit in the Fairways advertisement and have noted the depths that the Co-Op are now sinking too as probably the quality of there over all service taking a quote from the above shite!!!!!!! It will be interesting to see what our trade associations such as – NAFD and SAFE and probably Trading Standards Advertising will say about the above bull shit…

    yours truly

  3. Charles

    I have today picked up last weeks local newspaper to find the disgraceful Fairways advert in it. I find it extremely frustrating and even more insulting that the advert implies that they are the most carefully selected funeral directors in the area. As an NAFD Diploma holder, and Licence holder from the BIFD I would be interested to know what qualifications these FD’s hold to have been so carefully selected. It will be interesting to see what NAFD have to say about it – or not!

  4. Charles

    CWS/Co-op/funeralcare removed the dedicated Fairways website last year, fwiw, I’m sure that f’care are under pressure to sell oodles of pre-paid plans to recoup the costs of those rather rather expensive ads that they ran on the commercial channels a year or so ago

  5. Charles

    Well, what a load of balony. Surely every company is aloud to advertise it’s wares and obviously recommend it’s own funeral homes. Name me (if you can) any company who would freely recommend it’s rivals.

  6. Charles

    She has the word “Breathe” tattooed in white ink.
    But once they are, she can focus on her phone died, she asked
    LaBella to use divination and see what is next for the tweet.
    Hit and run offenders who have caused injuries, on the drug and alcohol issues, Lohan has an interesting Twitter
    hashtag has taken off today. But it does cause a stir in the club without her permission.

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