Which? hunt

Okay then, what’s so what’s our line on the latest media coverage of Funeralworld sparked by the ‘consumer advocacy organisation’ Which? deploring mendacious, predatory funeral directors?

All the age-old charges are levelled against funeral directors: opaque pricing, upselling, and talking people into services they don’t need like embalming. Out of 20 funeral directors mystery shopped by Which? the advice offered by 14 was rated poor or very poor.

This is what we think.

First, consumers have a duty to prepare, in advance of any commercial transaction they enter into, by informing themselves and shopping around. Funerals are no different. Perhaps they should be, but just now this is the way we do things, so tough. Buying a funeral is no different from buying a fridge. Or, perhaps more appropriately, a second-hand car. The first rule of capitalism is never give a sucker an even break.

Second, Which? has a very poor claim to be a consumer advocate in the area of funerals. Why? Because the Which? guide What To Do When Someone Dies is written by an funeral industry insider. That insider is Anne Wadey. Anne Wadey heads up the Bereavement Advice Centre, which is financed by the Independent Trust Corporation (ITC), a probate specialist, and sponsored by the NAFD. ITC’s reputation is deplorable. Have a look at the Review Centre website here. The latest review (12.12.2011) begins: “ITC Legal Services _ Never consider using them!” Please anyone out there contemplating using this firm for probate work, don’t don’t don’t! They are complete charlattans who lull you into a false sense of security that they will support you during a time of need and are actually only after fleecing the estate of your loved one. They have upset me so badly, I feel unable to even telephone them and consider taking them to court for misrepresentation is the only way forward.

We first looked at ITC in June 2010. If you’d like more detail, click here.

Third, this so-called survey by Which? is irresponsibly sensation seeking. Sure, they “applaud the examples of empathy and good practice we did see” — but there’s no reference to this in the Daily Mail report.

The effect is to tar all funeral directors with the same brush. This is terribly unfair.

Here at the GFG we are no strangers, obviously, to vile service from lying, cheating bastards trading as funeral directors.

We are also aware that some of the nicest, kindest, most principled people you could ever hope to meet also trade as funeral directors.

If Which? wanted to do consumers a service, this is what they would have said. They would have said that the good news is that anyone, anywhere, can find an ethical, golden-hearted funeral director who’ll look after them wonderfully well.

But they didn’t. They chose to stir the shit to get themselves a bit of cheap publicity.

And our completely crap media fell for it.

 

Daily Mail story here

Daily Telegraph story here 

Dethe where is thy sting, where Grave thy victory cry Molesworth

 

Posted by Vale

Ronald Searle is no more. We marked the day here at the GFG Batesville tower with a blog post and a brief period of mourning by dressing like Alaster Sim playing the headmistress of St Trinian’s. Enuff said.

But, in the pages of the Economist, the grate Molesworth himself has remembered him in the way that only he can. He say:

ART is for weeds and sissies whose mater hav said Take care of my dear little Cedric, he is delicate you kno and cannot stand a foopball to the head. Whenever anebode mention Art they all sa gosh mikelangelo leenardo wot magnificent simetry of line. Shurely the very pinnackle of western civilisation etc.etc. Pass me my oils Molesworth that I may paint my masterpeece. The headmaster sa gosh cor is that the medeechi venus hem-hem a grate work so true to life reminds me of young mrs filips enuff said.

Molesworth sa on the contry the most beatiful form in art is a Ronald Searle GURL from St Trinian’s in a tunick with black suspenders and armed with a hockey stick to beat the daylites out of another gurl or maybe just a teacher chortle chortle. Mr Searle sa he hav based her on his sister Olive. She hav wild platts and an empty gin bottle in her pocket a sack of poysinous todestools two sticks of dynamite and possibly a hippo on a lede while an old crone alias a teacher sa from a window Elspeth put that back AT ONCE. Or she will be sharpening a massiv knife on a grinder with grusome heads of gurls on a shelf behind and the headmistres will be telling the surprized parent this is Rachel, our head gurl, ha ha ha.

Of course Searle’s life and work went far beyond the gates of St Trinian’s and the doors of St Cedric’s. Molesworth follows him all the way. It’s a brilliant obituary and a true tribute to a grate man. Read it all here

Without knobs on

From Richard Rawlinson, our religious correspondent, who is a Catholic. 
The campaign against ugly and extraneous coffin handles launched by aesthete and designer David Hicks, which the GFG ran a little while back – here – has support in high places. Pope John Paul II’s coffin was beautiful in its simplicity.
 

Second-hand coffin for sale

A used casket went up for sale last month at a Los Angeles auction house with the estimate price of $1,000. The ‘one previous owner’ was Lee Harvey Oswald, President John F Kennedy’s suspected assassin. Shot dead by Jack Ruby just days after JFK’s murder in 1963, he was buried in Texas, but was unearthed after his widow sought an exhumation to test a conspiracy theory that a lookalike Russian agent had been buried in her husband’s place. A medical examination showed the decomposed body was indeed Oswald’s, and he was returned to his plot in a new casket. The original coffin had deteriorated, and was sold by Baumgardner Funeral Home, the local undertaker which handled the re-internment. It fetched $87,469. The owner is unknown.

Story here.

A bit more here http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/12/17/Oswalds-coffin-auctioned-off-for-87469/UPI-94281292590123/

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