I first heard from Lisa Mullan when she wrote to me on 23 Feb 2013:
7th November 2012, 1245: Email from Plympton to Mr Chatfield requesting he inform them of plot status.
8th November 2012, 1231: Email from Mr Chatfield to Plympton stating the existence of a plot for my father and potential accommodation of a funeral any time after 18th November 2012. 1353: Email from Plympton to Mr Chatfield requesting a burial at 1245 on 20th November 2012. 18.16: Reply from Mr Chatfield to Plympton confirming time and place of burial.
9 November 2012, 0900: My mother pops into Plympton. It is suggested she look at both Crossways and a burial site at Yealmpton, Devon (hereafter known as Yealmpton) over the weekend and inform Plympton of her decision on the Monday. As far as she is aware, funeral arrangements are for 20th November 2012 but contact with Crossways has not yet been established.
10-11 November 2012: The family inform relatives and friends that the funeral would be held on 20th November 2012
12 November 2012, 1100: My mother speaks to Plympton to be told there is still no word from Crossways but the funeral could be postponed until they had. Various: Phone records show several phone calls to myself and my sister from my mother. Unfortunately no one was home to take them. Midday: My mother confirms with Plympton that the burial should be moved to Yealmpton and agrees to pay an extra £950 for the plot and grave digging. 1451: Email from Plympton to Mr Chatfield informing him of my mother’s decision and requesting a full refund of the £835 my father paid for the plot. 0900: Mr Chatfield paid £300 to a second airline and started returning to the UK two days premature of his original departure date due to an unforeseen baggage handlers strike with his original airline. 2100: Mr Chatfield discovered the email from Plympton cancelling the burial.
13 November 2012: Mr Chatfield spoke to Mr Parson to express his displeasure but promised to refund the plot money minus a 20% administration fee.
20 November 2012: My father’s funeral at Plympton and Burial in Yealmpton. The requested donations box was not present before or after the service in Plympton.
25 November 2012, 1552: Email from my sister, Caroline Fielden, to Rosie Inman-Cook at the Natural Death Centre to complain about Mr Chatfield’s conduct in not contacting Plympton to arrange the burial at Crossways that my father had requested and paid for.
27 November 2012, 1245: Email from Rosie Inman-Cook to my sister informing her that Mr Chatfield had indeed confirmed the burial, returning early due to the aforementioned strike to be present.
29 November 2012, 1941: My sister forwarded to email from Rosie Inman-Cook to Plympton and requested sight of emails from 7th and 8th November to confirm this. She never received a reply.
Early December 2012: I was informed of the above and agreed to take it further. I arranged to meet Mr Parson on a trip to Plympton that month. I also rang Mr Chatfield who immediately forwarded the pertinent emails from 7th and 8th November.
12 December 2102, 1230: Meeting with Mr Parson to explain entire incident. He claimed not to be aware of any of it and needed to speak to his staff. We arranged a further meeting for the following day. There were several points regarding anecdotal evidence that Plympton had been rather persuasive in steering my mother to use Yealmpton and not Crossways for the burial.
13 December 2012, 0900: Second meeting with Mr Parson. We discussed various anecdotal evidence. He did not, however, say he had discovered exactly why my mother had not been informed that Mr Chatfield had confirmed the time and date of the burial. This, in my mind was the sole reason for reconvening the meeting. Mr Parson agreed to reimburse the mileage money my father had paid for the hearse to drive to Crossways, offered to help me with full reimbursement from Crossways should they refuse and let me know via email exactly how the confusion had arisen.
End December 2012: A cheque for £112 was sent to my mother to reimburse mileage.
4 January 2013, 2207: Email from me to Mr Parson explaining my disappointment at not hearing from him regarding the confusion.
7 January 2013, 0813: Email from Mr Parson to me stating he thought we had sorted the problem and when he would be contactable by phone.
7-9 January 2103, various: Tried to contact Mr Parson by phone but to no avail.
9 January 2013, 2133: Email from me to Mr Parson requesting Plympton reimburse the 20% Crossways administration fee, issue a full apology to my mother and reimburse Mr Chatfield the £300 he was obliged to pay to return to the UK.
11 January 2013, 1020: Email from Mr Parson re-stating that Plympton were not at fault. Inclusion of the Funeral Arbitration Scheme Leaflet.
12 January 2013, 1943: Email to Mr Parson stating that I will be taking the matter further.
13 January 2013, 0900: Phone call to Co-op Funeral Care Customer services. Matter discussed with the member of staff who sent the mileage cheque to my mother. 1700: Contact from Mr Adrian Smart, Regional Manager overseeing Plympton. He promises to investigate the issue and phone back.
18 January 2013, 1713: Email from Mr Smart. Attached letter details incident as he has understood it and the Arbitration leaflet. An apology was made for contacting my mother so soon after my father’s death but not for withholding information from Crossways.
10 February 2013, 2114: Reply to Mr Smart detailing the reasons I believe my mother was misled by Co-op staff.
11 February 2013, 0944: Reply from Mr Smart stating he cannot respond at this particular time but I will hear from him in due course. I have never heard from him or anybody else from the Co-op again.
Today, 16 June 2013, I received the following from Lisa:
Hi Charles,
One would hope (expect) that a funeral director would prefer to lose a couple of hundred quid than risk exposure in this fashion, even if it’s for the protection of his or her name rather than for the sake of the client. In fairness to the Co-op though, there is something I don’t quite understand, and it just could alter the whole outcome of this story. “Whilst this was unfortunate timing, contact was made with Mr Chatfield, and by Thursday 8th November the Coop had received an email from him confirming the time and date of the burial as 20th… Read more »
Thanks for your comments. I assumed they confirmed the 20th as the date on which they could do it – had chapel free, hearse free etc – what does not logically follow is why my Mum was then told on the Monday there was still no word and the funeral could be postponed until they had word. In all my discussions with the Co-op, they have skirted nicely around this issue.
very sad stuff, I’m afraid yet again Funeralcare are wriggling about…………………..irrespective of their vast profits, the party line seems very much to avoid liability to me and “cutting through all of the above”, the buck stops with F’care on the day that they accepted written instructions from Lisa’s father. It was very clear what he wanted and he paid for that specific burial plot. A duty of care was owed by F’care to him and his family. F’care contracted to perform their task at a certain burial ground and this did not occur for whatever reason, F’care did not subsequently… Read more »
O, the heartbreak of a messed-up funeral!
A shortfall of dignity, compassion, elegance, courtesy . . . One could go on.
This is the disembodied jobsworth attitude of an over-commercial way of doing business.
exactly Kathryn
I do not wish to constantly bang on re the shortcomings of Funeralcare but with their reputation and vast profits, they really should deal with these sort of problems straight away and with nil fuss
regards
andrew
We have worked with Martin Chatfield on many occasions and found him and his wife Julie to be extremely conscientious and thorough. They are a genuine small family concern, just the two of them and I can’t begrudge them a holiday. I got somewhat lost in the back and forth of this email trail, but one thing jumps out. Crossways is an awkward place to get to from Plympton, where as Yealmpton is about five minutes down the road. You do the maths..
I am sorry to read your story and saddened to hear of the undue upset and stress caused you and your family at this already difficult time. You mention being sent a Funeral Arbitration Scheme leaflet – did you pursue that course of action? I note you are still within the time frame for which this course of action can be taken (12 months from the date of the funeral service). In raising the issue with the firm you have already taken the first step of stage one of the scheme. As you have been unable to resolve the matter… Read more »
Dear HP,
We did not take it further as the Co-op are insisting that my mother is the client (surely it was my father?) and at the time she was unable to cope with any of this. In fact a lot of the dealings I could not tell her about for months as it would make her ill.
Lisa
Lisa
I’m afraid they are right, if your Mother was the Executor, then legally “she stands in your father’s shoes”
regards
andrew
What an intersting point, Andrew. If the exectuor (or whoever stands in her place concerning the funeral) is the plan provider’s client, doesn’t that imply that even when we’ve paid for a funeral plan it does not belong to us, and that we forfeit all rights to it on signing up?
thanks Jonathan well, in signing up for a Plan and presumably after a ‘cooling off period’, monies will have been paid over for your chosen F/D to carry out exactly what you have chosen I suppose that some will feel that its an investment in itself and frees their nearest and dearest of cost and considering what;s best after their demise I’m not sure of “any rights are forfeited” etc etc, one would need to look at all of the small print certainly if problems arose after a death and the chosen provider or the F/D were unable to carry… Read more »
Andrew and Jonathan, would it not seem logical that the plan holder is the client until he or she dies, at which time the executor becomes the client?
Andrew, “well, in signing up for a Plan and presumably after a ‘cooling off period’, monies will have been paid over for your chosen F/D to carry out exactly what you have chosen” is not actually accurate. We do not receive any of the trust money until the client dies. That’s the whole point of funeral plans. The client’s money is secure, and away from the funeral director, until it’s required.
Hi,
A bit late and you may not be reading this anymore, but I was the Executor of the will, the Grant of Probate was granted to me, however it was my mother that turned up on the Tuesday!
Lisa
I have a long term debilitating illness that causes pain all through my body, I suffer from many ailments such as anxiety, clinical depression, loss of memory, forgetfulness, lack of concentration,low self esteem,if any, no confidence.Unsure of what day it is or date. Stomach spasms and a hatred for the system we now have to exist in. I took out a co-op funeral plan on Jan 2012 and was very pleased with myself for doing something positive. I tried to make sure this was always paid. I got into a lot of debt and when I thought I could sink… Read more »
Margaret, what a sad story. But I think you can turn this round and make it back into a positive if you want (or need) to. You don’t say how much you have paid to the Co-op, but unless it is a very small amount, and could justifiably be called an administration charge, you are legally entitled to a refund of any money paid which has been put in trust. You don’t say where you are, but I deduce you are in Scotland. If I’m wrong, please forgive me. Find a local, independent funeral director, and use the money you… Read more »
My Dad went to the Co-op too because he and my Mum grew up with it and trusted the name. I think the word should now be spread that it is not the same trusted name that it was and th eoriginal premis of what the Co-op was and stood for no longer has a place in the commercial world of money-grabbing and laziness. Is there a register to help people look for independent funeral directors, as I understand the Co-op takes over some of theses businesses and doesn’t re-name them so noone knows they are dealing with the Co-op.… Read more »
thanks Andrew
yes, I was (well) aware of that
thanks for correcting this, I should have elaborated more in my post
regards
andrew
We think it is about time we added our little bit in this matter, we feel so sorry for all the heartache caused to the family, even though on holiday abroad in this day and age with mobile phones and web access we replied in an instant to the Coop.
Anyway it appears to us that we are the little guy trodden on and trying to be blamed by a mighty organisation.
We just hope others learn from this episode and use independent funeral directors.
[…] may remember the case of Lisa Mullan, whose father chose to be buried at Crossways woodland burial site but, because of an […]
My sincere thoughts go out to the family and friends involved.
On a serious note though, if the grave plot had been purchased prior to death ‘where were the DEEDS’. This would ofcourse been a key indicater of whether the chosen cemetery had been paid and/or booked!
The rest of the matter appears to be a client coerced into making decisions to cover up the image of the Co-op.
All very sad.