independent funeral directors

Wise words

10 September 2016
Fran Hall
8 Comments
Categories: alternative funerals, Arranging a funeral, Attitudes to death, Burnout, Children and funerals, death and funerals, Death education, Etiquette, Formality vs informality, funeral, funeral directors, funeral reformers, funeral trends, Good Funeral Awards, home funerals, independent funeral directors, Natural Death Centre, perceptions of funeral directors, The future of funerals, traditional funerals, uber undertakers

ru-callender

Ru’s opening words to the assembled guests struck a chord with many who were there, so we thought we’d put them on the blog for the whole world to read. Over to you Rupert.

“Welcome everyone to the Good Funeral Awards 2016!

It started off, as so many good things do, in a sweaty basement in Bournemouth, and has grown into this glamorous Metropolitan lunchtime bunfight.

My name is Ru Callender and I should be standing here with my wife, Claire – sadly, she’s got flu. Together, we run The Green Funeral Company in Devon, and we used to be the Enfants Terrible of the undertaking world. Self taught, stubborn, scruffy, we still use our family Volvo instead of a hearse – but as we’ve been doing it for 17 years, we’re probably just terrible…

Today is a genuinely unusual mélange of the alternative and the conventional funeral world, and it has probably taken longer than the Good Friday agreement took to get everyone in the same room.

You are here because someone thinks you’re great. Let that sink in.

Even if you asked them to.

This gathering is largely due to Charles Cowling and crew of the Good Funeral Guide, and also to the original renegade masters, the Natural Death Centre, both of whose organisations dared to believe that ordinary people could deal with the gritty detail of death, the truth about what happens to our bodies, that a deep, internal understanding of death is part of our birthright, part and parcel of being human.

And what they did – brace yourself, maybe have a glug of wine to steady yourself here, was to treat the public as adults, to include them in a conversation about the one thing that will happen to each and every one of us.

They presumed, as we all should, that people can handle more than the protective narrative that is fed to them.

They were right.

It was thought wildly radical then, now it just seems honest and transparent.

I said funeral world because I refuse to use the word industry. Making computers is an industry. Fashion is an industry. Even getting fit is an industry. I don’t decry industry. It’s necessary.

But death is a true mystery, and working with it should be a vocation, a real calling, and if you’re not meant to be here, if ego, or an understandable search for meaning in your life has misled you here, then death has a way of calling your bluff. You are either initiated, in or out.

This work, the real work of dealing with death and loss is not glamorous, however closely it nearly rhymes with sex, however interesting it makes us appear to those who unfortunately have to work in jobs they hate to pay the bills, and that matter little.

This work, done properly, is incredibly stressful.

It’s exhausting, frightening, physically, emotionally and existentially challenging, but it is also deeply, deeply rewarding.

Burn out is a real risk, or worse, an unconscious hardening of your outer emotional skin – these are the risks you face depending on whether you fully engage with it or not.

Breakdown or bravado. Truly a metaphor for our times.

So, if you work with death – florist, celebrant, undertaker or chaplain, particularly if you are new to it, you really have to let it in.

Go deeper.

Feel it. Fear it. Don’t pretend to love it , because the only thing worse than death is not death – and then, if you can, let it go.

 

This world is also open to all.

Undertaking is completely unregulated, and should remain so in my opinion, not just because no amount of qualifications can teach you what to say to the mother of a dead child, that is an instinctive language that rises unbidden from the heart, but also because we are all amateurs when staring into the abyss, all professionals when faced with a dead body.

And they are OUR dead, yours and mine. We are all funeral directors eventually.

It is a shared mystery and your guess as to what it means, and your actions as to what to do are as valid as mine, or the Church, or the Humanists.

Nobody knows for sure.

The mechanics of what needs to be done are easy, I promise. Keep bodies cold. Put them in a suitable receptacle. Carry them, bury or burn them.

The rest, the words, the rituals, the how we do this, you KNOW, deep down what is right for you. You know.

 

But here I am, bringing you all down at a funeral award convention – I should get a prize for that!

But just indulge me one last time before we start bringing on the champs, and this celebration of the real change that has happened gets underway –

Euphemisms.

They cover the kitchen floor of bereavement like a spilled cat litter tray.

They protect no-one, they fool no-one, they confuse children. They are well meaning, but they are wrong.

I’m only going to take on one here, and I apologise if anyone has to amend their speech or their website as a result.

Loved ones.

Not everyone is loved, some because they have led sad, lonely lives, others because they did bad things.

They die too. They need funerals and their families are broken, and the depth of their pain makes the phrase ‘Loved one’ seem like a jeer.

Just saying.

So call them the dead, the dead one, the dead person, anything other than ‘loved one’. Call them by their name!

I know it’s awkward, but it will spare you the look of contempt you get when you say it to the wrong person.

Lecture over.”

If small is beautiful, look lovely

4 April 2013
Charles
13 Comments
Categories: Co-operative Funeralcare, Dignity, funeral directors, independent funeral directors

There isn’t a single successful business in Britain that doesn’t seek to grow through mergers and acquisitions. Consolidation, they call it. It’s a factor of competitive capitalism. Or greed, if you prefer. Whichever. The bigger you are, the more efficiently you can trade. Efficiency enables you to bring your prices down, blow off competitors — and hey Tesco.  As Roberto Mancini, manager of Manchester City FC, would say, “Ees normal”.

So far so bad for Britain’s independent undertakers. Your days are surely numbered. Consolidation is under way. There’s no future for plankton in an ocean ruled by whales.

If you don’t believe it, consider the fate of our brewers. In 1900 there were 1,324 distinct beweries in England. By 1975 there were 141. Ees normal.

The technological development that made this possible was the invention of keg beers, which are sterilised and lifeless. They have a much longer life than living cask beers. They do not need to be kept so carefully, they can be transported for longer distances and they’re cheaper when they get there. Under the influence of advertising, consumers in the ’70s were easily persuaded to enjoy just a limited number of national brands. The little breweries could not afford to advertise. Older (elderly) readers of this blog will recall with misty eyes the halcyon days of Watney’s Red Barrel and Double Diamond, the Co-op and Dignity of their time.

The development which is making it possible today for the big players in the deathcare market to burn off the independents is, of course, the pay-now-die-later funeral plan whereby you stitch up tomorrow’s market share today. The adoption of embalming from America has arguably been a useful technology, too.

So what happened to Watney’s Red Barrel and Double Diamond, younger readers may ask. And where can I get some?

Well, just when the big brewers thought the field was theirs, something interesting happened. The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) happened, the tables were turned and, sorry younger readers, the victorious keg beers were poured down the drains of history.

Camra’s campaign stimulated an appetite for well-made beers and choice. It appealed also to romantic values — and the great British pub is nothing if not steeped in nostalgia. In the words of James Watt, managing director of craft brewers BrewDog, “People want something better, something ethical, and something made by passionate people … I think there is growing disillusionment with products which are generic and mass-produced.”

He’s right, of course.  The total number of breweries in England is back up from 141 to around 700 and rising. Which is why Camra is credited as the most successful single-issue consumer campaign of all time. In economists’ jargon, economies of scale have been trumped by economies of scope (choice). The big brewers can’t compete with the micro-breweries, most of which brew a variety of ales, because the production of small batches of cask beers does not fit profitably into scale production operations.

Camra, you may think, restored beer to its Golden Age. You’d be wrong. One of the reasons why keg beers were able to gain such traction was because most small brewers back in the day made ale that was cloudy, sour and full of sediment. Pretty horrible stuff, much of it. Today’s micro-brewers are of a far higher calibre than their forebears. The Golden Age of ale is, in fact, now. Camra didn’t turn the clock back, it wound it forward.

Is it possible that Britain’s independent undertakers might buck economic orthodoxy in the same way as the micro-brewers and chase off the purveyors of keg funerals?

They have a lot going for them. Like the micro-brewers, and unlike makers of, say, artisan cheese, they can compete on price with the consolidated undertakers. Better still, so incompetent and greedy are the consolidated undertakers that indie undertakers are universally cheaper. It’s absurd! The big players could fight back by starting a price war — but the likelihood of their doing so seems small. The micro-brewers are able to compete because of Gordon Brown’s 2002 Progressive Beer Duty (alternatively known as Small Brewers Relief), a 50 per cent reduction in beer duty for those breweries producing less than 5,000 hectolitres of beer. Indie undertakers need no such leg-up.

A great many of today’s indies are as good as it gets and much better than the generality of smalltime undertakers of the past. They have a lot in common with our micro-brewers: they’re intelligent, savvy and skilful — a new breed. They are characterful, individualistic and very much their own people, a welcome contrast with the corporates who tend towards bland homogeneity in spite of some excellent staff at branch level.

Because indies are passionate business owners, they are prepared to work incredibly hard. They offer a service which is of and for their community. They offer a quality of personal service which is everything a funeral shopper could want. Personal service does not fit profitably into scale production operations. 

It is unlikely that a Camref (the Campaign for Real Funerals) could achieve for undertaking what Camra has achieved so rapidly for beer, the thirst for the latter being the stronger. What’s more, most funeral shoppers have no idea that there are such brilliant indies out there.

So it would be good, perhaps, to see our best indies walk with more of a strut, make more noise about what they do and take the fight to the keggists. A well-kept beer is good for drinkers; a well-kept secret is no use to funeral shoppers. 

ED’S NOTE: Real ales are brewed for all occasions and come with all manner of characterful names. They include: Tactical Nuclear Penguin, Bitter Bully, Posh Pooch, Festive Totty, Gonzo Porter, Ragged Bitch, Crop Circle, Summer Lightning, Bishop’s Farewell, Truffler Dry, Bad Elf, Torpedo Extra IPA, Naked Ladies, Storm King, Hop Wallop and Bonkers Conkers.

So far as we know, no maker of real/craft beer brews one specially for funeral wakes. There’s a big market here. If you can’t brew one, can you at least suggest a good name?

Camref – the Campaign for Real Funerals

2 July 2012
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Dignity, family funeral directors, funeral cost, funeral directors, funeral trends, independent funeral directors

The departing board chairman of Golden Charter funeral plans offers this cold sweat-inducing warning to independent funeral directors in a valedictory address in the Golden Charter newsletter, Goldenews, which we are grateful to have had forwarded to us. He says:

Co-op and Dignity have both acquired significant additional scale, and unquestionably they are operating with a better financial model than independents – on their own – can hope to achieve. There will be no softening of their ambition and there will be greater local commercial pressure. We can also expect consolidation to come from other quarters, particularly private equity.

Not only are these two corporations and private equity seeking to dominate the funerals market, they are making substantial in-roads into the crematoria market. The strategy is to provide future control of and access to crematoria which will potentially form a risk to independents and the prices that they will have to pay.

Corporations like to deal with corporations, and Co-op and Dignity present like-minded opportunity to the insurance companies. In 2007, an over 50’s plan was merely a means of building a financial provision for a funeral – the question of service provision did not come into it.

However, the insurance companies now manage 60 per cent of funds subsequently to be used to pay for a funeral, and it is a reality that they exert considerable influence over who carries out a funeral.

The funeral industry is one of the last bastions for independents. Almost every other market sector has fallen to national or international consolidation. Over the next five years, the choice for an independent funeral director is simple: sell to the competition or come together and exploit your collective strength.

This remains a chilling analysis even after you factor in the chairman’s sales pitch: ‘Over the next five years, the choice for an independent funeral director is simple: sell to the competition or come together and exploit your collective strength. Golden Charter is the only credible collective umbrella.’

Consolidation, done well, benefits consumers and shareholders. The present corporate players will fail to grow their market share if they don’t address pricing, service and positive brand identity, and they don’t look as if they’re going to hack it. But there are unquestionably opportunities for the right player with a brand that dares to speak its name. As we like to say, if John Lewis did funerals…

The days of the independents just have to be numbered, don’t they? Come on, look at your high street and go figure. 

Or do they? 

Consider the work of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). Among its many successes it lists these: 

  • Created a rich and varied choice of real ale – In the 1970’s CAMRA successfully fought the efforts of the big brewers to replace traditional ales with tasteless keg beers. Since seeing off the likes of Watneys Red, Tavern Keg and Double Diamond the campaigning efforts of CAMRA has seen the creation of hundreds of new breweries producing a wonderful array of real ales. 
  • Smashed the Big brewers stranglehold on UK pubs – In the 1970s and 1980s the Big Six brewers, Allied, Bass, Courage, Scottish & Newcastle, Watneys and Whitbread monopolised regions of the country. CAMRA lobbied against this lack of choice in Britain’s pubs and gradually eroded these regional monopolies. 
  • Number of Breweries increased Fourfold – Since CAMRA was founded the number of breweries operating in the UK has grown fourfold to over 840 breweries. Without CAMRA’s presence it is doubtful whether real ale would be as widespread as it is today. 

 

CAMRA is not an industry body, it is an alliance of consumers: CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale is an independent, voluntary organisation campaigning for real ale, community pubs and consumer rights.
 
Much the same as the Good Funeral Guide. And the Natural Death Centre. 
 
The funeral industry is unaccustomed to consumer scrutiny, doesn’t much like it and tends either to keep schtum or react with angry insecurity when challenged and questioned. This is in stark contrast to all those bereaved people who phone and email to thank us for being there for them. 

 

We believe that independent funeral directors, if they are to survive as a collection of characterful and excellent businesses offering richness of choice,  would do well to reflect that their survival, by no means assured, is likely, if it happens, to owe a debt, perhaps a very great debt, to consumer-focussed communities like the GFG and the Natural Death Centre. To them we say: join in the debate. We learn from each other. We want the same thing. Let’s find common ground. 

 

CAMRA website here.
 
Sorry, no link to the Golden Charter newsletter available. 

 

They’re on Targets!

1 July 2011
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, independent funeral directors

By Andrew Hickson, independent funeral director in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, first published on his blog http://stneotsfuneraldirector.blogspot.com on 22nd June.

I sat with a client earlier this week, arranging his wife’s funeral. We built up a rapport during our short time together, and as part of making the arrangements I gave the gentleman an estimate of the funeral expenses, as always. He was pleasantly surprised, I’m pleased to say.

I asked him if he minded telling me why he had chosen Kingfisher Independent Funeral Services as his Funeral Directors. He liked the fact that we were completely independent. He liked the fact that we weren’t part of a chain. He liked that fact that we didn’t trade under the name of an old business in the town.

But most of all, and this surprised even me, he liked the fact that we weren’t on targets. He couldn’t understand how a Funeral Director could be “on targets” – so I told him. You remember when we talked about a coffin? I suggested the cheapest in the range because it’s for cremation? You remember when we mentioned Service Sheets? You said you weren’t keen, so I left it at that?

A couple of years ago, I applied for a job as a manager with one of my local competitors. The job description had the word “target” in it, and I knew straight away that the job was not for me. I didn’t even go to the interview.

This is what distinguishes the small Independent Funeral Directors from the Corporate ones, and word is evidently getting out. Of course, the Corporates like to call it ‘Added Value’ to their clients, but in reality, it is ‘Added Income’ to their Directors.

They incentivise their managers with targets, so of course these managers have to ensure their staff are pushing services which may be unnecessary or extravagant.

It saddens me that clients have experiences where they feel they are forced to spend more than they need to, and that a funeral is seen simply as a commercial transaction rather than the emotional journey of which it should be part. Yes, I’m in business, so of course there is a commercial element to what I do, but I certainly don’t believe in upselling at any time, and I was very proud to receive a testimonial recently which stated “There was absolutely no pressure to go for expensive options. In fact [Andrew] recommended some of the least expensive!”

A couple of days ago, a comment was left on the blog, agreeing that services shouldn’t be ‘pushed’ but that they should be offered so that clients are aware of them. I agree whole-heartedly with this: it’s the same as letting every client know, for example, that there are alternatives to religious ceremonies or standard coffins available.

The difference between offering and pushing is clear. Put me on targets and I’ll probably cross the line between them. That’s why I’m so happy being independent.

funeralcomparison.co.uk

11 November 2010
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: funeral cost, funeral plans, independent funeral directors, pre-need plans

A reader has written to me to draw my attention to funeralcomparison.co.uk. Is it, he asks, a scam?

I’d not come across it before. If you go to the site you’ll find that it enables you to, in their words, “find the exact funeral requirements you require in-line with your budget. You can search from over 3500 independent funeral companies and you receive an estimated cost and what you services you would typically receive within 60 seconds through our site.

In your time of need it is the single location for you to easily find everything you need with regards to the funeral arrangements. Funeral comparison gives you the user the power to decide what you want, without having to ask the awkward questions like how much will it cost, we will break down the list of services you require and then you can choose the funeral director that best fits your needs.”

Well, it’s not the most literate website I’ve ever read, that’s for sure. What else?

“We deal with all Independent Funeral companies* in the UK as we feel the quality commitment empathy and care that comes from independent funeral companies is greater, and best for you in your time of need.”

I wonder what that little asterisk after Funeral companies means. It doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

I spent some time playing with the search box and came across all manner of Funeral companies that aren’t independent as we know it. Go to Bury St Edmunds, for example, and you’ll be directed to Fulcher and F Clutterham and Son. They are both branches of Dignity.

How is funeralcomparison making its money, you wonder? “We work closely with independent Funeral Directors and charge a small finders fee for the services we provide via our website.”

Enough. I’m out of patience.

Anyone got anything nice to say about it?

Knowing you knowing best

10 September 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: bereavement, independent funeral directors

Yesterday I drove to Norfolk to meet Anne Beckett-Allen and her husband Simon. It was well worth every mile of the journey. They greeted me with warmth and kindness. They took me somewhere nice for lunch. And we chatted – oh, about death and funerals, mostly. What else?

Anne and Simon have been notably successful. They have opened five funeral homes in five years; they’re doing fine. Theirs is a partnership made in heaven (or thereabouts). Anne was born into the funeral business, worked for several of the big corporate outfits and now revels in the freedom of independence. She is intelligent and she knows how to make a business tick. Simon is an electrician by trade and a builder of considerable talent and taste. He has converted all of their funeral homes brilliantly. He is a funeral outsider, so he’s able to come at things from a client’s point of view. Both Anne and Simon are people of great heart.

As always when I meet funeral directors I become aware of the severe limitations of being an ideas-driven commentator. Things always look so much easier when I’m sitting in front of my keyboard. I put it to Anne and Simon that the most perilous occupational hazard of funeral directors is not formaldehyde vapour but, if they are intelligent, paternalism, and if they are dim, self-importance. Funeral directors of all sorts come to reckon that Undertaker Knows Best. The brighter ones want to give you the funeral you need rather than the funeral you want; the dimmer ones give you the funeral everyone else has because there’s only one way to do a funeral. I know, as a celebrant, that I am increasingly inclined to boss my clients about.

There’s an upside. A brilliant natural burialist, whom one might typify as paternalistic, told me of the time when a family came to scatter ashes. They reckoned something perfunctory would do (it was their dad and they didn’t like him). The natural burialist stopped them cutting it short, told them there was more to it than that and invited them to speak. There was a long, agonising and awkward wait followed by an extraordinary and cathartic vocal outpouring of rage and love. It was exactly the right bossy thing to have done.

I talked to Anne and Simon about this business of exploring choices with a client, especially opportunities for participation. To me, sitting in front of my screen, there’s absolutely nothing to it. Just give them the info. What could be simpler? It may take more time and make things more complicated but it’ll make for a much better funeral.

And they responded that it’s not as easy as that. You have to take into account the mindset and emotional state of the client – what sort of people are they, what can they take in? Rupert Callender supports this: making a client aware that they can, say, come in and wash and dress their dead person can create in their minds a feeling that they ought to, even though they really don’t feel up to it – a feeling that they may be letting their dead person down.

So it’s a fine line, isn’t it, between offering choice on the one hand, and Undertaker Knows Best on the other?  Given the emotional state of the bereaved person in front of you, you need to be incredibly careful and empathic. No two people are the same, so there can never be a best practice.

I drove home musing on this, reflecting on just what an incredibly difficult job funeral directing is. And of course I reflected on the occupational hazard of being an inky fingered commentator. You can so easily turn into a glib, opinionated smartarse.

Habeas corpus

23 August 2010
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: funeral directors, independent funeral directors

I was emailed last night by someone who wants to visit their dead parent at the undertaker’s. The undertaker won’t make an appointment. The client thinks the undertaker is prevaricating. The undertaker tells the client that the customary time to visit a dead person is the day before the funeral. This is not soon enough for the client. The email concludes with the client asking me what their rights are.

Leaving aside the matter of rights (it’s quite clear what they are), anyone who knows how the funeral industry works will know what’s probably going on here. Let’s hazard a guess.

The undertaker is part of a chain operating out of a satellite branch. The dead parent is not, as the client may fondly suppose, at that branch. No, the parent is in a central mortuary some distance away with, perhaps, a hundred other bodies from other satellite branches. It’s difficult for the undertaker to arrange for the body to be brought to the satellite branch because businesses of this size operate on the fewest staff they can. At this busy time of the year it is impossible to find spare manpower to bring the parent out to the satellite.

Perhaps

The bigger the business, the more incapable it becomes of flexibility and, therefore, of personal service. There ought to be a trade-off here. The big businesses, with their car pools and central mortuaries and staffing rotas to keep everyone frantically busy, enjoy economies of scale which ought to enable them to undercut their competitors. But that’s not the way it works. Economies of scale are not passed on to the consumer. In the case of, say, Dignity that’s not surprising. They’re in it for the money. Their shareholders expect. In the case of Co-operative funeral homes, however, there’s a case to answer.

Let us not deplore this state of affairs too loudly. It is because the big beasts, the Dignitys and Co-ops, charge so much that the little independent businesses are able to thrive despite their higher overheads. Not only are they able to thrive, they are even able to undercut the big beasts. The law of the jungle is not working here. Long may it not.

I decided to find out how widespread is this practice of deterring people from visiting their dead. I made some phone calls and asked undertakers how much notice they required. Here are my results.

Co-op Funeralcare, Aylesbury: Later the same day.

Arnold Funeral Service, High Wycombe (independent): None. Walk in off the street. If the chapels of rest are full you may have to wait for up to an hour or so.

Midlands Co-op, Stirchley, Birmingham: None, but prefer families to visit three days before the funeral.

Henry Ison and Sons, Coventry (independent): None – unless busy.

R Morgan, Dudley (a satellite branch of Dignity): Will try to make an appointment for you to visit buy cialis online in canada when you make your funeral arrangements. All bodies stored in a mortuary in Birmingham where they are embalmed (optional), washed, dressed and coffined. You can visit before the body goes to the mortuary: they will put a dead person on a trolley and make him or her as presentable as possible.

T Hadley, Halesowen (independent): None – unless busy.

T Broome and Sons, Baguley, Manchester (United Co-op): Prefer appointments but around an hour’s notice usually enough.

Haven Funeral Services, London (independent): None

Co-op, Hammersmith: None, but prefer you to make an appointment when you make arrangements and hope that’ll be the day before.

AW Lymn, Nottingham (many satellite branches): None. All bodies kept at city centre mortuary, or at Long Eaton. Either pop down there, or the body can be sent up to the satellite. They have a bed with quilt if you prefer that to visiting your dead person in a coffin. If they’re really busy and no one’s available to drive a body out to a satellite, “management will step in and do it.” Oh yeah? “YES!”

I stopped ringing. The picture is clear enough. Small, independent funeral homes are very responsive. Members of chains aren’t, with the exception of Lymn’s, quite so willing: they’d rather tie you down to an appointment made when you make funeral arrangements. That’s a heck of a lot of big decisions to make in a very short time!

My emailer’s undertaker would appear, thankfully, to be a rare exception.

While ringing round I made a discovery I ought to have made ages ago about transparency of ownership. This is a debate which rages and will go on raging. When a big beast buys out an independent it goes on trading under the old name in which all the good repute is tied up. There’s nothing unusual about this. No one demands that Harrods change its name to Al Fayeds. But in the case of a funeral home it can be misleading to those who are looking for an independent funeral director.

Here’s a scenario. Someone has died and I am looking for an independent, family undertaker close to me in Moseley. What do I do? I google funeral director birmingham moseley. What do I get?

Funeralsearch.co.uk tell me about N Wheatley and Sons. Good-oh! So does zettai.net. And fastfiners.co.uk. And 192.com. And uk.local.yahoo.com. And yell.com. And businessclassified.com. And cylex-uk.co.uk. And sheriffratings.com.

That’s only for starters. There’s plenty of help on the internet. But what none of these sites tells me is that N Wheatley and Sons is, actually, in the ownership of the Midlands Co-operative Society.

I needed to know that.

My apologies for the sudden reappearance of this. I’ve been doing a spot of categorising, resulting in the usual inexplicable nonsense, of which this is but one example.

David vs Goliath

5 July 2010
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: family funeral directors, independent funeral directors

This blog gets as tired of the sound of its own voice as, probably, you do. So it welcomes guest posts from whoever wishes to sound off, air a view, explore an idea — whatever. If you would like to make use of this platform, please feel free. Just send me what you want to say at charles@goodfuneralguide.co.uk and I shall be delighted to post it — subject to the obvious provisos: it mustn’t be libellous, gratuitously offensive, etc.

Today we welcome back David Barrington.

Over to you, David:

For a while now I have been amazed by the lack of compassion shown by some of my fellow professionals to prospective clients. In fact, some of the comments just had to be turned into a posting for Charles and all his readers.

First of all there is the funeral arranger who when the family would not accept the coffin he was trying to sell them said:

“Oh okay so you just want a bulk standard one then?”

Maybe that was the only one they could afford. Did he know them personally? Also, surely all of the coffins are of good quality so what difference does it make to him? Or maybe it’s because he has a target to meet? Should funerals be subject to sales targets?

Next there was another person who when the family called for an estimate said before anything else:-

“We’ll need a deposit, you know.”

Again, what bearing does this have on the family’s question at this point? They are asking for an estimate and the funeral company’s representative is assuming they have money problems because they are shopping around.

While visiting a family with a terminally ill relative (who was present at the meeting) I was told about another funeral director who had visited them to discuss funeral costs. The other funeral service representative worked for one of the larger funeral businesses.

Now obviously visiting somebody in this situation is uncomfortable at first, both for them and you and the first thing to do is put them at ease. Show you care, ask about their background, how long they’ve been ill etc.

The guy from the big company turned up dressed as a pallbearer (the family’s words).  When he came into the room where they were, he sat down, didn’t pass the time of day with them, plonked a copy of their brochure down on the table and said:

“Have a look through that and tell me what you want and I’ll let you know how much it is.”

That was pretty much it! For that service, for which the family would pay a premium of around £750 – £1000 more than me.

How can a funeral professional show such a lack of humanity and compassion? Did he think he was selling them a fridge or a washing machine? The lady going in the coffin was sitting there in front of him and he didn’t ask her how she would like to be remembered; what music she wants at her service; how she would like to be dressed; who she would want as the minister and whether she would want to meet him.

The person whose funeral it was to be told her family to tear up the brochure when he left.

One last incident that you should hear. Recently we had a funeral going to our local crematorium. We turned into the driveway and I got out of the hearse to walk the last 100 yards in front of the hearse. As I was walking slowly along, another funeral turned into the driveway and proceeded to go in the out lane, overtake us and pull into the crematorium chapel.  It transpired that they were late for their slot and wanted to get in first. I was absolutely speechless, however the funeral director had only been working for them for 6 months and had been let loose on the public so, I suppose, what do you expect? Again, a large company who charge about £1000 more than me.

These large companies say that they have the best training and development of their staff. Well, where is the evidence of this?

What can I say about these other guys except HOW DARE YOU treat our profession so shoddily and these families so thoughtlessly.

Going the extra mile feels so much better.