Should you use a price comparison website to find a cheaper funeral?
For years greedy firms have been ripping off grieving families. So...
REGULATORS will soon decide whether the £2billion a year funerals market needs a major overhaul, amid fears that families are being charged too much when laying loved ones to rest. Earlier this year the Competition & Markets Authority launched a probe into the industry and sought views from consumer groups, funeral directors and others.
By the end of next month it will confirm whether it will launch an investigation, leading to wholesale reform. If it decides to get tough, it could insist on greater price transparency to make it easier for the bereaved to compare prices.
The study was triggered in part by rampant funeral inflation which has resulted in prices rising more than 70 per cent over ten years. Data compiled by financial services group Royal London indicates that the average price of a funeral is now around £3,800, although extras can push this closer to £6,000.
There are also big price differentials between funeral directors – in some cases a service offered by one firm of directors can be three and a half times more expensive than an identical arrangement by a rival a mile away.
Such price ranges persist because most people do not shop around when they lose a loved one, in most instances opting for the funeral director closest to home.
James Daley, director of consumer group Fairer Finance, is adamant reform is long overdue.
Last year, he wrote a scathing report on the pre-paid funeral sector where people pay years in advance for a funeral of their choosing. This part of the market could soon come under the watch of regulator the Financial Conduct Authority. But in writing his report, he discovered major failings in the wider ‘at-need’ market.
He says: ‘Those left to arrange a funeral are often grieving and feeling vulnerable. This leaves them open to exploitation.’
Daley says many funeral directors do not disclose prices on their websites, only revealing them when someone comes in to discuss a service. Understandably, few people – stricken by grief – then go elsewhere to see if they can get a better price for the same kind of service.
More worryingly, standards between providers vary widely with some directors not even having refrigeration units on site to store the deceased prior to cremation or burial.
Only last year, a whistleblower at Co-operative Funeralcare revealed that bodies were left to decompose at its Windsor branch. Co-op and rival Dignity dominate the funeral market although there are some 3,000 independent providers. Industry oversight is also negligible with an Ombudsman scheme – arbitrating in disputes – controversially scrapped 16 years ago.
But the National Association of Funeral Directors does offer an arbitration scheme for disputes between its members and customers. Daley believes comparison websites, enabling people to shop around, are one of the ways forward. It is a view shared by Ian Strang. He is co-founder of funeral comparison website Beyond which allows people to compare the prices of local funeral directors. Details of more than 1,100 directors are included on the website, together with their prices, and visitors are able to read reviews from customers. Reviews that Strang says are 100 per cent ‘genuine’. He says 100 people a week are now arranging funerals through the website, with Beyond receiving a fee for every successful introduction.
‘The funeral market is a broken one and I want to help fix it,’ says Strang. ‘We vet directors before they go on our site, ensuring there is nothing dodgy about them and that they offer a decent service. It is then a case of people typing in their postcode, or the name of the town where they live, and they will be able to see which director provides best value for money.
‘By using the service, it is our wish that the bereaved make more informed decisions over which director they opt for.’
Beyond has not been frightened to ruffle feathers, nor confront and challenge the taboo around death. Earlier this year, Beyond posters of beachgoers with coffins rather than surfboards were banned by Transport for London because of concerns that they would cause offence.
It has also run April Fool’s Day spoofs about a ‘home cremation’ service called CremMate.
Strang is unrepentant, pointing to the fact that the stir caused by the beachgoer adverts raised his company’s profile – which is exactly what he intended.
He also said the company had recently been nominated in the ‘Out Of Home’ marketing awards organised by website The Drum.
‘We are obviously doing a lot right,’ he says.