How to Choose a Good Funeral

I’m often ask for help when people are looking to choose a good funeral director.

I believe that knowledge is power and always start by explaining the process that families go through on the funeral process. If the family decide to use a funeral director to help them then I will always give them the following advice;

“Compare, Compare and Compare again”

Less than 10% of customers ever go to more than one funeral director. People think all Funeral directors are all the same, in fact the act that people don’t compare funeral directors is something that makes the industry less competitive.

Be very clear what you want then to do and what you don’t want them to do. Funeral directors tend to take over and before you know it the event will be their plan and not your funeral plan.   

Always ask for a fully itemised estimate and invoice, never go with a package offering, and then you are not control of what’s included and what isn’t

Treat this like any other transaction. I realise it’s hard, but if you were spending this much money in somewhere like John Lewis you would do a lot more work and research

Understanding that Funeral Directors are completely unregulated and that you could set yourself up as a Funeral Director tomorrow if you so desired.  

Beware the name above the door. When small independent funeral directors retire or decide to sell up, the people buying and taking over the location are often the larger multiples. This means this even if the local Funeral director has a name like Smith and Sons, it may not be the independent family owned local funeral director you are hoping to find. Sometimes you may see a tiny symbol signifying that the link to the larger group, but sometimes nothing.

Obviously if you’re dealing with a larger group then this company will have head offices, regional managers with company cars and shareholders, and all of these need to be paid for! There is no co-incidence that the larger groups of funeral director are consistently more expensive than small independents. 

Why Choose Compare the Coffin?

Always, Always buy your coffin directly, it will always be cheaper, better quality than one you get from the funeral director as especially through comparethecoffin.com as we have bulk buying power through the coffin wholesalers. If you are choosing Compare the Coffin you will literally get to choose between different types of coffins and caskets and what other things you want in a funeral.