Consumer experts Which? have conducted undercover research that shows many funeral firms are using hard-sell practices on recently bereaved families.
In many cases request for simple funerals are ignored and vulnerable families have ‘extras’ pushed upon them to increase the overall cost to between £1,700 to £4,200 for a basic funeral. 
Which? researchers visited 20 different funeral directors posing as people asking for advice about a relative who was close to dying. Phone calls were also placed to 150 other funeral directors, including big companies such as the Co-op and Dignity, to enquiry about details and prices.
The findings showed that 14 out of 20 of the funerals directors who were visited delivered poor or very poor advice.
A Which? spokesman said: ‘Bad practice we encountered included “railroading” of researchers to inappropriately buy a funeral plan for their dying relative, and giving incorrect information about the time period for registering a death.
‘Some funeral directors failed to provide information which had been requested, gave poor explanations, and failed to ask enough questions to offer a personalised service with a good range of options.’
Two of the big funeral companies were highlighted for potentially breaching consumer protection regulations as they attempted to sway families into paying for embalming, a process which improves the appearance of the body and preserves it. A branch of the Co-op said that embalming was recommended due to the skin condition of the body, and a branch of Dignity told a relative that the body would not be suitable for viewing unless it had been embalmed. Neither company had seen the body so were unable to make such an assessment.
The Co-op denied that its branches used hard-sell tactics, adding that they didn’t believe there had been any intention to deceive the Which? researcher. Dignity responded to its allegations by saying that its staff were not incentivised to sell extras and said that ‘we believe embalming is beneficial’.
The research also discovered that some of the staff working for the companies were not as sensitive or discreet as families would expect them to be. In addition a lot of funeral directors didn’t show an up-front price list which meant that customers were unaware of the true costs involved.
One researcher called three different funeral parlours in Harrow to ask for a quote for the cheapest funeral; they were given prices ranging from £2,407 to £3,814. In Glasgow costs for a simple funeral were between £2,487 and £4,199.
The price of a simple coffin also showed vast price differences, the cheapest was £160 from the Co-op and the most expensive was £690 from a small independent funeral director.
Most funeral directors belong to one of two organisations: The National Association of Funeral Directors or The National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors. Which? said: ‘We met with both organisations and are pleased to see they both want what we want – to have all their members trained sufficiently to meet high standards.’
