Funeral directors unveil customer charter

LIKE ALL profit making businesses, undertaking can be a cut throat affair. So in a week when one Dublin firm showered the city with £50 off your next funeral vouchers, it was an opportune time for the profession to publish a customer care charter.

The document was unveiled at yesterday's annual general meeting of the Irish Association of Funeral Directors, an appropriately discreet affair held in Dublin's Burlington Hotel.

The company behind the voucher offer - Rom Massey and Sons - is not a member of the IAFD, and the association president, Mr David Fanagan took time at yesterday's even to make it clear that the association disapproves of such aggressive marketing.

"The company in question is - quite legitimately - offering a Ryanair type low cost operation, for which there was a gag in the market. But we are vet strict about the sort of promotional activities which members are allowed, and mail drops and money off vouchers are no among them. They're just no kosher."

In a more extreme case, he says, members of the association have been suspended in the past for canvassing business through old people's homes, although this practice is - merefully - not common.

The new charter promises to protect the public from exploitation when they are at their most vulnerable. It guarantees, for instance, that the cost must be discussed at the time of the funeral, not presented as a fait accompli afterwards. It also offers an independent hearing to anyone with a complaint, financial or otherwise.

More generally, the charter aims to educate the public about all the ancillary things which undertakers do, from organising death notices in the newspapers to explaining to the family that a jazz funeral might not be acceptable to the church authorities.

The IAFD represents only about one third of the Republic's undertakers but carries out 75 per cent of all funerals.

Many of the non members are part time operators, or own the one stop shops of small rural towns which cater for all the community's earthly needs, including the ultimate one. At present, anybody can become a funeral director, according to Mr Fanagan, but the IAFD's charter is a move in the director of regulation and minimum standards.

"This is a difficult and dangerous business, which can involve handling bodies with highly communicable diseases, and doing so with sensitivity. "We're telling members that if you can't provide a service and at the same time abide by the terms of the charter, it may be time for you to ship out."