We are delighted that we have been accepted as one of the first signatories of the Fair Funerals 2020 Pledge.

The 2020 Pledge is Quaker Social Action‘s campaign to highlight funeral directors who are committed to price transparency, by displaying their prices openly and prominently on their websites, enabling potential clients to research costs of funerals before signing up to something they may not be able to afford.

When we established our business in 2010, we were insistent that our prices would be online, despite many funeral directors warning us against this. We were seen as bringing the profession into disrepute by being open about everything.

We knew that clients should be able to see what we charged before committing to our services, and we were very pleased when we started to become known as the funeral directors with our prices online. Other funeral directors around the country who were thinking of doing the same thing started to contact us and ask if it was detrimental to our business, as they had been led to believe it would be.

Now, 10 years later, more and more funeral directors are publishing their prices online, and being open and honest about their charges.

However, there are still not enough.

The Competition and Markets Authority yesterday published some research as part of their investigation into funeral directors and the way the profession operates. The Ipsos Mori survey has interesting results. 74 funeral directors were emailed and asked for a price list. A staggeringly low 18 funeral directors responded, and of those 18, only 11 actually sent one.

The corporate funeral directors are keen to point out that they are being open, and the trade associations are similarly quick to say that they encourage their members to be open.

The reality is clearly different.

Kingfisher Independent Funeral Services of St Neots, Huntingdon and St Ives are proud to be entirely open and honest about everything involved in arranging a funeral. We continue to make all of our prices clearly available online, over the telephone, and in our offices. We believe that we are the only funeral directors in Cambridgeshire to do this (but we’d love to be proved wrong).

For more information please call any of our offices St Neots (01480) 471001, Huntingdon (01480) 412938 or St Ives (01480) 573080.