Funeral Director Near Me
How do you choose a Funeral Director?
There are many ways people try to find a funeral director. The above is just one search term of many put into Google. Others could be Funeral Home Scarborough, Funeral Parlour Scarborough, and Traditional Funeral Scarborough. The list goes on but you see my point.
The thing is, why on earth would you ever want to think about a Funeral Director unless they are part of your circle of friends and family? You just wouldn’t would you! I didn’t. I couldn’t have even named one but I was kind of aware of a local company (who turned out not be local at all but part of a chain).
It’s the same as any service you don’t have a direct interest in. Let’s take Plumbers. I respect their skill and ability but I have zero interest in the subject until something goes badly wrong with the plumbing. I’m never going to ‘follow’ a Plumber on Facebook, or a Builder, or Mechanic etc etc. All of them highly valuable to society and all required at some point but I still won’t ‘follow’ any of them. I’m simply not interested in the subject.
You would just seek to find one (Funeral Director, Plumber, Builder) when you had to. But what would influence your decision to call one? Probably just having a name of the closest one best known is the greatest deciding factor. It might be a name you can’t recall immediately but comes to mind once you ask someone or search for it.
Yet even those well-established companies spend a lot on paper advertising and Google adwords week in, week out because of the factors above.
‘Immediate need’. That translates into, someone has just died, what on earth do I do now?
One statement I hear frequently is, “I have never done this before, I just don’t really know where to start’’. This is not a nice place to be for obvious reasons. Dealing with grief and then having to deal with the process of registering a death and organizing the funeral is tough. It does go to prove that doing some kind of written pre-planning, or even just discussing your funeral wishes is so worth doing. The more you do can do beforehand will ease some of the emotional burden after a death has occurred.
Choosing a Funeral Director is very frequently done by word of mouth recommendation. Last year 90% of all the services I organized came from word of mouth. Its simple and understandable: people trust people they know which is much better than a company proudly, sometimes pompously, stating how perfect they are. Worse still is when a company is derogatory about those they compete with! Nothing puts people off a company or service more than when they start being negative of others around them. The old saying is ‘when you point your finger at someone in criticism, there are 4 fingers pointing back at you’!
After Word of mouth recommendation come online reviews. These are very important for many people, easy to access and usually very revealing. They can be compromised however. A recent Which report highlighted the big business that Review Platforms have become. Some Businesses using Amazon reviews have been caught out offering people money to leave 5 star reviews. There are multiple advertising platforms hosting funeral directors now. They advertise and then take a proportion of the funeral fee where they refer someone. Google Reviews remain the benchmark because you can’t remove a bad review.
I would always do a Google search, look for a high number of reviews and then check out the lowest scoring comments to see if there is a pattern of company failings that its customers have experienced.
So, to finish a slightly rambling article of ‘How to Choose a Funeral Director’ I would say:
1. Ask your Friends and family BUT don’t just choose the first name that comes to mind, do a bit of research, or ask a friend to help with the process if your are too tired and upset to make the calls.
2. Support a Funeral Director in Scarborough if they have good reviews on a trusted Review Platform such as Google. There are Independent Funeral Directors and also Corporate Funeral Directors do you know the difference? There are Pro’s and Con’s to both the Independent’s and the Corporate Funeral Directors. The Corporates will typically cost more due bigger general overheads and more expensive facilities; this doesn’t guarantee a better service however.
3. Go and see them, talk to them. Does what they offer seem appropriate for what you want, or think you want?
4. Check the Pricing. Do not be afraid to ask about the prices! They should be on the website.
5. Make sure they have some kind of External Approval. Special Send-Offs use the Good Funeral Guide. The name says it all. They visit the premises, check out the front of house, back of house, advertised prices and invoices; they are truly independent and not linked to any Pre-paid Funeral Plan company.
6. We also use a local Chartered Health & Safety company to independently audit Special Send Offs. This is very important to us because there is currently no regulation of Funeral Services! A specialist chartered Health and Safety Professional is the highest level of Health & Safety qualification and provides us with the assurance we comply the legislation based upon HSE requirements and Environment Agency legislation. They also check Training levels and their effectiveness and appropriateness such as First-Aid, Infection Prevention and Control, Manual Handling.