Funeral and Death Care Industry Editing and Proofreading Services

A price list exists because families cannot shop around at the worst moment of their lives. They ring three funeral directors, if they ring three at all, and try to compare a figure that includes different things each time — so the industry was required to publish a standardised list. The list is now published, and a family holding two of them from two firms still cannot work out which is cheaper.

We edit what the funeral sector produces at industry and group level — standardised price lists and their supporting explanations, price transparency and disclosure documentation, additional and third-party cost information, comparison and choice guidance for the public, industry codes of practice and their public-facing versions, complaints and redress information, pre-paid plan documentation and its terms, regulatory return and compliance documentation, guidance to member firms on disclosure, and consumer information about rights and options. Our editors work on the list a family compares against another firm's.

The standardised price list is either a comparison tool or a compliance exercise, and its failure is technical completeness without comparability. Two lists that are each correct and structured differently defeat the purpose of having a standard. We write these so the mandated items appear in the mandated order and wording without local variation, since a firm that renames or reorders them has made comparison impossible and usually not deliberately; so the difference between what is included in the headline package and what is not is stated at the point of the price rather than in a note, given that a family reads the number and stops; so third-party costs are shown as third-party costs with their typical local range and the statement that the firm does not set them — the cremation or burial fee, the doctors' fees where they apply, the minister or celebrant — because families otherwise attribute the whole total to the funeral director; so any item that most families end up buying is shown in the total rather than as an addition, as a headline price that nobody actually pays is worse than a higher honest one; so the cheapest genuine option is presented as prominently as the others, including the direct or unattended route, since this is what the standard exists for; so the pre-paid plan's terms are stated with what is guaranteed and what is not; and so the list says what a family may arrange themselves. Lists written this way can actually be compared.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including pricing, compliance documentation and member communications. We are editors rather than regulatory or funeral advisers, and we offer no view on pricing, compliance or consumer rights. What we can do is make two firms' lists answer the same question.