Funeral plan.

I'm sure my aunt on the IOW has paid £4K to this company for her funeral - if I can get to it I'll have a search for the pack later.

I'd walk away because of the bad reviews, also what happens if the company goes belly up before you need their services?

Hello Bopeep14 If you have a look at Bereavement on the list of forums you will find lots of useful information regarding funerals and funeral plans. Hope this is helpful.

Never believe good reviews they are often fakes but bad reviews are more likely to result from actual experiences.

I am sorry, I can't get to the file, it's buried under too many boxes.

I think WatchDog had a show about funeral companies going broke and the customers lost their prepaid funeral plans - I would recommend doing your research very thoroughly.

I don't know about funeral companies going " belly-up " as on the contrary and unfortunately, business has been very brisk. Very few of these places go to the wall.

I don't want a funeral and I have made this known. I have made provision in my will for my friends to have a party to remember me, if they so wish, otherwise the money is to be given to the Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team.

Today we got a leaflet stating that if you recommend a friend to sign up with Golden Charter you both get a £80 M & S voucher. Might be worth find someone who is?

We had no plan when DH died in November. I asked around amongst my friends and phoned the company which they recommended. They were excellent. It wasn't cheap but within the mid range limits so not impossible. They were attentive and kind throughout the process, allowing us to do what we wanted but willing to do it for us at any stage.
I.e they would have done the flowers and the newspaper announcement had we asked.
The weather was diabolical on the day and I had an early reassuring phone call to say, although our route had to be changed, everything would go ahead.

My FiL had a prepaid plan when he died just 2 weeks after DH. That worked out quite well too.

Years ago I worked in the admin offices for Golden Charter, their way of working is to set up the plan with a local funeral director. Any monies paid are put into some sort of trust account that cannot be touched until death, this protects if the local funeral director goes belly up. This was the practice 10ish years ago and from what I’ve read it’s still the same.
It’s certainly worth getting multiple quotes, the level of inflation in the funeral industry is unbelievable, so the sooner you get an agreed price the better value you will get.

My husband had a funeral plan that he paid monthly, when he died unexpectedly due to COVID we received the amount he he had been guaranteed even though he had not paid in anywhere near that amount. I also received some flowers. Trouble is I can’t remember which company!

A quick Google bring this up corporatewatch.org/you-despicable-beasts-dignity-funerals-and-commodified-death-in-the-spotlight/

My wife and I went with age concern. Hopefully they will keep their promises if they don't I intend to come back and haunt them. Evidently no one has, but they don't know how stubborn I am and old nick says I'm a special case.

Bad reviews are a bad start

Go to moneyadvice website

Also financial expert Martin Lewis has relevant advice on this