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How long can Dignity carry on and service their debt and invest in what they have?
Dignity will just leave limos in the funeral homes where the normally park, Total Greed in better times started their problems
Every time the added funeral homes to their company it spawned more less expensive independents A few yeas ago independents where slipping away which made it better for the likes of dignity but regained a position in the last few years with the cheaper funerals. Dignity is now stagnant it cannot expand, it will struggle to compete as its overheads are way to high, You can do all sorts of things with figures but going forward dignity will have to a massive revamp and rethink about where it is. COULD there be some kind of sell off, when a company like dignity are stagnant and stop expanding they cannot survive and especially when they cannot continue to maintain market share, I said in a earlier post Dignities directors/ Managers do not know what is really needed. The virus has added to their problems , THEY have lost control at the grass roots.
local councils generally contact funeral homes at back end of year to check what capacity they have to store bodies this normally happens if a large flu epidemic is suspected, most funeral homes have a code of practice for dealing with contaminated bodies, and sometimes collect same, which the nhs double bag and label not to open.
It looks like people who die at home from the virus will could be collected by special teams that are being set up .
that would exclude funeral homes .
The Crems clearly not enough to salvage dignities outlook , The funeral homes are competing with lots of cut price funerals and cannot see them increasing their current position, Total Greed is Paying Them Back.
I think you are right about them getting hammered. I think the larger public may not know about the CMA investigation but what they do know through a army of independent funeral directors who are explaining to families what is happening who will pass info on it will work like you tell one and they pass it to 5 others and so on Families talk at funerals.Dignities golden days are over.
At the end of the day I cannot see anything that will make a real big difference from what was happening in the funeral trade prior to the CMA investigation, The big concern was pricing and openness, which dignity have already taken the hit on that one . The crem situation is very complexed and will be hard to change somethings.
I cannot see any great regulation maybe something that could be managed by trading standards.
In the past the CO-OP have had some major cock ups makes the headlines and then fish and chip paper.
Dignity will cope with any bad publicity and move on. Talk to Joe Public and they do no know about any enquiries or anything that is going on, Because funeral homes run under existing names that dignity bought a large % of people do not know it is dignity anyway. Back to regulation as it stands at the moment any body can set up in the funeral trade without so much as a CRB CHECK or any checks, if there was massive regulation it would increase costs more than present level as the councils, would have to charge, and people like HEALTH AND SAFTY ect, ect a big can of worms might escape,
The consultation period may of ended in Nov18 but no one knows what the out come is yetThere are a lot of Funeral Directors with big axes to Grind Who will not have held back.One thing for sure is the big price greedy hikes have come to a end ,along with big profits.
Auson,, Would not buy at the moment as I think it is un-clear to what could happen ,
I Would be interested to know what you think of the current position of the future is.
I think this is more a response to all the new simple cheaper funerals that have and still are springing up all over
With them owning 30 odd crems they will have valuable information of what other funeral directors are doing in the market.
It looks like people who use it do everything on line, and then dignity must contact their nearest funeral home who then uses one of dignitys nearest crems the first 2 prices quoted will be ok for hostpitals, and councils who have to pay ( no one to pay or next of kin) the third price is what their cheapest basic quote is at their funeral homes with xtra for add ons. It looks like the share holders of dignity are going to fund this whether they know it or not.
Mass immigration may have helped a little but many are not of departing age.
Local councils since having all the savage cuts have cottoned on to their cash cow crems,and burial sites and a lot are not far from the top priced ones, In defence of dignity they have sorted and improved some of theirs, which council just keep taking the money and running, The problem with crems is in most areas there is only one choice and long journeys for rural areas as most are in cities towns. You could say dignity crems are a conflict of interest as other funeral directors have to use them with no choice available.
During the war years sadly many 1000s of people lost their lives which if had still been here would of been boosting figures for the last few years and in the coming years that deficit will be overcome hope you understand.
The Group will of course take part in any CMA Investigation as it wants to come out trying to justify its GREED
and pricing , Dignity will of course love to claim standards need to rise as that they would push for regulation but who would pay to monitor this? The single biggest argument is the public have been getting ripped off with inflated prices from funeral homes and now the cat is out of the bag they want to justify their year on price increases
Transparency is a key point especially when talking to the family of the bereaved.
How many funeral homes display their prices were the public can see them, I may be wrong but I think this is trading standards requirement, To be honest dignity need to address many of their own problems first.
Some in the funeral trade said Dignity was buying up funeral homes every where because they saw in the next ten years now that we are heading into the period from war years that it would become very busy for them,
It seems they did not take into account of the competition, and the economic climate, Crems are seeing a lot more simple funerals of which dignity will never be able to compete , I have seen in the last couple of years people set up and in some cases built a business and took 100 to 300 funerals. a good funeral manager from DIGNITY can leave and take 70% of their customers.
Dignity have always called for regulation but hoping on their terms so to shut down the smaller independents
just another greed grabbing tactic . At one time there was moves to licence limo drivers in funeral companies with local council like taxi drivers that would of been fun for them and co-op.
There is always potential in this type of business, un-regulated charge what you want,
The potential is only there how ever if management now know what is needed.
They can call advisors in what ever but I cannot see them reaching the main problem.
You maybe will not remember but it reminds of how British Leyland carried on until it died.
Dignity is the victim of their own greed, every time they bought any thing from crems to funeral homes the price shot up over night, They spawned managers to set up on their own, the only way they could keep share prices high was to keep buying and has previous said that as come to a end.
When they bought a new funeral home they inflicted their own ways over time and which where often silly ideas coming from far removed management. What ever their plan was they paid too much for what they bought.
They are typical of large companies that loose direction at the grass routes and now have created a army of independents along with others are spreading the word to already stretched public, people are already losing the fear of getting quotes at their sad time.