One of the things that set us apart from many other Funeral Homes is that we do not put any mark ups on the items we pay for on your behalf. Traditionally these are items, such as Flowers, Newspaper Notices; Catering; Cemetery fees etc. We itemise these as ‘Disbursements’ meaning they are passed on at cost.
These days they get mixed in with costs provided by the funeral home and usually are simply listed on the invoice under their itemised heading, or under a heading such as ‘Other charges’. Many Funeral Homes now put a ‘Mark Up’ on these items, much the same as a tradie does with products they purchase on your behalf. At Kapiti Coast Funeral Home, however, we do NOT put a mark up on the ‘disbursement’ items.
We have great pride in outlining to families that whether they order these items or we do, the price is still the same. In fact once upon a time we would get a 10% discount from the newspapers for the volume we put through to them, sadly those days are gone, but when we did we would also pass on that saving to our client families, so often we could purchase the same items they could but at a cheaper rate and then pass those savings on to our client families.
Some items we now provide internally, including designing and printing our own graphic material such as Service Brochures, and Registers. These we then not only personalise but also make changes and increase the print run at the last minute. This is even the case during a funeral at our premises where we can run off additional service sheets when a funeral is larger than expected, and usually if only a few we don’t charge for these extras.
We don’t hide extra in our professional service fee to make up for the loss in mark ups, in fact we invite you to compare our fees, which have a range depending on what service you require from us, but usually, you will find we are frequently less than other local firms.
A fair Service fee helps, as does ‘No Mark Ups’ on the outsourced items, which makes this another thing that ‘sets us apart.
