Six pages, two columns

How to compare funeral directors

The NSW Government suggests talking to two or more funeral directors and getting a quote from each. This guide sets out how to put two side by side: what a director does, what their quotes must show, prepaid plans, the cemetery’s own fees, and where to take a complaint. It is a guide published by Dotto from the official sources linked on each page.

General information, not legal or financial advice. The rules belong to each state and territory, and no funeral director is named here. Each page names the official body to check with; most of what follows comes from New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.

An open notebook with blank ruled pages and a black ribbon marker lying across the page.
Blank ruled pages and a ribbon marker. Photo by BRRT on Pixabay
The register

Six pages, in the order you might need them

  1. What a funeral director doesWhere the director’s work stops and the cemetery’s starts, and who checks a director in four states.
  2. Two funeral quotes, side by sideWhat a quote must hold, and how to read two of them line against line.
  3. A prepaid funeral, from both endsComparing two plans before signing, and what a family does with one later.
  4. Cremation, burial and the cemetery’s own feesWho sets the cemetery’s charges, and where some are published.
  5. Complaints about a funeral directorThe order to take a complaint in, state by state, and what to have ready.
  6. Questions to ask, with room for two answersSeventeen questions, a column for each director.
Before you start

What makes two directors comparable

Their lists price the same things

In NSW, Victoria and Western Australia, a director’s price list must price a set list of goods and services, such as transport, storage, care of the person, viewing, the coffin, the service, and the burial or cremation. Queensland directors must display an itemised price list too. Because the lines repeat from one director to the next, two lists can be read against each other.

Their own charges sit beside other people’s

Part of a quote is usually money the director pays to others for you, called disbursements: cemetery or crematorium fees, and celebrant or minister fees, for example. Separating those from the director’s own prices is the heart of a fair comparison, and the cemetery’s own fees explains how.

Some names can be checked

Victoria keeps a public register of funeral providers, the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board publishes the funeral directors it licenses in Perth, and NSW Health keeps a register of mortuaries. What a funeral director does says how to use them.

At your own pace

Not being rushed

The Metropolitan Cemeteries Board’s first piece of advice about funeral directors is not to let them rush you into decisions, and to tell them if you are not ready. Even one price list from each director, read side by side, can show a difference worth asking about.