Funeral companies make you PAY and PAY
for EVERYTHING, to take advantage of family’s grief
and also the greedier need to impress relatives. There are
virtually NO REGULATIONS ON FUNERAL BUSINESSES in
Singapore, only the basic health and safety ones. The attitude is
that ‘if you don’t pay a lot of $$$ when your relative dies, it
shows you don’t love them as much.’ My belief is that so long as
you don’t do anything that obviously dishonours the dead person,
then a funeral should be more catered to ease the grief of people
still alive…
I will break down what happens in steps, since people are not
usually very familiar with funeral arrangements.
1. After the funeral company is called, they arrive and take the
body for storage. Not much happened here. But I’m a little annoyed
that they tried to remove my grandmother’s jade ring to pass to my
mother and ended up cutting her finger… Still, an accident is an
accident….I ignored this.
2. You go to the funeral parlour to arrange the funeral. My
mother booked everything in my name because I was the only one
carrying an IC at the time.
3. You choose what room, what coffin, how many days, what sort
of food, what flower arrangement etc…Choosing the room was
straightforward, we knew relatives would travel during the weekend
so the room was fairly small since they would not stay around for a
long time.
Cost of room was almost eight hundred dollars for the first night,
and almost $500 for each night afterward! I asked what were
provided with the rooms. Aircon, a fridge, a stand to put the
coffin, a wall-hanging themed with the deceased’s religion, a
posterphoto to say who she was, a cleaner who would sweep it once a
day. The only really special thing that it had was a ventilation
system to suck away candle smoke and insense burnings.
If you think about it, you can use a room in someone’s house for
a lot cheaper….>_> ....btw do you know that setting up a
Buddhist or Taoist funeral in a void deck or field is at least
THREE TIMES as expensive?
The staff talk to you like they are selling a handphone plan…it
was usually me who negotiated as politely as possible for a
reasonable price; but my mother insisted on making the final
choices. I knew she was stressed and instead of going to the
trouble of arranging a home funeral, she wanted the Pearl Room.
Okay. Fine.
4. Choose the coffin. Selling coffin like selling cars….the
staff will bring you to a back room and ALWAYS show
the most expensive coffin first and then go all the way down to the
‘cardboard coffin’. the most expensive ones easily cost
SEVERAL thousands of dollars, the cheapest one around
$350. The most expensive ones are made of solid hardwood (think of
the trees!) with real brass handles (which is going into a
cremator) are lined with real satin (again, going to be cremated)
and are HUGE
The salesperson will go on and on about how the coffin is ‘your
most precious, last gift to your deceased’. From what I know about
my grandmother, she wouldn’t give a damn as long as rites were
followed; and like i said before, i see a funeral as a time to care
for the living. My preference was for the second cheapest model
which was a bit small, but had a glass window for people to see my
grandmother’s face, and was made of recycled wood which was painted
over and polished…about another $850. the handles were plastic but
painted metallic.
At least I spending another $1500 on the coffin she was looking
at. If you could buy a coffin at IKEA, it would
probably only cost as much as the cardboard one….I don’t believe a
big cardboard box should cost $350, a recycled wood box $850 and a
new wood box $XXXX…especially since its going to be cremated!
Even when I picked the $850 coffin, the saleswoman still kept
going…”are you sure”, “Its your LAST GIFT” etc…I only
shut her up when a brilliant idea popped in my head. I asked
her:
“What colour is the floor of the Room?”
“Erm…”
“I don’t want the coffin to be the same colour as the floor. A
lot of the old relatives have poor eyesight and I don’t want them
to bump into the coffin…”
“Let me check for you…”
As I suspected, the cheaper coffins were actually
LEAST similar in colour to the floor, you can a cheap
coffin at $280 only, so dun get cheated.!!
bowah bro, thanks for the info. nice sharing. But ultimate is if
can afford, pay a few k ok la, money still can earn. But not for
those, di di want face, ego...fork out more than pocket can
give...in the end lagi worst.
like the old saying, when times are good, can spend abit more
and eat restaurant..once a while. not bad...
when times are bad, eat maggi mee or eat bread plus a cup of
kopi also stomach full...
is like got small head, wear small cap...big head, wear big
cap....dont because of ego, arya say pay more and more...in the
end, ownself suffer...because of?
