Farewill

Farewill Funerals: direct cremations terms and conditions

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Before you sign your Farewill Funerals paperwork, please read these terms carefully. It will help make sure that we're the right choice for you. If you are unsure or have any questions about our service, just get in touch.

Contents

  1. These terms and the funeral
  2. How to contact us
  3. How we’ll contact you
  4. Who can buy a funeral
  5. What’s included
  6. What’s not included
  7. Return of the ashes
  8. Price and payment
  9. Disagreements and disputes
  10. Your responsibilities in ordering and using our service
  11. Our liability
  12. How you can cancel
  13. How we can cancel
  14. Insurance
  15. To make a complaint, get in touch with us
  16. Other important terms

1. These terms and the funeral

We’re Farewill Funerals Limited, registered in England and Wales at address 4 King Edwards Court, King Edwards Square, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, B73 6AP, under company number 12278192. We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority with Firm Reference Number 995901. Our registration details can be accessed online at https://register.fca.org.uk. These legal terms are between you and Farewill Funerals Limited, and the laws of England and Wales apply.

We may change our terms and services, or stop providing our services, to reflect changes in law or regulation, or to make minor adjustments or improvements. If we do, we’ll let you know using the contact information you give us. And if you spot something that doesn’t look right, please get in touch.

If you get in touch with a complaint, and we cannot resolve it using our complaints procedure or by mediation, then the courts of England and Wales will settle it.

If your funeral is being conducted in Scotland, it will be delivered in line with the Scottish Government's Funeral Director Code of Practice.

2. How to contact us

If you need to talk to us about anything, you can:

All our emails will be sent from an email address with the following structure: [person’s name or team name]@farewill.com

Please be wary of spam emails which claim to be from us. If you’re not sure about an email or phone call, always contact us using the details above.

3. How we’ll contact you

We’ll contact you in English using email, phone or post to your home address. If any of your details change, please let us know as soon as possible.

4. Who can buy a funeral

You must:

  • be 18 or over
  • be responsible for paying for the funeral
  • have the legal authority to arrange the funeral of the person who’s died. In most cases, this means that you’re either:
    • an executor named in the will of the person who’s died
    • one of the people entitled to inherit the estate of the person who’s died under the rules of intestacy (also known as an ‘administrator’), if there’s no will

You must not:

  • be aware of any disagreement about the funeral, like a family disagreement about the type of funeral you’re arranging or disagreement over who has the legal authority to arrange the funeral

Buying a funeral if there is a will

If there are other executors named in the will of the person who’s died, it is your responsibility to ensure that they’re happy for you to buy the funeral and proceed with the funeral arrangements. You must check this before buying the funeral with us.

If executors are unable or unwilling to be involved with the funeral arrangements (perhaps because they’ve died or they don’t have capacity), it might be possible for you to buy a funeral if you’re named as a beneficiary in the will. The best thing to do is talk to us.

Buying a funeral if there is no will

If other people are entitled to inherit the estate under the rules of intestacy (aside from you), it is your responsibility to ensure that those other people are happy for you to buy the funeral and proceed with the funeral arrangements. You must check this before buying the funeral with us.

If you have been asked to arrange the funeral on someone else’s behalf

It might be possible for you to buy a funeral if you have been nominated by either:

  • the person who has died
  • the person or people who have the legal authority to arrange the funeral

The best thing to do is talk to us.

If you do not have the authority to arrange the funeral

If you do not have the authority to enter this agreement or to buy the service we provide and there is a claim made against us as a result, you will repay us in full, within 30 days, for any losses, damages, costs and expenses that we suffer as a result.

If you need help to pay for the funeral

If you’ve applied, or are going to apply, for a DWP funeral payment or any other financial help to pay for the funeral, you are still responsible for paying us in full.

Completing the paperwork

You need to complete all the paperwork we send to you. Unless it’s for an urgent collection, returning this paperwork means that:

  • you agree to these terms and acknowledge our Customer Privacy Policy, and
  • a contract is formed between you and us and you give us authority to start work on the funeral.

If you require an urgent collection (for example out of hours), we will accept authority to start work on the funeral when you, or someone who represents you, instructs us to on the phone. By instructing us to start work on the funeral, you (or your representative acting on your behalf) agree to these terms and our Customer Privacy Policy and a contract is formed between you and us. You also agree to complete this paperwork as soon as possible.

Unless we both agree otherwise, our contract will terminate automatically once we’ve provided the service to you.

5. What’s included

Here is our service in full.

  • Collecting the person who has died, and caring for them respectfully until the cremation
  • Specialist support from our funeral advisors
  • A coffin and urn
  • An unattended cremation without a service (a ‘direct cremation’) anywhere in mainland England, Wales and Scotland
  • Preparing the ashes for you to collect from the crematorium, or scattering the ashes at the crematorium’s garden of remembrance on your behalf

To avoid loss or damage to jewellery or valuables, we recommend that you remove them from the person who has died before we bring them into our care. We cannot accept responsibility or liability for keeping these items safe.

6. What’s not included

  • Registering the death
  • Visiting or viewing the person who has died once they are in our care
  • The option to choose the date of the cremation, or location of the crematorium
  • An attended service at the crematorium
  • Interment - putting cremation ashes in a permanent resting place that people can visit
  • A memorial
  • A newspaper notice to announce the death

There may also be fees for:

  • Urgent collection - when someone dies at home or in a care home and we need to bring them into our care quickly
  • Bariatric support - when someone is particularly tall or broad, and more people or equipment is needed to bring them into our care
  • Collecting someone if they die outside England, Wales or Scotland
  • Removing a medical device
  • Hand-delivery of the ashes
  • Dividing the ashes between multiple urns
  • Delivering ashes to an address outside mainland England, Wales and Scotland

As some of our care centres (mortuaries) do not have public facing facilities, we are unable to share the full addresses of our centres in England and Wales.

We work with crematoria across the country, so booking dates and locations are often outside our control. We'll do our best to share the date and location of the cremation in advance, although we are unable to share the time of the cremation. To keep our service affordable, we sometimes need to change things at short notice, for example using a crematorium closer to you, so we can't guarantee that the information we give you won't change.

If something is not available at the time of the funeral, like your choice of urn, you agree for us to provide a reasonable alternative. We’ll always do our best to help organise the funeral you want, but we cannot guarantee any specific items.

If we cannot help you arrange a funeral, we’ll let you know and will not charge you. Reasons we may not be able to arrange a funeral include:

  • Unexpected limits on our resources
  • An error in the price or description of the funeral
  • We cannot meet a deadline you’ve asked for

7. Return of the ashes

Where you have chosen for the ashes to be hand-delivered, we will deliver them to you within the timescales set out at the point of sale and throughout your journey with us.

Where you have chosen to collect the ashes, they will be available from the Crematorium shortly after the cremation date. We will contact you with the information you need.

We will always try to contact you by phone, email or post to arrange collection or delivery of the ashes. If we are unable to reach you after a period of 6 months, we reserve the right to scatter the ashes in the Crematorium’s garden of remembrance. We will make every effort to contact you to reunite you with the ashes before we make this decision.

8. Price and payment

The price you pay for the funeral is the price we give you by email or phone when you make your order, except for additional fees for extra things that you chose, or if a medical implant needs to be removed. We’ll let you know the cost of any additional fees in advance.

You’ll need to pay in full for the funeral before we start the arrangements except in the case of an out of hours urgent collection. If urgent collection is needed, we will collect payment in full on the next working day. A ‘working day’ is Monday to Friday.

9. Disagreements and disputes

We reserve the right to charge you for any fees or costs that may result from the funeral arrangements being delayed because of a dispute or disagreement which is outside our control (for example a dispute about the funeral organisation or type of funeral).

Where we receive notice of a disagreement or dispute, we will contact you as soon as possible to provide some guidance on the next steps. We will be unable to proceed with the funeral arrangements while there is an ongoing disagreement or dispute.

If the funeral has already taken place and we receive notice of a disagreement over who should receive the ashes, we will contact you as soon as possible to provide guidance on the next steps. We may request further documents from you, like a copy of the will of the person who’s died, or some identification documents for you.

It is not our responsibility to act as a mediator or arbitrator between parties for disputes and disagreements over the funeral arrangements and we will not do this.

If Farewill Trustees has been appointed as professional executor in the will of the person who’s died, they will take the wishes of all relevant family members into account. Ultimately, Farewill Trustees will have the right to take possession of the ashes and to exercise discretion as it sees fit, as to who ultimately receives them.

10. Your responsibilities in ordering and using our service

If you need any of the services detailed in the section ‘What’s not included?’, our service is unlikely to be right for you. We’re not liable or responsible if you proceed with our service where it is not fit for your own purposes.

You must provide us with accurate and true details about who you are, including that you have authority to arrange the funeral. You agree not to mislead us or misrepresent who you are.

11. Our liability

Nobody apart from you has any right under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to enforce any part of these terms and conditions. This does not include any other right or remedy that a third party may have under law.

We're liable or responsible for any foreseeable loss or damage we cause you if we fail to comply with these terms - by breaking this contract or not using reasonable care and skill. Foreseeable means it's obvious it'll happen or, if at the time we made the contract, we both knew it might happen.

We're not liable or responsible for any loss or damage that's not foreseeable, for any loss or damage (direct or indirect) caused by something beyond our reasonable control, or if something was unavoidable despite us using reasonable care and skill to avoid it. So you won’t be able to claim against us if your losses resulted from circumstances that we couldn’t or shouldn’t have been expected to know about.

This includes:

  • You gave us information which was inaccurate
  • You acted fraudulently
  • You failed to tell us about a likely disagreement or dispute over the funeral or who has the legal authority to arrange the funeral
  • Jewellery or valuables are lost or damaged
  • You used our service in breach of these terms
  • Any delays or failure in performance under these terms resulting from acts beyond our control, such as a pandemic, flood, war, emergency or electricity failure

We’re not liable or responsible for verifying, investigating, advising on or checking:

  • your identity
  • whether you have the legal authority to arrange the funeral

We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you, where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited by applicable law.

If we are held liable to you for any loss or damage arising from a breach of these terms and conditions and/or negligence, such liability shall in all cases be limited in aggregate to the payment of an amount not exceeding the amount you paid for the service, including costs and expenses.

Nothing in these conditions shall affect your statutory rights as a consumer.

12. How you can cancel

To cancel, either:

The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation & Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 gives you the right to change your mind or cancel your order within a cooling-off period of 14 days. This cooling off period will be waived (will not apply) if you have returned our paperwork and we’ve started work on the funeral, or in the case of an urgent collection, you have told us to start work on the funeral.

You will get a full refund if you cancel before a contract is formed between you and us, which is when you complete and return relevant paperwork to us, or in the case or urgent collection, when you tell us to start work on the funeral.

We start arranging the funeral after a contract is formed between you and us, so if you cancel after that, we may charge a cancellation fee. This fee will reflect the reasonable costs incurred up to the point of cancellation. We will let you know the cost of the cancellation fee before proceeding with the cancellation. If we have already completed an urgent collection the fee for this will also be payable.

Depending on the cancellation reason, you might be asked to make arrangements with another provider, and/or pay a reasonable amount for us to transfer the funeral arrangements to them. We’re not liable for anything they do, unless we have acted negligently.

13. How we can cancel

We reserve the right to withdraw or amend the service for a material reason (something significant that impacts the service). Where we can, we aim to let you know why we are cancelling in advance.

We may cancel or suspend our service if we believe you’ve:

  • broken the terms of this agreement
  • put us in a position where we might break the law
  • broken the law or attempted to break the law
  • given us false or inaccurate information at any time
  • been abusive to anyone at Farewill
  • told us information which means in our reasonable opinion that our service is not right for you

We may also cancel the service if:

  • You don't, within a reasonable time of us asking for it, provide us with information, cooperation or access that we need to provide the service
  • There is a dispute or delay that makes the funeral impossible (for example in the organisation of the funeral)

If we cancel your access to the service, we’ll refund you any money that you’ve paid to us.

There may also be times where our services are delayed or we cannot provide services to you because of an event outside our control. If that happens, we’ll contact you as soon as possible to let you know and we’ll take reasonable steps to minimise any effects of the delay.

14. Insurance

We have professional indemnity insurance. Please get in touch with us if you’d like further information on our insurance levels.

15. To make a complaint, get in touch with us

If we’ve done something wrong, we’ll do everything we can to put it right. We have a complaints policy which we can share with you on request.

To complain, email us at [email protected]

We’ll let you know as soon as we receive your complaint and outline the next steps. Your complaint will be handled by a dedicated member of our team.

Within 3 working days, they will contact you, introduce themselves and explain what we are doing to resolve your complaint. If we need to look into things further, they will respond to your complaint no longer than 8 weeks from our first acknowledgment of your complaint.

16. Other important terms

Our registration number with the Information Commissioner’s Office is ZB220412. We collect, store and use your personal information to provide and manage the relevant funeral service. For information on how we do this, see our privacy notice. If you’d like a paper copy of our privacy notice, just let us know.

You may supply information about another person or other people to us when you buy a funeral. You confirm that you have their permission to pass on their details, including any sensitive data to us and that they agree to us holding and processing their information and data. Data provided to us will be processed in accordance with our privacy policy.