Simplicity Funeral Service owed $150,000 in families’ unpaid bills

The company asks for a $3000 deposit for its services. Photo / Te Ao

By Mare Haimona-Riki of Whakaata Maori

Simplicity Funeral Service says it is owed over $150,000 by families who haven’t paid their bills. The company is actively reaching out to the families of deceased people in an effort to collect the overdue payments.

To address the outstanding bills, Simplicity has turned to social media platforms to contact families and has listed deceased individuals with unpaid bills.

Founder Carla Turner emphasised the company’s reluctance to publicly shame families, saying, “The last thing we want to do is put families on blast. We don’t want to do that. But we also want to stay in business.”

Turner attributed some of the outstanding bills to miscommunications within families about insurance matters.

“Funeral insurance normally would have an executor where the funeral insurance goes to. It doesn’t go to us, so yes, the funeral insurance came through but it went to the next of kin or the person in charge, and that person didn’t pay the funeral home but the rest of the whānau thought it was paid,” Turner says.

‘Anything to keep the price down’

Simplicity conducts 725 funerals a year across its four locations in Hamilton and Tauranga.

Turner said the company was committed to assisting families in covering the costs by helping with WINZ grants, and ACC coverage, and exploring other financial options based on each family’s circumstances.

“If that means that the whānau need to take the body home themselves rather than use us to transfer the tūpāpaku (corpse) or if they have a casket themselves they want to use instead of using ours then we’re open to that and anything to keep the price down.”

Simplicity has a $3000 deposit requirement but remains firm in its decision not to demand the full payment upfront, a practice adopted by some other companies.

“I don’t want to have to do that. That’s not what we are here for,” Turner said.

“We just want to work with families… If it’s $5 a week, it’s $5 a week. If there are five kids and everyone’s doing five bucks a week, that’s 25 a week to go towards the bill.

“We don’t want to go to BayCorp or anything like that. That’s not our business. That’s not what we’re about.”