Pay up or you don't get buried

A ROTORUA funeral director will require deposits of up to $1500 before funerals can proceed from next month.
The move by Keith Osborne at Osborne's Funeral Home is aimed at avoiding bad debt.
He also plans to discuss with Rotorua's three other funeral directors ways of alerting each other about families who are obvious bad debt risks.
Charging deposits was common around the country and his company had no choice, Mr Osborne said. Local funeral directors wrote off thousands of dollars a year as a result of families being unable to pay their bills.
The problem was highlighted last week when Richard Bennison, a director at Gray's Funeral Services, threatened to exhume the body of a teenager because his family had not paid his funeral bill.
While he would not be allowed to simply dig up the teenager's grave, he had hoped the threat would prompt the family into paying the $7500 owed.
The family also owe another Rotorua funeral home money for their mother's funeral two years ago and have applied for a loan to pay the debts.
Mr Osborne said dozens of funeral directors around the country supported Mr Bennison. "They just don't have the courage of his convictions to say what he did publicly."
Many funeral directors already demanded deposits of $1500 or more before funerals proceeded and some also ran credit checks on families.
To the end of June this year, Osborne's dealt with 12 families unable to pay funeral bills. The $70,000 owed has been referred to debt collectors but Mr Osborne said it was likely to be written off.
"If a family owes $4500 and they're paying $5 a week, it would take them two years at least to pay it off. Meanwhile, I still need that $70,000 to pay my staff.
"We don't want to be in the business of constantly lending people money. We do our best to provide families with a level of service they can afford but beyond that, we're a business and we've got to make a profit."
The average cost of a funeral is $6500. Funeral directors were happy to work to a family's budget, offering services for as low as $1700, Mr Osborne said. Burial fees of up to $1800 and cremation fees of $332 are charged on top.
Financial assistance is available to low income families for funerals and some funeral directors apply on behalf of families. Work and Income offers funeral grants of up to $1706 while ACC provides up to $5100 if the death was accidental.
Erin MacDonald of Mountain View Funeral Services said she saw demanding deposits as a "last resort". The only Rotorua member of the Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand, she encourages financially stretched families to have low-cost funerals by arranging flowers or catering themselves.