The founder of a pricing comparison site for funerals says he has been the target of legal threats from major players resistant to his bid to make the industry more transparent.

Colin Wong established Gathered Here to list prices and reviews of funeral homes across Australia in January. Posing as a mystery shopper, he received quotes for big-ticket items such as coffins and service fees from more than 600 businesses that he then listed online.

He said he had since received a number of legal threats “to the effect of cease and desist”. Prices listed on Gathered Here had also been challenged by funeral homes that had quoted them to him directly, he said.

Colin Wong, a former solicitor, said he expected opposition from the funeral industry when he established Gathered Here.

He was unable to specify how many or which companies had asked him to remove their pricing but said Gathered Here was partnering with the legal firm Marque Lawyers on a pro bono basis to respond.

Wong, a former solicitor, said he had been expecting pushback. “What we’re doing is at its core pretty disruptive to the industry,” he said. “As a whole, it basically benefits from a lack of transparency.”

The Australian funeral industry has been criticised for taking advantage of the newly bereaved with opportunistic pricing. The Consumer Action Law Centre has said there is much room for competition in the sector.

Wong was inspired to establish Gathered Here by his own “terrible experience” of arranging a funeral for his great-aunt in 2013. “It really stuck with me – funeral directors going out of their way to tell you how complicated it is, how they can’t possibly give you any pricing unless they meet you in person.”



Support for Gathered Here suggested others in the same situation had felt “taken advantage of”, he said.

Wong said he had been told by industry insiders that coffins, already marked up to 400%, could be inflated to 800% or even 1,000% if a consumer was perceived to be willing to pay. Funeral homes would also decline to give quotes for big-ticket items such as a professional services fee or a coffin because of variables over smaller expenses such as flowers and memorial books, he said.

“‘Predatory’ is a strong word, but it’s this kind of opportunistic pricing.”

While itemised pricing could be demanded under state-specific fair trading laws, Wong said people did not know to invoke them or feel comfortable doing so.

“So many people won’t say anything at that time because you don’t want to be perceived as caring more about money, or bargaining over the death of a loved one, and that’s exactly what funeral directors know as well,” he said. “Itemising prices, letting people know upfront, is really going away to protect those vulnerable consumers.”

Earlier in May, Wong launched a Change.org petition to lobby the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission or each of the state fair trading bodies to require funeral directors to list their prices online.

The Consumer Action Law Centre was also in favour of regulatory change as comparison sites were not a total solution to issues with transparency over pricing.

Sandra van der Laan, an accounting professor at the University of Sydney’s business school, also called for greater transparency over pricing in her investigation into the Australian funeral industry published in April. Her report found that the average price for a basic funeral in NSW in 2016 was $5,758, an increase of nearly $1,000 or approximately 21% since 2009.

Van der Laan said of Gathered Here that any initiative that increases price transparency in the industry was “a huge step forward”. But another issue for consumers that it did not address was funeral directors’ combining body disposal with an often costly memorial service: “These two services are bundled unnecessarily.”

In her report, Van der Laan found that funeral pricing was driven by the dominance of InvoCare, a listed company with a 40% share of the Australian market. (The remaining 60% is made up of small and family-owned businesses.)

The largest private funeral, cemetery and cremation operator in the Asia-Pacific region, InvoCare runs three brands nationally in Australia – White Lady Funerals, Simplicity Funerals and Value Funerals – as well as more than 30 regional ones. In February, it announced after-tax operating earnings for 2016 of $55.2m, an increase of nearly 12%.

At the same time it presented its “Protect and Grow 2020 plan” to invest $200m over four years to expand its operations. This year, 165,000 Australians are expected to die and demographic shifts mean that number is only due to increase until 2034.

A spokeswoman for InvoCare said, though it was not one of the companies taking a legal response to Gathered Here, the prices for its brands had been listed on the website without its consent. While InvoCare believed there should be greater industry-wide transparency of costs and services associated with a funeral or cremation, she expressed concern that the prices listed on Gathered Here may not be accurate.

InvoCare had launched its own online comparative aggregator, Funeral Planner, earlier this year. Wong was aware of the service and said it was not obvious that it was not an independent site.

“We believe that consumers should be able to assess the entire market with complete transparency – and not just see details of funeral homes owned by a parent company.”

Of the accuracy of prices listed on Gathered Here, he said all funeral homes were invited to correct their pricing information if necessary.

Wong said Gathered Here was not in opposition to the funeral industry – rather, it sought to level the playing field. Wong hoped that, in time, operators would be required to list their prices themselves and his site’s primary service would be user reviews. He had also devised premium membership for funeral homes, retailing at $29 per month, that would give them a priority listing in search results and more display options in their profile.

“When there’s transparency, what separates you is service. What we’re hoping is that funeral homes will concentrate on their service – by doing that you’ll actually succeed in the digital world.”