IT seems there is a price-cutting war between the two largest funeral companies in the UK as they slash prices in an attempt to maintain their market share ("Profits dip at funeral company Dignity", The Herald, November 13).

Anybody who heeds the numerous adverts on daytime TV will be aware of their warnings of "the high cost of funerals" and the "need to protect your family".

Surely, then, the cost of a funeral hasn’t been based on the actual expenditure of the funeral companies but rather on what the public can be expected to pay (fuelled by a greedy insurance industry that has already exploited consumers in the dental and veterinary sectors)?

Families are at their most vulnerable when dealing with a bereavement and unlike any other service, a funeral is rarely approached in the same way as buying a piece of furniture or household appliance: for example compare the cost of a trip to your local graveyard/crematorium in a taxi with the same trip in a funeral car.

Let’s have a bit more transparency. Until 1996 many Scottish district councils invited annual tenders for the provision of a funeral for people they had to deal with under the 1948 Act and the prices submitted by local undertakers were often a fraction of those they were charging families for similar services. It isn’t fair.

John F Crawford,

4 The Breakers, Victory Boulevard, Lytham.