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NEWS photo Tom Burley

your energy PAGE 11

A NORTH SHORE based memorial service company has launched a campaign to end telephone solicitation in the

B.C. funeral industry.

First Memorial Services Ltd. general manager Jim Darby said Wednesday his company made the move because ‘tit has reached the point where we had to take action to stop a bad situation from get- ting worse. We see so much abuse and get so many calls from people who have been sold things they don’t need, we just had to take a stand.”’

A petition drafted by First Me- morial last week calls for legista- tion against all telephone or door- to-door solicitation of cemetery and funeral services.

Current legislation in B.C. under the Funeral Plan Act makes it il- legal to sell funeral services and goods such as embalming and caskets door-to-door or over the phone, but ullows the telephone or door-to-door sile of such cemetery services as cremations, cemetery plots and memorial markers.

GOV'T PROMISE

The government, Darby said, has been promising to do some- thing about the situation since 1976, but nothing has happened thus far

Darby said smaller independent operations in the funeral industry are rapidly being absorbed by a trio of large funeral con- glomerates, who now control 60 per cent of the market.

Sales personnel working for the larger conglomerates, he said, work largely on a commission basis, which leads to high-pressure sales tactics and the sale of unnec- essary and expensive ‘‘pre-need”’ merchandise and services to people who are extremely vulnerable.

Darby said sales personnel get

By TIMOTHY RENSHAW News Reporter

their feet in a prospective client's door by discussing cemetery ser- vices then proceed to sell pre-need funeral services.

He added that pre-need sales in the B.C. funeral industry were about $2 million last year.

But Forest Lawn Memorial Park general manager Lenore Martin said telephone = solicitation can mean anything from picking ran- dom names from the telephone book to following up mailed in- formation brochures to find out if more information is needed.

‘A CONVENLENCE'

She said her company, which was acquired by Service Corpora tion International in 1969, deals in cemetery services only, ‘‘but itis a great convenience at the time of death to have as many details as possible taken care of in advance.”

Martin added that it would be extremely difficult to prohibit any one industry from using telephone aud door-to-door sales.

Darby said his company is not against the concept of + re-need sales; “We have our own (pre- need) program. Our issue is with the (sales) vehicle, It is a terrible invasion of privacy.”

Provincial government cemetery division spokesman Donald Pat- terson said Thursday the issue of pre-need = selling was extremely complex with many ‘pros and cons and ins and outs. But we are aware of Mr. Darby and what he is doing. All [ can say is the situation is under study.”’