Farewell - Funeral Director Comparison Marketplace with Price List Compliance
Funeral Comparison Marketplace for a Leeds Operator
Designed and built a clickable operator console for a Leeds company whose marketplace lets bereaved families in England and Wales compare about 450 funeral director branches by clear prices: price list checks against each director's CMA standardised price list, careful review moderation and complaints tracked to the 8-week response mark.
Most of our work is under NDA. Per agreement, we can share the work but not the company details - all names and identifying information shown here have been changed.
Impact
Dashboard, price list compliance queue, review moderation with its review context panel, the complaints list and complaint detail. Approve, query, reject, publish, hold and record outcome all update the record and its history.
Required items present, attended and unattended packages priced, third-party costs listed, no zero prices without a note, mapping to Farewell's three options complete and the published URL reachable. Entered prices are then compared line by line with the director's own PDF.
Possible personal data, possible health details, abusive language, possibly not genuine and reported by the director. The flagged phrase, such as the name of the person who died, is highlighted in the review text.
Funeral director branches across 7 regions of England and Wales, with 12 price list versions, 12 reviews, 14 complaints and 7 Wharfemead staff users.
The Problem
Wharfemead started as a phone line and a spreadsheet of Leeds funeral directors. As it grew to about 450 branches, price lists went out of date, callbacks were missed at weekends, reviews arrived by email with no way to check they were genuine, and nobody could see which families had been left waiting. Directors had no simple way to keep their listing in line with the price list they publish under the CMA rules.
Our Solution
Farewell gives families one calm, honest view of local funeral directors by price for direct cremation, a simple funeral and a full service, then a callback or online booking and a shared arrangement checklist. Directors run their listing, price list, leads and bookings from a portal, and Wharfemead's team checks prices, moderates reviews and handles complaints from one operator console.
The Challenge: Honest Prices for Grieving Families
Most families contact the first funeral director they hear of, often within a day or two, while grieving and without knowing what a funeral should cost. Prices for similar services vary widely in the same town, and third-party costs such as crematorium fees are easy to miss.
Prices That Must Match the CMA List
The CMA's Funerals Market Investigation Order 2021 generally requires directors to publish a Standardised Price List in a prescribed form, covering attended and unattended packages, other items and third-party costs. Farewell's own comparison has to match that list, and stale or mismatched prices mislead families.
Reviews That Need Care
Families write reviews while grieving, and they often name the person who died or mention a cause of death. Fake reviews are prohibited under the DMCC Act 2024, so each review must come from a real booking, and honest criticism has to be published rather than softened.
Vulnerable Customers, No Pressure
Bereaved people are often in a vulnerable situation, and consumer law prohibits misleading or aggressive practices. That rules out countdowns, scarcity messages, upsell prompts and ranking by fee paid, and staff need a way to flag a family who may be at risk.
Funeral Plans Without Selling Them
Pre-paid funeral plans have been regulated by the FCA since 29 July 2022 and Wharfemead is not authorised. Farewell can only give general information and link to providers it has checked on the FCA register, with no advice, no applications and no payment from providers.
Our Approach: From Funeral Market Rules to a Clickable Console
Spec and Rules Research
Mapped 9 user roles, 47 screens across the family site, the funeral director portal and the operator console, and the data model for firms, branches, price list versions, leads, bookings, arrangements, invoices, payouts, reviews, complaints, safeguarding cases and fees. Wrote down the rules the design follows: the CMA Funerals Order, FCA funeral plan rules, UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, the DMCC Act 2024 and death registration in England and Wales.
Clickable Demo on a Production UI Kit
Built 5 key screens of the operator console on a production dashboard kit: the dashboard with KPIs, a needs attention list from client policy thresholds, average published prices by region and coverage by postcode area; the price list queue with automatic checks and entered items beside the published PDF; review moderation with tone guidance and the review context panel; and complaints with an 8-week response state, messages, notes and outcome. All actions run on local state.
What a Production Build Adds
The 18 mobile-first family screens, the 11 funeral director portal screens and the rest of the console: director verification, safeguarding, leads and fees, bookings and payments, plan providers, reports and the audit log. Integrations with postcode lookup, Companies House, the FCA register, Stripe Connect, GoCardless, Twilio, Postmark, Onfido, DocuSign and Zendesk, staff sign-in by role with safeguarding records restricted, and compliance sign-off before launch.
Why It Works: Calm for Families, Strict on Prices
Old Prices Stay Live Until Checked
A new price list goes live only when the listings team approves it. A query sends the director a message naming the items affected while the current version stays live, and a serious mismatch can hide prices so families see "Prices being updated" instead of a wrong figure.
Moderation Written for Grief
Tone guidance sits at the top of the queue: publish honest criticism, remove the name of the person who died and any health details, and tell the reviewer what changed. Rejections use a fixed list of 6 reasons, and the context panel shows the booking timeline, linked complaints and other reviews from the account.
Deadlines Visible on Every Complaint
Each complaint shows how long it has been open and turns amber in the last 2 weeks before the 8-week response mark, a Wharfemead policy. The dashboard counts those nearing it, and outcomes are recorded with signposting to the NAFD or SAIF complaints scheme or Citizens Advice.
Money and Safeguarding Need Two Hands
Refunding a payment collected through Farewell needs a second approver from Finance, and a complaint can be linked to a safeguarding case. A quote changes only with the family's written approval, which is how the showcase complaint about a £310 invoice difference is handled.
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Enterprise Software Engineering - Human + AI
Contact Us
Locations
Global Headquarters
21 Merchant Road, 3rd Floor, Singapore 058267
Main corporate office and leadership operations
North America Office
548 Market Street, PMB 12345, San Francisco, CA 94104
Client operations and business development
India Office
402 Shivalik Shilp II, SG Highway, Ahmedabad 380015
Engineering and delivery center
© 2026 - Copyright. All Rights reserved Oceanlab