MONOPOLY AT PARISH CEMETERIES
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Created on Tuesday, 10 September 2013 12:31
Urząd Ochrony Konkurencji i Konsumentów (the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection) imposed in August a penalty on the parish in Kietrz where only one company had a monopoly on funeral services.
It all happened in the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle in Kietrz, Opolskie Province. Everything started when one of the companies became an administrator of the cemetery and had exclusive rights to dig graves. – I was losing customers because I could not dig a grave and make a tomb. I could just enter the cemetery with the funeral procession, bury the coffin and leave – says Czesław Marcinków, an entrepreneur who feels a victim of this situation. The office said that the parish violated the law by restricting competition at the cemetery as regards digging graves.
The office said that the victims were most of all competitors, that is companies which were not able to provide funeral services. The customers were also not satisfied because they had a limited choice on the market of funeral services. The office imposed a penalty of 3,800 PLN (ca. 950 euro). The parish has already paid it and the company which informed the office about violating the law may enter the cemetery now. It has to pay the fee, though: 50 PLN (ca. 12 euro) for entering the cemetery and 400 PLN (ca. 100 euro) for digging a grave. The owner of the company said that he would submit a complaint in this case, too. Just to remind you, four years ago we were writing in Świat Kamienia about procedures which allow cemetery administrators to take advantage of the position of the monopolist on cemetery and stone services market.