After having to confusingly and emotionally deal with a funeral home last year, I realized some things
What happens when you mix investor-backed companies seeking return on their money, with funeral homes which aim to transact (sell) merchandise such as caskets, urns, graves, and services, such as viewings, burials, and funeral services.
Well... You may get massively marked up caskets urns, graves, viewings, burials, and funeral services. Death Care industry consumer advocacy groups have done multiple studies on what happens to funeral home pricing when a corporation buys them out and lo and behold, they tend to hike up in prices past usually inflation.
A LOT of people out there realized that buying the exact same casket from an online wholeseller is possible, and legally required to be accepted by the home by law, Costco, Amazon, other wholesellers shop very fast. The same goes for Urns, which you can literally Amazon to your door, and where the markups are just as bad.
Why is a company, who should have efficiency gains from vertical integration and economics of scale (owning cemeteries, streamiling theming cataloges, memorial video services, owning efficient crematoriums) ending up RAISING prices for consumers when they should be in fact, lowering it. Do you think these companies are going to train their sales staff to try and rush the already terrible and extremely emotionally bereaved and confused family member(s) into costly financial decisions with a limit on time constraints due to the nature of a deceased body?
Do you think these companies are going to say, well hey look, check out the exact or very nearly exact casket/urn online that is somehow 50% cheaper than ours?
Then there's the add ons. Even if you chose cremations, you're able to upgrade the box they are cremated in, and even add a pillow. A pillow less, cardboard box would be terrible for the ashing of your loved one, wouldn't it. Why a more dignified box. Oh, by the way, when you bury that casked, water may seep in, how about a rubber gasket seal to keep your loved one more comfy. Silk linked caskets?
How about we show you through a casket room which may aim to put the cheaper less profitable caskets below eye level, in ugly colors (they studied this), and the ones they want to sell at eye leve, in respectable colors. Also, why not ebalm them, even though it's not a legally required or always truly necessary service.
"This is the last thing you can for mom. She deserves this."
"You May not have been able to provide the best stuff for your son in life, but you can give him the best in death."
"Given your position in the community..." (Why would you skimp out on a funeral for your loved, will that make you look bad to others?)
"Your (family member) had excellent taste when she made arrangements for your aunt, this is what she chose..."
"Well, if budget is a concern... We do have some more .... Economical, options."
"Most people don't pick this quality of casket material..."
"This sealer vault will keep your loved one more protected from anything in the ground..." (Worms? Bodies end up liquifying and seeping out over time regardless of the container).
"If you buy this vault, you're husband will be protected for all of eternity"
"Can you put a price on peace of mind?"
"Jesus Christ himself had a sealer tomb"
"Cremations are not entirely in line with Christian tradition"
"I someone like your father would have wanted this"
"We may have to charge more if too much time passes for the body"
"We have limited availability for funeral dates and times for what you want"
"The pricing is too complicated to discuss over the phone, please come to our home during these hours to sit down with us" (developing an in-person professional relationship builds implied trust to sell)
"You could buy it outside urn or casket, but it may not have the same quality guarantees as ours" (many homes don't even give you the model or actual names for the merchandise meeting it's far more difficult to price compare, Plus this gives him the ability to offer discounts on already marked up items which is something you actually see a lot at car dealerships or Black Friday events)
"We can help you with the costs given your situation" (this may be despite staff knowing that much of the extra cost is going to executives and investors)
"We may go a little over budget but this add-on would be perfect"
- Other considerations could include talking about how the body is being currently stored, and how you can pay to transfer them into a better box, honestly there's a lot to it, and if you do cover this or get into it, be sure to look for these sort of guilts.
- Even for cremations, they sell you up on upgrading the basic wood box the body is burned in to a casket or one with pillows. It's not needed and it's extra margin for the home, but you can understand the subtle ways of guilt and ideas of care and kindness to the body with possibly little regard for the value of services or if it actually means anything.
-claims that third party caskets are of low quality when they aren't.
- the biggest conglomerate in the US apparently has sales calls in which they push employees to sell sell sell, apparently there exists some sort of graphic or illustration of what happens if a water liner is not used in a casket, lots of anecdotes from employees on the internet ... Apparently a certain private equity firms also work their employees hard. I will work on gathering more anecdotes as time goes on....
-not sure if I mentioned this but they can say pricing is too complicated and thus want you to provide further details in person... Even if they technically do need to give prices over the phone
-bait and switch pricing is common, you can advertise a low cremation price for example, but then add on fees that inflate the price further, but technically, you advertised only for the cremation fee, not the removal fee or general overhead fee.
- Going to go into pre-need for a sec here, but the issues with pre-need can mirror general. Pre-need or pre-planned funeral services allows you to pre-pay for your funeral or cremation costs. They market this typically to older adults and seniors as a way to save their family time and expense in the future, while also having your wishes fulfilled. This is a great thing, but several issues can emerge:
- There are guaranteed and non-guaranteed plans. Guaranteed plans promise you pretty much all funeral costs will be payed regardless of how much time passes, while non-guaranteed do not, and allow for inflation or price hikes to allow for future potential costs. Obviously with fine print, there's a lot an innocent details senior (or, basically any normal person) can miss, like forcing your family to buy the items they picked out, no options to remove unwanted things.
The pre-need policy pay also not pay out interest, meaning it does not mean on itself for you (but it does for them?)
These points on pre-need are few in number but wide in what it could mean for you.
- too lazy to type this one, so, AI Sealed/Gasketed Caskets: Directors often pitch a “protective” or rubber‑gasket casket as essential for preservation. In reality, these seals create an anaerobic environment that accelerates decomposition – a phenomenon called “exploding casket syndrome”
. (The buildup of gases can warp or burst the casket.) In short: paying $1,000+ extra for a sealed casket adds no benefit, and may even worsen the outcome.
-Burial Vaults vs. Liners: Most cemeteries require a concrete liner (a simple box under the casket). Salespeople will push a costly sealed burial vault (often $2,000–$6,000) with a pitch that it “will protect” the casket from moisture. But concrete alone already prevents ground collapse, and water will eventually seep in regardless
. In practice, a basic unsealed grave liner (often $700–$1,000) suffices for the same purpose, so the added seal is just an upsell.
Identical “Premium” Merchandise: To hide cheaper alternatives, some homes use private‑label branding, meaning there is no model or name you can use to trace it back to the manufacturer or pricing online for it. This prevents you from recognizing the item and price you saw online. (By law the FTC Funeral Rule prohibits refusing outside caskets, and you shouldn’t pay any extra “handling” fee, but misleading labeling and showroom tricks can obscure your options.)
If the focus is on selling merchandise and services then the focus is less on having an actual meaningful experience for the bereaved...
They can also flood you with options leading to decision fatigue and many small yeses which while not huge in price tag ends up adding up. The video tribute, the custom prayer cards, the keepsake jewelry, a memorial website.
A lot of the times they present something as a requirement but they don't technically factually say it was requirement leading to the consumer thinking they had to purchase this or do this a certain way.
One of the biggest issues is that funeral home companies do not publish their prices online meaning you're not as able to price compare. It'# also very easy for a funeral home to give estimates or ranges and then when you actually go into talk to them you get a higher number.
Now this isn't to say every single private equity or corporate owned location is bad, sometimes these companies bought out a funeral homes that have nice venues and nice properties that can't be achieved elsewhere.
But I think that actual independently owned local funeral homes have a much a lower chance of misrepresenting things and attempting to generate higher margins off of each consumer. I think the important thing is to shop around and have an idea of what you want when the time comes, as time may actually be limited, and you may not be in a state of mind to make good financial decisions that will lead to an actual meaningful experience. It's probably best to involve a third party friend or family that can help you analyze things.
Because let's get down to it, the meaning of someones life is not determined by how nice of a place the service is at or how good looking or expensive the casket was. It's about people coming together to share and celebrate and mourn one's life. A family gathering does not need to happen at a funeral venue but at the home that the deceased cherished and had memories in. A urn doesn't need to be a well designed receptacle that was mass produced to be sold. It could be her purse, a container related to ones interests or profession, something that actually meant something to the person that is now gone.
Some may even argue viewings of the body in a casket at a funeral can be traumatizing. Seeing them again after knowing they're dead may not have the intended effect initally thought it would have been meant.
And lastly all the respect goes to the men and women who work in the funeral industry be it directing , embalming, removal, counseling etc. Obviously all of them want the best for you and if they could give you a personalized experience at a just price, they probably would. But sometimes they have their hands tied, sometimes they have their source of living tied to how well they perform according to upper management, and then there's the minority that are actually legitimately greedy and soulless.
You should be focused on grieving and honoring them well, and not worrying about financial stress.
Money that could have been saved from a different funeral service is money that is earned for the grieving family who needs it
But most of the professionals out there do care and want to try the best for you and do have to do with a lot of shared pain, trauma, and working realities. They definitely do deserve to be rewarded for what they do, and this goes for many industries. The problem is that when you have large corporations and private equity on the scene that introduces a new party into your relationship.
It's not just you, and the funeral professional anymore.
It's you, the funeral professional, and a party seeking to make maximal returns on their invested cash.
Don't let it get any more worse than it has to be.
Bonus quotes: ""Upselling Without Upsetting the Client" is one of the continuing-education courses approved by 27 state boards for funeral directors to maintain their licenses.
The online class, which a Money writer signed up for, advises funeral directors about techniques to persuade customers to buy more than they need. The sweet spot for going above a client's budget: 20%.
The course instructor encourages funeral directors to ask about the family's budget, then say, "We are going to stay as close to that number as possible" -- conditioning customers to think prices will stay within reason. Then directors are urged to use phrases like, "We might go a little over your budget, but this particular add-on will go perfectly."
Lynch, the former NFDA president, calls the title of the course "tacky and inappropriate" and says he's not familiar with its content. But in general he says upselling is not the norm. "The service we render for folks is far more important than the stuff we sell them," he says. "If we treat people properly, the sales will take care of themselves.""
(In reference to the largest American funeral conglomerate) one former SCI sales rep reported management “hounds sales reps constantly…Don’t give out too much information on the phone, don’t give prices…Get that appointment and sell, sell, sell”
From: https://www.dvxuser.com/threads/funeral-industry-corruption.269823/?sharetype=link
My mom worked at a funeral home. I was about to graduate high school and she figured she'd get a part time job. She saw an ad looking for a grief counselor at a funeral home and was given the job. The job paid commission and during training she was taught to "upsell upsell upsell." 6 months later she quit. A poor family had spent their last $5,000 to pay for the father's funeral service, and my mom's boss kept telling her to suggest upgrading the vault to granite, otherwise the casket was at risk of being crushed (which is a lie).
Yes, corrupt. The funeral directors will indeed lie to you. There are very simple lies like, "All cemeteries in your county require vaults" which force you into buying a vault. There are more intense lies like, "Your uncle is too tall for our cheapest casket. If you insist on our cheapest casket, we will have to cut off his feet."
I am somewhat familiar with the funeral industry and they parallel a little bit with the health industry-- that being INSURANCE and nickle and diming you.
Funeral home's thought process is when "in need" people show up, and most people have life insurance, they ring up that bill with as much as they can and up-sell everything they can... knowing and telling these grieving people that insurance pays for everything.
--People tend to spend other people's money (ie insurance money) a lot easier, not realizing it actually is their money. So this car salesman mentality sometimes moves into the funeral home industry.
Then when a non-insured family member comes in they tend to keep sticking it to them because they expect to get a similar total sale price.
An article on sci, there's a lot on sci an how they operate out there given they own at least 15% of homes in the US. https://www.whistleblowers.org/news/worker-fired-for-describing-conditions-at-funeral-home/?sharetype=link
https://www.npr.org/2017/02/08/504031472/despite-decades-old-law-funeral-prices-are-still-unclear
https://youtu.be/xRNaqntsLPI?si=qab109sTsgoGY-fp
Interesting reviews here... Shaved someone's beard when that person has not been beardless, stuff about how certain things wouldn't be put in, like the death record or obituary if the entire funeral cost was not paid that day... One review claimed their mom had worked for one of them and was forced to suggest the low income family take a loan to pay for it... There's a lot of shit to this isn't there?
"-Before touring the "show room" of caskets, I was interviewed needlessly about my history with experiencing death. I was asked questions like, "Have you ever had a person close to you die?" I said yes. The lady then said, "It's the hardest day of your life." In Dignity Memorial's (the corporation who owns Cook-Walden) advertising, they claim that pre-planning helps to prevent emotional over-spending. This is true! However, Cook-Walden accommodates by creating an emotional, sad mood before entering the show room.
-Another example was asking me all about my girlfriend, my parents, my job, and my income. I played dumb, and perhaps the saleslady figured she could try to dig into my personal life to figure out how much I would spend. Each of these questions wrapped around to suggestions like, "It sounds like your mom might want you to have a traditional service, THEN get a cremation." The funeral industry had trouble initially with consumers seeking cremations. The current strategy is to suggest an open-casket service (must buy the casket), followed by a cremation and storage in an expensive urn."
Here's a bunch of varied comments I collected off of social media, again, on imgur: https://imgur.com/a/nduCKcv
My own write up---------
https://imgur.com/a/18tCApO
Babel hathitrust has the 1978 FTC funeral rule report with a lot of interest testimony, the website also has a search function where you can find more documents from more recent decades.
https://www.calebwilde.com/2015/02/five-ways-funeral-directors-can-bully-their-customers/ has some sales line quotes
https://www.calebwilde.com/2015/02/five-ways-funeral-directors-can-bully-their-customers/
https://ezifunerals.com.au/are-funeral-companies-like-mcdonalds/
I missed this tactic: Similar to how McDonald’s advertises a budget-friendly meal deal but then entices you to upgrade, funeral companies often promote low-cost funeral packages, which may lack essential elements.
A basic cremation package may seem affordable, but it often excludes a viewing, an urn, or a proper farewell service.
The funeral director may suggest an enhanced package, claiming it’s what most families choose.
By presenting a lower-cost option that feels insufficient, families are encouraged to upgrade, spending much more than they originally planned.
“The urn room was designed like a jewelry store,” our source continued. “Mood lighting, elegant displays, emotional music—all to justify sales for a 500 buck urn that goes for 80 online.
Ok I'm done. This is not exhaustive and kinda messy, but gets u started, good luck folks