Avoiding Funeral Scams

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Getting the best deal in your time of need

Visiting a funeral home to make final plans (either for yourself or a loved-one) is often an uncomfortable experience and consumers can be forgiven for wishing it to be done quickly. Unfortunately, as with almost every other large purchase in life, quick is usually not smart. For best results in buying any memorial product -- from caskets to headstones to urns to jewelry consumers should do what they can to keep their emotions in check and negotiate good deals. If they don't, they may just fall victim to sales tactics aimed at convincing customers to spend thousands of dollars more than necessary. We've listed a few of the more common tactics here:

A Traditional Funeral:

There is no such thing! A funeral can be as extravagant or as simple as you like. Sales people, of course, will want to encourage to you buy "only the best" for your memorial service. But it is probably more practical to keep up with the Jones’s in other areas of life. If you are ripe with money and want to go all-out for your funeral, by all means, do so. And do not let anyone talk you out of it. But, on the other hand, be careful not to allow a sales person to convince you pay for extravagances you do not really want or cannot really afford. Always remember that a funeral is deeply personal. There is no right or wrong way to conduct one – no matter what a sales person says.

Expensive additions:

No casket will protect a body indefinitely. In fact, U.S. law now prohibits sales people making that claim directly. But, unfortunately, the law is less strict about hinting or suggesting. So sales people, without directly claiming that a particular casket will preserve a body, will sometimes use carefully selected words and phrases aimed at making you believe that a particular casket has more preservation power than another. Be careful not to fall for this. Rubber gaskets installed along the sides of a metal casket, for example, add no extra protection for a body. And, in some cases, extremely air-tight caskets can actually speed up a body’s decomposition process.

Package pricing:

Funeral homes and other memorial dealers will sometimes try to hide their exaggerated retail prices by offering “package” deals. These packages may seem reasonable at first glance, but be careful to look at the itemized prices of all the products and services included. (The company is required to provide this list, by the way. If there is reluctance, be very wary about further dealings.) You will often be able to find goods – such as cremation urns or headstones – available for much less from another dealer. (The Internet is a great place to find dramatically lower prices.) Do not be afraid to scratch certain items off the “package” list and use another dealer’s product. Funeral homes and cemeteries cannot legally require you to buy their products as a condition for using their services.