The grim business of laying the dead to rest, known by the gentle-sounding euphemism as the “Death Care Industry,” has established a unique place in American society, invoking a sort of reverence in the public mind. But while they provide necessary services, they are in business to make money, and consumers need to be aware.
“Our expression of grief and mourning has been written over by this capitalist logic, that the only right and proper way we show our love for the dead is through commercial consumption.”
“Unfortunately, every profession has a few rotten apples,” says National Funeral Directors Association Treasurer Jack Mitchell. “There are some people in our profession that would take advantage of families in their grieving, who are going through a difficult situation and upsell them. The vast majority of us despise that, because it makes the rest of us look bad.”
Complicating matters is that death, including funerals, is seldom seriously discussed. As people confront the economic challenges of their daily lives, the need to plan for death, even their own, is far from their minds.
“With the last generation or two, there’s been less discussion ahead of time about death,” Mitchell says. “We sit down with families who don’t have a clue what they want to do, and I think they end up making decisions that further down the road they look back and say, ‘We should have done this instead.’ ”
People struggling to afford basic needs are more likely to “have shorter lives than those with higher incomes,” according to a 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office.
Families with loved ones who die unexpectedly, especially from illness and injury, face even greater monetary challenges when arranging for final resting places and accompanying services. Sadly, this discussion has become more urgent with the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, as the risk of death is much higher for those who are elderly and impoverished or who have pre-existing conditions.
The potential costs even for modest funeral services can be overwhelming, given that four in ten Americans say they would be unable to afford a $400 emergency. The financial burden compounded with the grief of losing a loved one can cause traumatic distress.
Those tasked with the somber responsibility of making funeral arrangements must make tough decisions in a limited amount of time, attempting to honor the wishes of the departed as well as recognize financial limitations. Emotions are heightened, leaving consumers vulnerable.
The National Directory of Morticians Redbook lists more than 19,000 funeral homes in the United States. Funeral homes generated revenues of around $17 billion in 2019, with the average funeral costing more than $9,000. The funeral industry is projected to have annual revenues of $68 billion by 2023.
“From December 1986 to September 2017, funeral expenses rose 227.1 percent, while prices for all items rose 123.4 percent,” states a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The National Funeral Directors Association published its annual “Member General Price List Study” last September, which surveyed more than a thousand of its members to collect data on prices. According to the study, the average cost of a funeral with burial ranges from around $6,000 to $7,500, depending on the region; the average cost of a funeral with cremation is around $5,000.
The cost of funerals has grown so dramatically that many families now request financial contributions “in lieu of flowers.” The crowdfunding platform GoFundMe has a whole section dedicated to funerals, memorials, and assistance with survivors’ living expenses.
The trend toward favoring cremation over burial is also on the rise. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the cremation rate has risen from 40 percent in 2010 to 53 percent in 2018 and is projected to grow to nearly 75 percent by 2035.
This is unsurprising, as “the bereaved can reduce their costs substantially through immediate cremation, obviating the need for embalming, a viewing, a burial plot, and burial,” says Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America.
Traditionally, people turn to funeral homes that served family members in the past. Checking with other funeral homes to compare prices could save them hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.
“They’ve misrepresented their prices and lost cremated remains.”
It is no coincidence that funeral homes have dramatic names for their products. Boxes to bury the dead are called “caskets.” Jars for cremated ashes are called “urns,” and fancier models are “decorative urns.” It is not as if through some act of alchemy funeral directors were able to transform these objects into something more than they are. When such terms are applied, however, the numbers on the price tags go up.
“We reformers and advocates have known since the mid-twentieth century that funeral homes use the same retail merchandising tactics that furniture stores and everybody else does,” says Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit group that monitors the funeral industry and advocates for fair practices. “Our expression of grief and mourning has been written over by this capitalist logic, that the only right and proper way we show our love for the dead is through commercial consumption.”
Slocum wants to demystify the funeral industry, to help people reframe the situation as any other kind of financial transaction. By pulling back the mysterious curtain that shrouds the industry, consumers can reassert their rights.
“The only way to really keep control of your costs,” Slocum says, is to “comparison shop for prices ahead of time and have a clear idea you share with your family about what your values are in terms of a funeral.”
Funeral homes often push basic products that would be cheaper if they were provided by the consumers themselves. For example, memorial packages and card folders that cost $250 at a funeral home can be bought elsewhere for around $50. Instead of selecting an urn from the business’s catalogue, people can bring their own urns. The same goes for coffins, which consumers have the right to purchase from a place other than a funeral home.
As with any business, people can be misled on costs and surprised with hidden fees.
“They often go to great lengths to put that package under your nose before you see the a la carte options,” Slocum says. “It’s these packages where a lot of padding goes on.”
About 80 percent of funeral homes are privately owned by families or individuals. But as with nearly every sector in our society, corporations are getting into the industry.
Service Corporation International (SCI) and its signature brand, Dignity Memorial, own the largest chain of funeral homes and cemeteries in the country. With more than 1,900 locations in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, the company has created a flourishing enterprise built on high-pressure sales tactics to create the highest-priced market in the funeral industry.
The median price of SCI funeral homes, compared to those with price disclosures, is 30 percent higher for simple cremation, 32 percent higher for simple burial, and 50 percent higher for a full-service funeral, according to a 2017 report from the Funeral Consumers Alliance and the Consumer Federation of America.
If SCI purchases a funeral home previously owned by a family, it will generally keep the family’s name, such as “Johnson and Son,” leaving consumers unaware of the change in ownership until the time comes to write the check.
“They know that the family name has brand value,” Slocum says, “and brand value means consumers have no idea that it’s not the Johnson family, and they’re inappropriately transferring a warm emotional feeling about the Johnsons to this corporate funeral home.”
The Progressive contacted SCI-Dignity Memorial to ask why it does not provide price listings on its websites. Instead of answering the question, the company responded, “Prices are available upon request, directly from the location.”
The funeral industry is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which in 1984 created the Funeral Rule to better protect consumers. It allows them to choose only the goods and services they want, and requires that they be shown an itemized list of prices before reaching a decision. From 1996 to 2018, the FTC investigated nearly 3,200 funeral homes and found that 559 of them had violated this rule. In 2017, twenty-nine of the 134 funeral homes inspected undercover by the FTC in eleven states failed to disclose their prices.
As the rule was created before the Internet was in popular use, it does not require funeral homes to list their prices on websites. “Requiring funeral homes to post existing price lists online would be relatively easy and inexpensive,” says Brobeck, from the Consumer Federation of America. “Just create a PDF and post it.”
California is the only state that requires funeral homes to disclose price information on their websites, thanks to a bill enacted in 2013. Mitchell, with the National Funeral Directors Association, says he is “on the fence” regarding such a requirement, but adds, “I feel like funeral homes, knowing that’s how most people shop nowadays, it would behoove them to do it.”
One of the shadiest operators in the funeral industry is Heritage Cremation Provider, owned by the father-son team Joseph and Anthony Damiano. The company, which claims to be “Everything you could possibly need from a cremation provider,” subcontracts with local funeral homes to provide the services it charges for. Heritage and its sister website Legacy Funeral Services have “F” ratings from the Better Business Bureau, and have been subjected to multiple legal actions.
“There are families all over the country that have terrible experiences with them,” Mitchell says. “Families go to them and wherever they are in the country they assign a local funeral home to handle the cremation for really, really cheap. They’ve misrepresented their prices and lost cremated remains.”
In 2003, Joseph Damiano became embroiled in scandal when it was revealed that his business, Professional Transport System Inc., supplied cadavers to the mortuary school at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, without the consent or knowledge of family members. His son Anthony was banned from the funeral business in Florida.
Mitchell wants the FTC and the FBI to “chase after them and to shut them down,” but says they have proven to be elusive.
Slocum calls the funeral industry “probably the best example of regulatory capture I have ever seen.” Regulatory capture is when a government regulatory agency becomes a commercial and political force advancing the interests of the industry the agency is supposed to be regulating.
“Most regulators that oversee funeral homes on the state level are governed by a majority voting bloc of industry,” Slocum says. “It’s like seven funeral directors and one so-called consumer member on the regulatory board. These actually function more like a trade lobbying group with the fig-leaf of government consumer protection.”
As the funeral business continues to evolve, there needs to be progress in the way people view the industry. Change can come only when people start recognizing the brutal realities surrounding it.
“There is nothing degrading or terrible about being a funeral director,” Slocum says, “but they have never done anything to earn this sort of hands-off, awestruck silence that we as consumers have given them, and we need to stop it.”