This piece was written in 2020 when I was still employed by Funeral Consumers Alliance. This is its first publication. -JS
It’s a toss-up how I’ll respond to the small-talk opener common to dinner parties. “What do you do?” Sometimes I’ll just say that I work in “consumer advocacy.” If I’m feeling expansive, I’ll say that I direct the Funeral Consumers Alliance. That requires more explanation. What in the world is “funeral consumer advocacy”?
The elevator pitch answer: “Think of us like we were Consumer Reports magazine, but only for the funeral and burial purchase.” I explain that we offer education about the options available to people making death arrangements with a focus on how to do it affordably. Unless you’ve done some homework and comparison-shopping, the average person’s funeral purchase is likely to cost a lot more than most people want to pay.
“It’s a shame/outrage/scandal to take advantage of people on the worst day of their lives!” is the most common reaction from a conversational partner.
Yes, it is a scandal to take advantage of grieving people. But there’s an unstated assumption behind this : That there’s something immoral about making a living—even a profit—by caring for the dead. People don’t say it out loud, but they don’t need to. Eighteen years of experience has shown me that most people are at least suspicious of funeral directors. Not suspicious just of obviously avaricious funeral directors, suspicious of funeral directors as a class and specifically because they make their living selling services to the bereaved.
There are reasons for this. The funeral home sector in the United States earned a reputation for being secretive and defensive about prices. Before the Federal Trade Commission’s ‘Funeral Rule’ took effect in 1984, too many funeral homes forced consumers to buy all-inclusive packages whether the family wanted or could afford a one-of-everything funeral. The industry hasn’t covered itself in glory, either, with emotional manipulations such as marketing sealed caskets as “protective”, or pushing the idea that loving family members should want to spend enough to give mom the very best sealed vault to keep the body from natural decay.
There is a sound public policy reason for requiring funeral homes to be transparent in pricing and truthful in how they represent their services. Unlike almost every other retail transaction, the funeral buyer is usually emotionally compromised. Grieving people are more likely to spend beyond their means, to buy services they may later regret. This isn’t the fault of funeral directors, but it is the reason we hold them to specific rules that attempt to make up for the grief that handicaps the bereaved.
But the common American suspicion of funeral directors goes beyond a normal distaste for vendors who take explicit advantage. We cast a jaundiced eye at undertakers for being undertakers.
We do this because we don’t like death, and we don’t like responsibility. It’s more appealing to see ourselves as victims than it is to admit that we put off death planning until the last minute. Most of us don’t compare funeral prices in our local market to see which firms fall within our budget. We sleep-walk into “our family’s funeral home” then some of us complain that they charged us such high prices. We will scour the Internet to save two dollars on detergent, but we won’t devote an hour to calling five mortuaries to get a price quote on cremation.
So we blame the undertaker for making a living.
The customer isn’t always right
Not every complaint is reasonable. “I was in grief” does not excuse every funeral choice we later regret. While the death of a spouse will cloud our judgment, it doesn’t account for all the time before the death we could have spent assessing costs to make sure they fit our budget.
Earlier this year Mrs. A. complained about the $15,000 “basic funeral” she held for her husband. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said.
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