Choosing a funeral home

The price list is the comparison tool

Every funeral home must keep a General Price List, and it must give you a printed copy to take away, before it shows you a single casket. That document lists each service and each item with a price beside it, and it is the only way to compare two providers, because nothing else they say to you is comparable at all.

Packages are not comparable. Brochures are not comparable. A quote given verbally over a desk is not comparable, because two homes will include different things in the same sentence. Only the line items are, and the price list has the line items.

The largest single driver of the difference between two homes is the non-declinable basic services fee, which appears on every funeral regardless of what else you buy and covers overhead, staff, planning and filing the paperwork. It runs a national median of about $2,495, and the spread around that median inside one city is very wide. You cannot decline it, so the only way to control it is to choose the home that charges less for it. Funeral home fees explained covers what sits inside it.

What the law entitles you to

The FTC Funeral Rule has been in force since 1984 and it is enforceable law rather than industry guidance. Read this list once and you will negotiate an entire funeral without raising your voice.

• You may buy only the goods and services you want, apart from the non-declinable basic services fee.
• The funeral home must give you a printed, itemised General Price List to keep, before it shows you any caskets.
• It must quote prices over the phone if you ask, without requiring your name or address.
• It must accept a casket or urn you bought elsewhere, and may not charge you a handling fee for it.
• Embalming cannot be required for a direct cremation or an immediate burial, and it may not be performed for a fee without permission.
• It may not claim a casket or a vault preserves the body indefinitely, because none of them do.
• A vault is a cemetery requirement where it applies, not a state law.

Two of those are worth repeating. Prices must be quoted over the phone if you ask for them, and the home may not require your name, your address or the name of the person who died before it does so. And no provider may tell you that a law requires something unless it can identify the law.

The four documents to ask for

If a provider will not produce one of these, that alone is enough reason to use somebody else. It is also a Funeral Rule violation and can be reported.

Building a like for like basket

Decide what you want first, write it down, then price the identical list at three homes. Ringing round without a fixed list produces three quotes for three different funerals, which is exactly how the spread stays invisible.

Include the two package prices at the bottom even if you want a full service funeral, because the gap between a home’s direct cremation price and its full service price tells you a great deal about how it prices everything else. A national median direct cremation is $2,202 and a full service burial is $8,300 before the cemetery bills anything. The full breakdown of a funeral bill shows where each line sits.

What to ask each one

Who actually owns it

A substantial share of American funeral homes trading under a family name are owned by national or regional corporate groups. The name over the door frequently stays for decades after a sale, and the staff are often the same people. It is a fair question to ask and it is not an accusation.

It matters mainly because pricing and package structures are usually set centrally, and because a prepaid contract sold before an acquisition may be administered differently afterwards. If you are buying ahead of need, prepaid funeral plans covers what happens when the home changes hands or you move state.

Warning signs

None of the following are subtle, and each of them is a reason to make one more phone call rather than to sign.

• Refusing to quote prices on the phone, or demanding your name and the name of the person who died first.
• Not handing you a printed price list to take away, or offering to read it to you instead.
• Saying that state law requires embalming, a casket for cremation, or a vault. None of those is generally true, and the Rule requires the law to be identified in writing.
• Claiming a sealed or protective casket, or a vault, preserves the body. It does not, and saying so is specifically prohibited.
• Selling only packages, or refusing to price items individually.
• Resisting a casket or urn bought elsewhere, or attaching a handling fee to it.
• Requiring full payment before you have an itemised statement of what you selected.
• Framing merchandise as a measure of love, or steering by starting at the most expensive display and working down.
• Vague cash advance lines with no receipt behind them.
• Collecting the person before you have agreed anything, then presenting a transfer fee as leverage.

How families get overcharged takes each of these apart in more detail, and casket prices covers the item where the markup is largest.

What a good funeral home looks like

It gives you the price list without being asked twice. It quotes on the phone without a script. It tells you plainly which items you do not need, including the ones it sells. It offers refrigeration as a normal alternative rather than as a grudging concession. It puts the direct cremation and immediate burial prices on the same list as everything else instead of hiding them.

It also does the parts that are not on any list. It answers the phone at three in the morning, it knows the clergy and the cemetery office by name, it handles the county paperwork without drama and it treats the person in its care with visible respect. Price is the thing you can compare on paper. It is not the only thing that matters, and a family that got both usually says so for years afterwards.

Ask for a recommendation from a hospice social worker, a hospital chaplain or a local congregation. Those people watch dozens of funeral homes work and they have no commercial interest in the answer. A local Funeral Consumers Alliance affiliate may also have surveyed prices in your area already.

If a provider breaks the rules

Say it in the room first, calmly, and name the rule. A great many issues end there, because the person in front of you knows the requirement perfectly well. If it does not end there, you can report the provider to the Federal Trade Commission, and complaints are also taken by the state funeral board that licenses the home.

You are allowed to walk away at any point before you sign, and in most cases after, subject to whatever transfer costs have already been incurred. A family that leaves is not being difficult. It is doing the thing the Funeral Rule exists to make possible.