Funeral Homes Should Post Prices Online, But They DON'T !!!!

Philadelphia Inquirer, Wednesday, March 30, 2016, Page A10, OPINION:

Philly funeral homes should post prices online

By Rachel Zeldin

Planning a funeral is extremely difficult, and not just because someone you love has died. The process is chaotic and time-consuming, and having many funeral homes stuck in the pre-Internet age doesn’t help.

If you are like most people, you have never purchased a funeral before, so you have no clue what’s involved. You rarely know your legal rights, the full range of options, or what you do and do not need to buy. Chances are you’ll use a funeral home your family has used before — even if you didn’t like it — or the one nearest your home.

Most people will walk into a funeral home’s for-profit showroom and say, “What do I need?” And because they’re nice and you’re grieving, you believe them when they say, “We’ll take care of everything.” And, chances are, you will naively purchase whatever they suggest.

I know this because my family was one of those consumers back in 2011, passing around the hat to pay for Uncle Rafe’s $10,000 funeral and then for my grandfather later that year.

This process can work out fine, but it doesn’t always. Case in point are the families that unknowingly use funeral homes that don’t keep up with their licensure requirements — or, worse, are legitimately out of business but continue to operate in their communities anyway.

At this point, you may be wondering, what does a valid license for a funeral home or funeral director even mean? Does the license actually protect the consumer? Not really. Pennsylvania doesn’t provide enough resources to actually inspect and oversee the more than 1,600 funeral establishments in the commonwealth.

But even when dealing with reputable, licensed establishments, here’s the real problem: Consumers are stuck researching and organizing an event with an industry that is stuck in 1984.

In 1982, the federal government recognized how vulnerable funeral consumers were and passed a set of laws — called the Funeral Rule — to protect them. Among the protections: Funeral homes must have a general price list that itemizes the costs of all products and services, and they must give a copy to consumers before discussing funeral arrangements. Progress, right? This even standardized pricing to a certain extent, but it also allowed funeral homes to charge a catch-all, non-declinable basic service fee.

Another major flaw is that the rules, passed in ’84 and revised 10 years later, reflect the shopping methods of their time: in person and by phone.

To this day in Philadelphia, you are lucky to find a funeral home with a decent website and even less likely to find one that posts its prices online.

In 2015, the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Greater Philadelphia collected price lists from 86 of the 137 Philadelphia funeral homes through a yearlong effort of calls, emails, and follow-ups. Shockingly, what we learned is that the price of direct cremation ranges from $700 to $4,465 — for the same thing. Embalming ranges from $293 to $3,000. (Of course, the skills of embalmers vary, but those skills are not tied to the prices they’re charging.) The average non-declinable basic service fee is $1,876; that is just the base cost of doing business with a funeral home when you haven’t even purchased any actual services or products yet. (The full survey results are at FCAPhilly.org.)

In a nationally publicized 2015 report by the Funeral Consumers Alliance and Consumer Federation of America assessing ease of access to funeral pricing information, Philadelphia funeral homes proved to be the worst in the nation. Only nine of the 15 surveyed had websites, none had prices online, and three refused to provide prices at all — a violation of federal law. Worse, to obtain a copy of these price lists, it took a minimum of three calls before the information was sent over — by fax.

Hey, funeral homes! How about entering the 21st century and putting your prices online?

Despite multiple requests from consumer groups, the Federal Trade Commission has not sought to update the federal rules. Beyond those rules, most funeral regulations are enacted on a state-by-state basis. So unless lawmakers in Harrisburg take action to require that price lists be posted online, consumers are stuck calling or visiting each funeral home they want information from.

California recognized the difficulties for consumers and now has a law requiring funeral homes with websites to list the goods and services they offer and include a statement that their prices list is available upon request or via a link on the home page.

The effect? In the same 2015 report, 85 percent of the funeral homes surveyed in Orange County, Calif., posted their full price lists, making it exponentially easier for local consumers to do their homework before stepping foot in a funeral home.

Though it’s still not as easy as buying shoes online, it is better than what the rest of the country experiences when shopping for a funeral. California has provided an easy, consumer-friendly measure that allows consumers to educate themselves and protects them from overspending and working with illegitimate businesses.

If the federal and state governments won’t follow California’s lead, it’s up to consumers to improve price transparency and comparison efforts. Call your local funeral home and ask, “Are your prices online? If not, why not?” Let me know what they say.

Rachel Zeldin is the founder and
CEO of I’m Sorry to Hear — Funeral
Planning Online
(www.imsorrytohear.com), a Project Liberty Digital Media incubator company housed at Philadelphia
Media Network, and a board member of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of
Greater Philadelphia. rzeldin@imsorrytohear.com

Woodworker Turns Trees Into Caskets/Urns=Life's Final Passage Beauty

From Milestones, a publication of the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging.  This article is great.  Mr. Campbell talks well about the "Funeral Rule" and the fact that embalming is NOT required by law; most consumers do not know about these 2 things.  Plus his handmade wood caskets and urns look beautiful!!!

Elder Care

Honoring life's passages

By Linda L. Riley

David Campbell’s woodworking took a surprising turn when his father-in-law became seriously ill. At the time, Campbell was 56 and had been teaching woodworking, carpentry and construction at Eastern Center for Arts and Technology in Willow Grover for almost 13 years.

 “I knew he was going to die, and I just started making his casket. I didn’t tell anyone,” Campbell says. It became a way to pay homage to the man who originally introduced him to woodworking, and with whom he was very close. “While I was working on it, I was thinking of him – all the things we did – it was a cathartic experience.”

 “When I finished it, I came upstairs and said, ‘I’m done.’ He had told his wife, Renie, about it not long before. “We went to see him, and two hours later, he died. I decided at that time to change careers and commit myself to doing woodworking full time.” That was in 2008. 

 “This experience inspired me to consider all of the passages we go through in life – births, marriages, families growing and changing, aging, death. I realized my life’s purpose was to create special pieces to mark these passages,” he says.

 Since then, Campbell has dedicated himself full-time to his woodworking, under the name ‘The WoodsMyth.’
 Each of his hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind pieces is custom-made. Among them have been cradles, Chuppah wedding canopies, hope chests, and other pieces of furniture. He allows each piece of wood to suggest its use. Cross-sections from the trunk of a walnut tree became a 14-foot long bench that provides seating in a gallery at the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill. The massive, gnarled root of a cherry tree became a magnificent menorah, which is among his works currently on display at “The Art of It” gallery in Jenkintown.

 Among the most meaningful commissions, he says, are the caskets and urns he crafts for life’s final passage.

Journey of discovery
 That first casket, created for his father-in-law, set him on a quest to learn more about funeral practices, customs and regulations. He discovered that, although embalming is a common practice today, it is not required by law. Designed to preserve the body, he says it became prevalent in the United States during the Civil War when great numbers of soldiers died on the battlefields, far from home, he said. Their bodies were embalmed to make it possible to transport them home for burial. Campbell is part of a “green” funeral movement which shuns the practice, and others designed to prevent or delay the natural process.

 “Embalming is not necessary at all in today's world, and it is a process that uses very toxic chemicals like formaldehyde, which poison the earth and seep into groundwater,” Campbell says. “My caskets, made from recycled or reclaimed wood and made without toxic chemicals or metals, honor the earth and the lives of those who are returned to the earth.”

 He points out that under the Federal Trade Commision’s Funeral Rule, a funeral home may not refuse to accept any container in which you wish to bury your loved one. (see related story) “People don’t know this,” he says.

  His caskets range from a simple pine box to a sleek cylinder, to a hollowed-out tree trunk. Images, shapes and symbols that are meaningful to the deceased are often carved into them. Urns may take a variety of shapes, depending on the piece of wood. Because he works with wood from fallen trees, or from those that have been taken down due to disease or for other purposes, each one is unique. His process involves a three-way conversation of sorts – between himself, the family, and the wood.

 “In the past several years,” he says, “I have had the privilege to work with families who have found comfort and a sense of peace as they joined with me in the creation of a one-of-a-kind casket or urn.  I have found that for families facing a loved one’s death, designing a vessel for that final passage can be a powerful and healing part of the process.”

  Several times, Campbell has participated in the Tahara, the cleansing, washing and dressing of the body, which are part of a proper Jewish burial. “There’s a series of prayers that they read,” he says. “It’s very powerful.”

 “I believe that acknowledging that our bodies will return to the earth after death, that we will become one with nature, is part of the spiritual journey to an acceptance of our own mortality,” Campbell says.

For more information:

The WoodsMyth - David Campbell
7743 Albright Ave. Elkins Park, PA 19027
Phone - 215-565-5018
Email - info@thewoodsmyth.com

www.woodsmyth.com 

How Does The Funeral Rule Protect Funeral Consumers Per The Federal Trade Commission?

THE FUNERAL RULE

The Funeral Rule is implemented and enforced by the Federal Trade Commission to protect funeral consumers. The following rules must be followed by funeral homes:

• If you visit a funeral home in person, the funeral provider is required by law to give you a general price list itemizing the cost of the items and services the home offers.
• If the general price list does not include specific prices of caskets or outer burial containers, the law requires the funeral director to show you the price lists for those items before showing you the items.
• The Funeral Rule requires funeral directors to provide price information over the phone to any caller who asks for it.
• Many funeral providers offer various "packages" of commonly selected goods and services that make up a funeral. But when you arrange for a funeral, you have the right to buy individual goods and services. That is, you do not have to accept a package that may include items you do not want.
• The funeral provider may not refuse, or charge a fee, to handle a casket you bought elsewhere.
•   A funeral provider that offers cremations must make alternative containers available.