Funeral Consumers Alliance

Fair enough, Josh. Steal was a poor choice of words. My point was that it's wrong to assume that buying a casket at somewhere other than the funeral home will automatically lower your total funeral bill. Your are absolutely correct, you need to look at the entire bill, including professional service fees, before you can make a good comparison. Incidentally, the FTC required General Price List alone does not give you enough imfo to figure this out. I do believe that the public doesn't ask enough questions of low cost providers, to know what they are getting. Assuming that a lower cost provider is well run by happy employees who follow an ethical set of standards is not always a safe assumption. For example, I recently spoke with a family who was upset that it took an area Cremation service a week to get their family member cremated. It was an uncomplicated death at Dartmouth that should have easily been done quickly after the 48 hour waiting period. If I were the public, the lower the price, the more questions I'd be asking. Clearly the folks (which admittedly includes funeral directors) who were using the crematory in Georgia were't asking enough questions.