3/6/2010— Another example of the financial dangers of prepaid funerals. This Iowa couple was shocked to discover they'd have to pay almost $28,000 in insurance premiums for funerals that would cost only $14,000.  Read their complaint below.

UPDATE — Within minutes of sending our open letter (see below), Polk County attorney Micheal O'Meara responded:

Mr. Slocum,

The Office of the Polk County Attorney stands by the legal counsel it provided to the Office of the Polk County Recorder and the Office of the Polk County Medical Examiner, as independent legal officials under the laws of the State, in the situation you reference.  We will engage in no further communication with you in this regard.

Why, thank you for your kind attention and thorough attention, Mr. O'Meara.

---

2/26/2010 — The Polk County attorney's office denied a local man the right to a burial permit he needed to bury his own father without using a commercial funeral home. This appears to us to be a bureaucratic snafu, based on misinterpretation of Iowa laws and regulations. Whatever the reason, a grieving son who'd prepared for his elderly father's death and wanted to keep in it the family was forced to relinquish his father to a commercial funeral home (though the funeral home kindly helped Mr. Sindric for free). According to the Indianola Record-Herald:

An Indianola man says state officials committed a grave injustice when they denied him a permit to transport his dead father’s body to the cemetery.Richard Harold Sindric, 55, could not convince anyone to issue him a burial transit permit that would have allowed him to move the body of his father, Richard Nicholas Sindric, who died at Taylor House hospice in Des Moines on Feb. 3.

. . . .

The younger Sindric had planned his father’s burial arrangements for months. He built a coffin and hoped to transport his father’s body to the Iowa Veterans Cemetery in Van Meter. His goal was to avoid any and all involvement by funeral directors, whom he believes have an unfair monopoly over the burial industry.
“It seems like you should be able to perform simple services like moving a body without paying someone,” Sindric said. “And I’d like to get through to (state officials) that this was the intent of the law."

Funeral Consumers Alliance has published an open letter to Iowa officials, with a copy sent directly to Polk County Attorney Michael O'Meara. Click READ  MORE for the text of the letter.

1/10/2010—Cemetery consumers have complained to us for years about the strong-arm tactics they face at the graveyard. Today, we got a letter from Tom Gast, of Gast Monuments in Chicago, confirming once again the need to bring cemeteries under the Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule. Gast's letter is addressed to Congressman Bobby Rush, and it urges Rush push for passage of his bill, HR3655, The Bereaved Consumer's Protection Act of 2009.

A few highlights from Gast's letter:

• "The rules and regulations at many cemeteries have become so complex that a consumer could not possibly be expected to know what questions to ask in order to make an informed decision and cemetery personnel are not always forthcoming with all relevant information."

11/25/2009 — The Massachusetts Division of Public Licensure has found 25 percent of funeral homes they inspected were illegally hiding prices from consumers. Click here for the report, and the names of the accused funeral homes (and hats off to the state for such diligent work, and for making the information public).