March 15, 2011---Once again, Illinois Congressman Bobby Rush has introduced a bill that directs the Federal Trade Commission to expand the Funeral Rule to cover cemeteries, crematories, and merchandise retailers. The Funeral Rule, in effect since 1984, gives consumers the right to price quotes by phone, the right to pick and choose only what they want, the right to buy caskets from outside the funeral home, and the right to accurate information about legal requirements. But cemeteries have escaped these modest regulations, leading to consumer abuses and complaints around the country.
HR 900, The Bereaved Consumers Bill of Rights Act of 2011, would finally end the patchwork of lax state cemetery regulations and compel all burial grounds to meet these minimum consumer standards. Funeral Consumers Alliance testified before a Congressional subcommittee in 2009 in support of the bill, delivering two sets of written testimony (here and here). We will continue to push for this important legislation, but we need you!
How You Can Help!
Cemetery associations will be working hard to sink this bill; don't let them. The more citizens lawmakers hear from, the better chance we have to win. We need co-sponsors for this bill in both the House and the Senate. Please write and call your Representative and Senators to urge them to co-sponsor this important bill.
Your email and phone call don't need to be wordy or complicated - it's your voice as a citizen that counts, and numbers make a difference. You can tell your lawmakers why this bill is so important. It would:
- Compel cemeteries to give consumers accurate prices before the sale
- Give cemetery consumers the right to buy only the goods and services they want; families will be able to buy markers, monuments, or grave vaults from less expensive retail vendors rather than being captive to the cemetery’s prices
- Bar cemeteries from forcing families to buy entire packages of goods or services, if the family wants to choose item by item
- Require cemeteries to disclose rules and regulations, and consumer rights, before the purchase
- Require cemeteries to keep accurate records of all burials sold, and where remains are interred, and to make those records available to regulators
- Bar cemeteries from lying about the law - claiming state laws “require” vaults to surround an in-ground casket, for example
Please let us know when you've contacted your lawmakers by leaving a comment on this article, or emailing This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Thank you!
Nope, there's no exemption for religious cemeteries in this version. Expect the Catholic cemetery lobby to push hard for one again, though.
California law requires, according to a KUSI-TV consumer watchdog, that cemeteries refund the money if the preneed property isn't available within 3 years of its preneed sale.
The GM initially refused to refund several customers' money, until the TV reporter embarrassed the crooks on local TV.
The GM claimed he didn't know the state law, even though his entire family, and his father's family, I learned, have been in the cemetery business since the 1950s.
The funeral-cemetery biz has no one but themselves to blame for the rash of restrictive consumer protections that strangle their profits today, after entire generations of our predecessors were ripped off by shysters preying on people when they were most vulnerable.
The funeral home that I work for has been running advertisements in our local papers to both warn and educate the public when dealing with cemeteries for either preneed or at-need services. Many, many cemeteries, particularly those that are owned by corporations such as SCI & Stewart Enterprises operate much the same as new and used car lots because of the high pressure and deceptive sales techniques used. Cemeteries need to come under the same type of regulation that your neighborhood funeral home must submit to.
The following is a sample of the information listed in our adds:
Before you begin any pre-planning process, arm yourself with these six facts. By keeping these points in mind, you can avoid regrets or incurring additional expenses later:
1. There is no reason you must update your files at the cemetery prior to a death. Very often this is part of a series of sales techniques used by cemetery salespeople to sell vaults, markers and caskets.
2. Funeral homes will have a much larger selection of caskets, vaults and urns than what is available from a cemetery. This means greater choice in style and price. You may also find that similar or even lower quality caskets are as much as $1,000 more at the cemetery compared to the funeral home.
3. After selecting a casket or vault, you should receive the manufacturer’s name, model number and model name. Funeral homes will ALWAYS provide this to you. This confirms to your family the merchandise you selected is provided later– not a substitute chosen by someone else.
4. Make sure you can transfer your complete plan to any funeral home, in any state, at any time in the future. Get this promise in writing before you complete any sales transaction, particularly at a cemetery.
5. Is the price quoted only valid at that moment or for a limited number of days? If so, this can be another high-pressure sales technique from a cemetery salesperson that you should avoid. You should NEVER be under time pressure when pre-planning these important decisions.
6. Many cemeteries hire commissioned salespeople who might be required to meet sales goals or even quotas. This might shift their focus from “helping you” to “selling you.”
Lets not forget those ridiculous "inspection fee's" on vaults that the family chooses to purchase outside of Catholic Cemeteries. This increases the price of the vault by $360+ when a family purchases a vault outside of the cemetery. I sell vaults at cost just to help families out, their is still a little savings of about $250 for the family, I also do that because I don't care for Catholic cemeteries very unethical practice of charging those inspection fees. Remember the "Casket Inspection Fees" of not to long ago? Same thing.........