I was looking over the latest figures for average funeral costs, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. According to their calculations, the average price of a funeral is $7,755. Of course, they point out that the figure doesn’t include the cost of a cemetery plot, flowers, monument marker and obituary. That figure, however, remains in sharp contrast to the prices I generally see. I often see a television commercial for an insurance company, which points to a similar $7,000 price point.
I ran across another article pointing the finger at corporate funeral homes for the higher-priced funerals. And perhaps this is true, as my experience with higher costs involved corporate firms. If I recall correctly, the last handful of funerals I arranged were priced from $12,000 - $17,000, sold in a corporate setting and were purchased as packages.
Anyway, back to the article, In Vermont, the average price tag for a traditional funeral is $4,330, according to a recent survey by the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Vermont. Cremation costs about $2,200. The alliance released its 2011 General Price Survey of the state’s 81 funeral homes last week, which includes a breakdown of prices for 29 individual services from embalming to burial that are provided by mortuaries in Vermont.
Lisa Carlson, a funeral consumer advocate and author, said the prices are “particularly admirable because these guys are paying the exorbitant fees for gas and fuel that everyone else is.”
Funeral prices in Vermont are low compared with the national average, but costs have gone up dramatically at a handful of funeral homes in southern Vermont that are owned by a multinational corporation, according to the alliance.
Service Corporation International, a publicly traded company based in Houston, Texas, with assets of $9 billion, owns four funeral homes in southern Vermont. The average total cost of a funeral at these homes, is $6,125, or $1,695 more than the statewide average, as reported in the alliance survey.
Adams & Kenney Funeral Homes in Ludlow and Ker Westerlund Funeral Homes in Brattleboro are two of the local entities that are part of the Dignity Memorial network of 1,600 funeral homes nationwide. Dignity Memorial is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International, which bills itself as “North America’s largest provider of deathcare products and services.” The company generated $1.5 billion in revenues in 2010.
“Those plans often come in the form of package deals, in which consumers choose a fixed array of services that include all the necessary components of a funeral, plus many unnecessary services as well," according to Carleson.
Carlson, an author and former executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, said grieving family members often spend more than they have to on funerals because they don’t shop around. Fifty-three percent of funeral consumers choose a funeral home because it has been used by their family in the past, and 33 percent go to the nearest available funeral home.
“A lot of people assume they have to call the only funeral home in town,” said Carlson, co-author of Final Rights, a book on the legal and business aspects of funerals and how they affect consumers.
For more information about funeral service costs, go to the Federal Trade Commission website at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/products/pro26.shtm
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