Funeral Industry

An Industry taking care in difficult times of family lives. Working in the industry is difficult and deserves a degree of respect. However, a lot of funeral homes are owned by large business corporations. These businesses aim to efficiently make money. Functions and factors that help generate revenue include: - A lack of information on how much funerals should cost, and what rights you have as a consumer. - Selling preneed. This may be focused towards being sold to the elderly. Preneed may contain fine text designed to obligate ones family to pay specifically for the agreed upon services with possible limited flexibility, thus secure future revenue for the home. - Casket rooms can be designed in such a way as to force families to view expensive, "good looking" or "fitting" caskets as opposed to more affordable, but less impressive ones, often in less desirable colors as to influence more desirable casket choices. - Bundling services that make consumers feel like they are saving more by buying more. - Subtle gestures such as saying (deceased's name) deserves more (perhaps a grander service or better casket or burial). - Also note the significant psychological state of the consumer, who may be dealing with unbearabke grief. See the 1978 FTC report on funeral homes, the research done by the funeral consumers alliance, and other resources and articles done on your local death industry. Of course, not every home is coporate or "greedy".