Wow, the funeral business is a huge scam

The BBQ Pit
1

My mother passed away recently and did not leave detailed instructions for what she wanted. So we are left with a sibling’s assertion that she wanted a “traditional” funeral with a wake and a mass at church. The lack of planning is on my mom, and it is what it is. So I’ll just say, please do your family a favor and spell everything out (also have a way for them to get into your phone, email, etc, but that’s another thread).

So we troop over to a funeral home, selected for proximity, which was mistake number one. They walk us through the usual stuff, including selecting a casket. Now I’m not unaware of the costs associated with a funeral. But going through the process really brings it home how much this industry relies on people not comparing any prices, and just checking boxes out of a sense of duty to tradition.

It really got comical. I was unable to pretend to care what sort of casket we used (if I had my way we’d bury nobody, ever - it’s a huge waste of space and resources). My dad and sibling were absorbed with this, however. Dad actually asked, “What kind of metal is this?” which made me bust out laughing. As if he could distinguish between different metals, or it matters in any way. The mid range casket ended up costing around $7000.

Then they upsold him on a vault (for all the good that does, $3000), custom lettering ($250), some damn blanket that gets draped over the casket ($150) and a limo ride we definitely don’t need ($800).

My Dad did reject some religious iconography on cards and other paraphernalia, but it turned out they had no secular options. “You can have either a cross or praying hands on the announcements.”

“What do you have that isn’t religious?”

“Well… I guess the praying hands aren’t overtly religious…”

Good thing I was wearing a COVID mask, or they might have seen the expression on my face.

It’s Dad’s money, so whatever. But I can’t pretend to find any of this a source of comfort, or anything other than an incredible waste.

And then the church service… We go to a meeting with a woman whose job (not sure if she’s paid or volunteer) was to plan funeral masses for the church. Now I realize this has to follow some kind of format, and having no plan would lead to a terrible service. But she was literally checking boxes in a binder and filling in blanks like MadLibs.

Boilerplate bible readings were on offer. At one point she asked us for a couple sentences about my mother because “the priest will use it to talk about her”. How nice, this priest we don’t know will actually mention the deceased person during her mass. I laughed at that, causing this woman to ask me what was funny. No desire to be rude, but I could only assure her she wouldn’t get it. Weird vibe from her. Creepy.

I also understand churches are a business, and that the various people involved (organist, ushers and whatnot) need to be paid. Turns out they only take cash and we are expected to turn up with multiple envelopes. Just struck me as similar to a mob transaction.

So here is how the whole process strikes me:

Our mother dies.

We are then on the hook for about $25k all in, largely because all of this is simply “traditional” and “expected”.

We, a largely secular family, now have to sit through this crap at church. It’s true that some people may find it comforting, but I don’t. It feels like an imposition. I don’t need this to remember my mother.

When my best friend died some years ago, his wife had him cremated and then had a dozen of us to her house. We had a drink, talked about him and had a nice time. Even with having lunch brought in, I figure she saved around $24,500. But more importantly, it felt real and we actually had a good time.

Although I knew this before, seeing the process from the inside makes it clear the funeral industry relies on people not looking into options, and reverting to what is traditional. And for big bucks. I suspect the individuals involved are as nice as anyone, but it would be hard to convince me this industry isn’t incredibly cynical and even predatory.

I’ve informed my family they can spend as little as they like cremating me. But I also recognize it’s not about me. My wishes don’t matter that much after I’m dead. I just don’t want them to feel they have to spend huge money and go through empty ritual out of a false sense of obligation.

Don’t know how I’m going to get through this church service without spraining something from rolling my eyes too aggressively. After all this nonsense maybe I’ll have some time to actually think meaningfully about my mother.

2

I’m sorry for your loss and for all of the bullshit that you’re having to endure. Great post.

3

“Worth” is a relative thing and, in the case of laying one’s loved one to rest, a VERY personal thing. Your father lost his wife, and how he handled this seems to have meant everything to him. I hope he didn’t pick up on any of your mocking, derisive attitude.

It’s Dad’s money, so whatever.

Indeed.

4

First - I am sorry for your loss of your mother. May her memory be a blessing and comfort.

My grandparents were in the funeral business. Let’s just say their descendants tend to have very simple memorials, such as you describe for your friend. Actually, I think some of my relatives wanted too little for my taste, but the decisions weren’t mine.

Yes, they do. And some funeral homes/directors are more predatory than others. It is possible to find less than predatory but that requires comparison shopping - something a family in throes of grief is unlikely to do. Also, nothing like guilting people a little to get them to part with their money.

Speaking as the wife of a musician who used to perform for funerals: the spouse insisted on direct cash payments for funerals after experiences with bounced checks (go figger - grieving families don’t always track expenses well and bounce-bounce-bounce…) and getting stiffed by funeral homes/parishes/other parties. So while the cash in envelopes might make you feel uncomfortable on a certain level perhaps knowing that doing it that way guarantees that the people doing the actual work (because it is work) in fact actually get paid what they are due.

The predators don’t just prey on the grieving families - they can also prey on those providing the various components of the service.

5

So sorry for your loss. And yes, the funeral industrial complex is a money suck. I also find the overt unavoidable religiousity personally troubling.

I have been fortunate (can’t think of a better word to use) with family funerals. A couple of decades ago, the family seemed to settle on cremation as the preferred choice. I attribute this to us being simple folks, with not a lot in the way of resources, and not wishing to draw attention, or burden others. And regarding my mother, since she had to go through taking care of her parents passing, she pre-arranged, and pre-payed, her own arrangements. So, it was a very smooth process. She was also an active member of her church, so their involvement was personal. It was somewhat amusing when the pastor visited us children to gather more personal information to include - my one sister long ago converted to Judaism, my other sister identified as a LGBQT+ Wiccan, and I am a small “a” atheist. But the pastor was a good man and did not cause any grief.

When my sister passed, it was handled almost completely outside of the industry. As I mentioned, she identified as Wiccan, but that was really just her being iconoclastic and trying to get a rise out of people. She was also severely disabled, and made her wishes known, which we carried out. She was cremated, and the ashes were given to us. They were stored in a Nike shoe box (her wishes) in our nieces closet, until which time we could sprinkle them off the boat dock at the lake where she used to teach swimming. My other sister and I wrote the eulogy, and I read her favorite Shel Silverstein poem, slightly edited for personalization.

So, the message to everyone reading is, make you wishes known!

6

I just want to say, this sounds beautiful. Simple, personal, and meaningful.

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When my father died, the funeral home was ok and didn’t really try anything too bad.

The only thing silly was getting the cemetery plot. Local regulations mean that there has to be a concrete vault that the casket is placed in and they showed us a drawing of the vault, with a handwritten note that water would seep in the cracks here, here, and here. I don’t remember how much the additional fee it would be to have it sealed but I didn’t like the way it was presented.

So, I turned to my mom and said that Dad has always liked swimming so let’s definitely not have the cracks sealed.

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You let them upsell you on all sorts of crap you didn’t need. Cravat emperor.

Here’s how the last burial/funeral I dealt with went. It was my grandmother, in 2011. She had several insurance policies, but they were old. As in, there were policies where the beneficiary was my grandfather, and when he died in 1979 it was switched to my mother, and when she died in 2002 it was switched to me. I went to the local funeral home, family run for generations, burying my family for generations. They went to work on figuring out the old insurace policies, and weren’t sure if more than one $3,500 policy was still actually recoverable. But the planning happened anyway. With a steel casket (not top of the line, but not junk either), vault, graveside service only at the site she already owned, and family pastor preaching, the whole affair was around $7,000. But the funeral director told me if only $3,500 of insurance came through, then the whole thing costs $3,500. (The amount that came through was around $6,600, so that was what it ended up costing.)

My point is, #notallfuneraldirectors.

9

When my dad died I knew he didn’t want a funeral. He wasn’t religious and avoided attending funerals whenever possible. However, my sister was extremely distraught and so I did not object when she set up some kind of funeral, although I did not attend. My brother was a little upset with the idea of a funeral. I do not know if he attended.

Years later when my mom died the exact same thing happened.

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My Dad did, yes. But there is such a thing as an industry being legal, yet predatory. And it’s quite clear to me that the funeral business goes to some lengths to make sure the buyer feels they have little incentive to beware.

And you’ll note I allowed that the individuals involved are likely well intended. But I find it telling that Broomstick’s grandparents were in the business, yet seemed to go a different way than what they sold to customers.

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Well I’d rather he’d been nicer to her in life. Feels like too little / too late, making up for many years of unkindness with a souped up coffin and vault*.

  • I still don’t understand what this vault thing is about. It keeps water out so the body doesn’t decompose as quickly or as much? Why are we burying people if we don’t expect the bodies to decompose? It’s not like we’re going to dig her up and check. Hard for me to see it as anything other than added cost, very thinly veiled.
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My father pre-paid for his cremation. I think it was the Neptune Society or something like that. He got a card that he gave to me. During his last few years he would always remind me that it was all taken care of. When he died, we called the number, and they took care of the rest. We literally didn’t have to do anything.

With no funeral to plan, about 15 of us gathered at my father’s favorite restaurant. They closed it for an afternoon for us to gather. We drank a bit, ate a bit, and reminisced.

I guess it’s time for me to make arrangements with the Neptune Society folks.

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From what I understand, the vault is to prevent the dirt above the casket from sinking down over time. There’s a lot of empty space in the volume of the casket. Obviously it’s not essential, but some cemeteries may require them to be used.

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I mean, psychic mediums also provide a great deal of comfort to people and undoubtedly many people who go to them feel that it is money very well spent but they also unarguably also use psychological manipulation to exploit people’s emotional vulnerability in order to extract large sums of money and absolutely deserve to be criticized as scams.

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This comparison is invalid unless you are saying that the coffin, grave, tombstone, etc. aren’t actually real. Therefore, it is not a “scam”. It is a service that, according to your feelings, has no value. It is, however, a service.

A painting by Rembrandt entitled, “Portrait of a man, half-length, with his arms akimbo”, sold for $33.2 MILLION. It is just that, a painting of a man from the waist up. That’s THIRTY-THREE PLUS MILLION DOLLARS for something that I wouldn’t buy for a hundred bucks. I could go on and on about stuff that we think is insanely valuable, but I think I’ve made my point. I’m sorry, but I just can’t agitated about a man paying $25 thousand to bury his wife.

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Totally.

I mean … it wouldn’t be possible to make a good faith case that grieving people, having just suffered a profound loss, are particularly vulnerable.

Or …

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It’s nitpicking a bit, but I agree that as long as you get the service and/or product that was promised, it’s not a scam. It might be predatory. it might be a shitty deal, but it’s not a scam.

I have called the AAA a scam in the past but that’s not accurate either. It’s a massive waste of money, but as far as I know if you need to use their membership services they will provide them.

As another example predatory lenders are also not scamming people, but they’re still shitheads that should rot in Hell for eternity nonetheless.

18

And as the OP said, this is why it’s best to go ahead and make your own arrangements ahead of time. My grandparents did, which relieved a ton of stress on my parents, and my parents have done so, so when it’s their time, my siblings and I won’t have to deal with that on top of our grief.

It’s much easier to decide how you want to go, how you want to be remembered, than it is for someone else to do so. If they try to upsell you on useless items, you know that you aren’t going to really care, and your loved ones won’t either, so it’s harder to get the claws in.

And if you want and can pre-pay for an extravagant affair, then you can do so. If you want to be ashes in a shoebox for close family and friends to say some words over, you can do that, too.

You never know when you are going to go, so waiting just means that you may wait until it’s too late. My parents apparently got a package deal when they pre-paid for theirs, so they set up myself and my siblings as well. It was a bit odd coming in and just checking some boxes about what color and type of casket I wanted (my parents didn’t want us cremated), what music and bible verses we wanted, and other little bits like that. It does give me a bit of comfort that if I keel over tomorrow, at least no one will have to deal with that.

19

I love having my AAA membership. If either of us have a flat tire, dead battery, keys locked in car, tow needed, etc I just call and they take care of it. I’ve gotten my $$$ worth over the years.

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My wife insists on a AAA membership for us both and I have to admit, it’s paid for itself quite a few times over the years.