Mother & father in law were killed in a car wreck twenty years ago. They had pre-paid funeral policies that I found. Got to the funeral home and we were told the policies were no longer valid. They had "cashed them in" for the face value several years earlier and bought two small life insurance policies. Never could prove anything, but suspect that the funeral home people had a cohort insurance agent and when these policies reached maturity and the cost of the funeral was greater than the policy they would talk the policy holder into cashing the policy for the $3,500 face value and paying a monthly premium for an insurance policy of the same value. So, the funeral home isn't "stuck" with eating the cost above the pre-paid policy. The in-laws were mid eighties when killed, so it appears these people were preying on the older folks.
The funeral director also tried the upselling on everything. Even to the point of trying to sell us caskets with the equivalent of refrigerator gaskets that would supposedly keep the bodies from deteriorating for fifty years. Ended up handing the guy the no-longer-in-effect funeral policies and telling him we wanted exactly what was on the policies. Period.
