Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Funeral Hone Chicanery..................

Something else to consider...

I lost my 1st wife to cancer 12 years ago. Months before she died, I made most of the arrangements. She was a school teacher and one of her very active parents was a mortician. He said to come in to see him. He showed me a funeral insurance policy he had available. You had to have it in effect for 2 years to get the full benefits but they'd pay out 50% if the policy holder died before that. He put together an elaborate funeral package that cost twice what we would have paid and we took out a policy for that. When she died, we just cut it back to what the policy paid. We paid out 2 monthly premiums total.
While that might sound a bit shady, they did offer the policy of their own free will and we followed their terms to the letter.

Not a bad deal for the funeral home if the markup is 80%.......

Our oldest daughter was good friends in high school with the daughters of a family owned funeral home owner/mortician in a nearby town. The family lived in the same big building above the funeral home. Daughter went to a couple of slumber parties at their house and said those kids thought nothing of walking around among dead bodies regardless day or night. She said it was a real hoot watching their kids get all wound up excited when dad got a couple funerals to run at the same time --- Yay, ... we can go shopping big time now!

Some of y'all are painting with a broad brush, kind of like our liberal friends that claim bad guys with guns means that anyone with a gun is bad. There are unscrupulous individuals in all walks of life and it is a mature person that learns to deal with it and not get sucked in. I've known many funeral directors and never known any of them to inter someone with the shoes on the wrong feet, zipper down or even face down. Although some probably deserved it. I have known them to help a family take care of a loved one at all hours of the night, deal with loved ones that have been dead for a while, and have multiple funeral services on holidays when they would love to be with their families. Sorry you ran into a bad one, I ran into a bad mechanic not long ago.

Never buried anyone face down. That is interesting.

My Dad went in to the undertaker thirty years ago and purchased his entire package and wrote out specific instructions. Including," I have always slept on my stomach, and I will spend eternity on my stomach".

I had a friend who was a clown and when he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.

I built a really nice new funeral home for a long time established funeral home in a large city. It took awhile. Got to know mortican and adminnistrator well. I learned too many secrets and tricks to reveal here or believe.. I learned one that haunts to this day,I wish I hadn't. The head mortican told me they had an extremely hard time hiring people who won't have sex with the dead people. You can't make that up. Life is so much better if we could stay naive.

My wife and I recently purchased a pre-need package and dealt with all of the grossly over priced options. Things like a cardboard box for transport and cremation at the low, low price of only $175. For cardboard! I said I'd leave the kids enough to buy a new refrigerator and they can use the box it comes in. FH can't allow that he says.

Then they tried to sell us a "policy" that would pay to ship the body back to where we are currently living. I said, This FH is a national chain correct? So. if I croak somewhere else just use the nearest facility. And if that wont work my SIL has a pickup truck.

After an afternoon with those guys I have a new found respect for used car salesmen!

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.

I knew there was no way we could get through this thread without necrophilia being mentioned.

It is a racket.

When my father-in-law passed, a local mortician (and long-time acquaintance) called asking about the funeral arrangements.
He got huffy with "The Warden" when she didn't fall into hauling her dad 125 miles for the meager sum of $1200.
She and her Mom hauled Elmer to Albuquerque in the back of an SUV.

Joy said it was not only quiet, but he didn't even tell her where to turn!

My wife's brother has a backhoe. Good enough for me.

Some states, like Idaho, are pretty lenient on how you can handle a body. Here, you can do your own death certificate, requiring only the signature of the doctor, nurse, PA, etc. The forms are all online at the state health dept website. You can move the body yourself within the state. If you cross a state line, it's more complicated depending on the other state's laws. You can bury the person at home, have a home funeral, etc. all without a funeral home being involved. No embalming is required as long as you don't use public transportation to move the body.
Some towns restrict burials so you have to check local laws and zoning.

The death cert. certifies that the state knows the person is dead and they know how he died. Beyond that, it's whatever you want to do.

My brother operated a backhoe for a number of years and got called to dig up an individual that was being exhumed (for what reason I do not remember), long story short they were buried in a vault and when he removed the cover the casket apparently did not fit ,was too big for the vault. It had obviously been jammed into the vault with a backhoe bucket crushed like a tin can. To say the least the family was quite perturbed....

They know most folks are emotional, feel guilty about being “cheap”, and are on a tight time schedule when this happens. What a racket...

Funerals and weddings are out of reason any more. $20 to 30g isn't uncommon for weddings and funerals can get about as bad if the family is too emotional. Thing is, most people at a funeral are there to remember the deceased. They don't even notice the 'quality' of the box, the number of flowers, etc.

The funeral business is FRAUGHT with corruption and they get away with it, preying on families at their most vulnerable . Example: 125 dollars for a Guest Signing book, when one can get the exact same book for 4.99 anywhere.
The list is endless.

Burying your own is a good way to say goodbye.
Almost every part of a funeral can be done yourself without a FH being involved. You have a computer and printer? Print your own programs and cards. Buy your own guest book. Buy a casket online or at Costco. Need a Hearse? Rent a Suburban or a van. Anyone in the family can drive it so you don't need to pay a driver. Costco has the best price on flowers you'll find anywhere and there must be someone in the family adept at arranging them.
My brother died unexpectedly of a stroke 8 years ago. He was single so we stepped in and did it all. We had him cremated and that was the only thing we paid to have done. We held the funeral in his house with chairs I rented. He had a friend who was a minister so we got him for the service. It wasn't that hard and everyone seemed to think it was nice. We could have spent $5k and have nothing to show for it.

That, or Colorado still permits funeral pyre's, or so I hear.....