Understand the funeral industry. Prevent yourself from being ripped off.
Basically, people are f'd up when going through grief, and in the West, especially for christians or traditionalists, the traditional funeral service at a venue seems to be an iconic image.
Funeral Homes can be owned by corporations or private equity, who can be greedy people. They know the bereaved are in a lost and confused state of mind, and may not do research, "shop around" (seen as rude..), or understand the value for what they get.
Urns, Caskets, cremations, and services can be marked up several times over, with sales pressures like "this is the last thing you can do for mom" or.. "she would want this..", or the time pressure of funerals being held soon especially if you want to view the body (some say this is more painful).
It's too much to explain, but essentially, yes, investors are present in this industry, there is a massive lack of education on your consumer rights and knowledge (you can bring any third party casket or urn (costco, amazon lol)). Funeral Consumers Alliance is an american website that covers your rights in the US, and Canada is somewhat similar as well.
This industry is hard on its workers, it's not the best, and management want their margins for the rest of the company… or- even an independent or family owned home - who are mostly reasonable, caring, and personal, but can also be more profit than client motivated. Most funeral homes are reasonable and caring, but enough aren't to warrant talking about this.
The following link is my full spiel with URLs and more stuff.
Help spread this around if you can, and keep it in mind for the future.
Let's not get ripped off.
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