Amid Grief, Families Can Overpay for Funerals

Nov. 4, 2002 -- Good versus greed is a regular plot line on the HBO funeral home seriesSix Feet Under, where the undertakers are often tempted to put cash ahead of compassion.

"Shopping around for the best deal. Isn't that her right?" one character said in a recent episode, after a customer left. "Wasting our time."

That's TV, but what about in real life?

According to some grieving families, the reality is worse than fiction. A funeral, which costs an average of $5,000, plus cemetery costs, is one of the biggest expenses many families will ever face. Plus, the decisions involved are often made at the worst possible moment, in the midst of tears and mourning.

With 2 million funerals a year, the death care industry is a multibillion-dollar business, but not all consumers are aware of how the costs of a funeral add up. In Lee's Summit, Mo., Kathy Garska's and Dixie Olson's grief turned to anger when they realized they'd agreed to pay more than $7,000 for their mother's funeral.

"They took advantage of us — they took advantage of our grief, and our loss, Garska told ABCNEWS'Good Morning America. "We signed a contract in 15 minutes for $7,700. You spend more time and get more attention when you buy a used car."

Dazed Sisters Sign Off on Charges

Their mother, Verna Milner, was a spunky, independent woman who lived in her own home battling a heart ailment. The family was caught off guard when she died a month before her 85th birthday.

The next day at the Langsford Funeral Home in Lee's Summit, the sisters say they were still dazed as the charges added up. The funeral director's service fee was $1,990; the casket, $3,990; embalming, $475; wake, $390; hearse, $210; and police escort, $150. With other, miscellaneous charges added in, the funeral total was $7,732.30.

They signed a contract, but in hindsight, the sisters say the undertaker put one over on them. In response, the Langsford Funeral Home said the sisters' complaints stem from a billing dispute they are in with the funeral home. They also say they have never had any other complaints.

The government has rules designed to prevent funeral homes from takingadvantage of grieving families. Lisa Carlson, the Executive Director of Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit group that monitors funeral industry practices said that funeral directors must handevery family a document called a General Price List at the very beginning of any conversation about arrangements.

"My advice to families is that price list is one of the most important tools that they have to control the funeral experience," Carlson said.

List Allows Comparison Shopping

The General Price List breaks down the cost of a funeral, item by item, allowing people to comparison shop at different funeral homes, and choose only the goods and services they want before signing a contract.

If a family doesn't receive the list, "that tells me that the funeral home thinks you've got a blank check with his name on it," Carlson said.

Garska and Olson said they were never offered the General Price List when they were making arrangements for their mother's funeral.

"It was never offered to us," Garska said. "So we didn't even know there was a price list available."

"To think that there's really people out there that just prey on people that are grieving," Olson said, tearing up.

From Home to Home

To find out if a funeral home would really fail to provide the price list to a grieving family, Good Morning America began making funeral arrangements for an imaginary elderly aunt, with a hidden camera rolling.

Producers visited the same funeral home that Garska and Olson used — the Langsford Funeral Home in Lee's Summit, Mo. They also met with the same funeral director while using a hidden camera.

Right away, there was a problem. Missouri law does not require embalming, a procedure that can cost hundreds of dollars. But the funeral director said that the embalming was a requirement for a viewing service, whilethe hidden cameras were rolling.

"That's just the law," the director said. "We can't let people come in and view a body that's not been embalmed."

The funeral director showed Good Morning America producers caskets, jotted down prices for them, but never handed over the federally mandated General Price List. But he did encourage paying for the funeral in advance.

"On our pre-arrangements, we give a 15 percent discount," he said.

Funeral Home Violations Common

The Federal Trade Commission, which makes sweeps of funeral homes across the country, says 20 to 40 percent of funeral homes violate regulations.

Robert Vandenbergh, outgoing president of The National Funeral Directors Association agreed that there is a compliance problem.

"We're doing everything we can with our members in educating them," Vandenbergh said. "And again, maybe it's people that aren't our members, that we can't reach to."

Good Morning America's Consumer Correspondent Greg Hunter reported this story.