Cremation is a money saver. There is no doubt about that. But the trouble is, when families who have lost a loved one order cremation, they end up unintentionally being a bit of a burden to the funeral director who is taking their order. The fact is, many a funeral director’s blog (and even a few tell-all confessional books written by funeral directors) can testify that cremation is an enemy to the funeral home business, that owners and managers of funeral homes often do all they can behind the scenes to push the funeral directors on their staff to convince families to forgo cremation and to order the company’s expensive funeral and burial services instead. This is because cremation is a money saver. And funeral homes, simply put, are in the business of helping grieving families spend money, not save it. So the consequence of this is that cremation, if a family is not careful, can be a money waster. Because many families who have decided upon cremation (or whose families members have asked for cremation in their last will and testament or other final documents) make the choice specifically because cremation can be a money saver, we offer the following tips, information and advice for making sure these families can get the most out of their dollars spent in a funeral director’s office.
Funeral Directors Fighting Cremation
The first thing that families who are interested in cremation should know is that many funeral homes operate under tough, behind-the-scenes (and aways unspoken – in front of clients that is) policies that discourage their funeral directors from accepting new clients who have a desire for cremation. Funeral homes offer cremation, of course – because cremation is gaining popularity with each passing year – but they do so begrudgingly because, simply put, funeral home profit margins can be very slim when it comes to cremation, in some cases a hundred times lower than they would be for more traditional funeral and burial services.
So, while a funeral director will likely remain cordial and friendly when a family mentions that it is interested in cremation, there is a significantly high probability that the director’s reaction is not genuine, that, inside the man or woman’s head are floating any sort of devilish thoughts are floating and churning. The funeral director is likely to be envisioning meetings with his or her managers in which the boss asks him to verify that he has, indeed, done all he can do to convince the family to order a funeral service instead. He may even be secretly worried about quotas that have been established by the funeral home’s managers – bring in more than two cremation orders in a month, the quotas may say informally, and you’ll be in trouble, maybe even looking for a new job!
It is interesting that there is a tradition in the funeral home business – in some cases funeral home industry lobbyists have made it a legally required tradition – that cremation is a bit of a controversial practice that must be signed off on by family members of the deceased before it can be performed. Just as doctors are often reluctant to perform surgeries without having patients sign a document indicating they are aware that surgery is risky and that even death may be the result of the most routine procedure, funeral directors are often required by either their bosses or by local or state law (which, as we say was almost always heavily influenced by funeral home industry lobbyists) to ask relatives of a deceased loved one to formally acknowledge that cremation is permanent and, therefore, potentially an emotionally difficult experience for many people. Critics of these documents will often warn funeral home consumers that they are mostly intended as scare tactics which serve as a last ditch effort for funeral homes to convince families to forgo the less profitable route of cremation and order a funeral and burial service instead.
Families, unfortunately, must usually hire a funeral home in order to get cremation services because most crematories are either part of a funeral home itself or they, by business practice, accept orders only from funeral homes so as to avoid the expense of having to maintain a sales force of their own. So, they should be ready to experience, perhaps passive aggressive, sales tactics when they approach a funeral director requesting cremation. It will be almost impossible to know whether the smiles that a funeral director will likely give to a family who is interested in cremation are sincere, but one way a family can be fairly certain they are dealing with a funeral director of integrity is to notice whether, from the start, a funeral director mentions the company’s cremation services as thoroughly as funeral services. To be sure, a federal law known as The Funeral Rule legally requires that funeral homes give customers, fairly quickly in their first meeting with a family, a list of all goods and services they offer, along with the prices they charge. If a funeral home offers cremation (as most in today’s modern world do), that service must be listed on the general price list. But funeral directors are not required to highlight the cremation services verbally. Nor is there any requirement that the cremation service be listed prominently on the list. So families might do well to take note of subtle clues to the funeral director’s sincerity regarding cremation: does he or she give cremation equal time with funeral and burial in his or her opening few minutes of the family? Does the price list give equal prominence to funeral and burial services? If the answer to those questions is no, it is likely the family members should prepare themselves for a passive-aggressive fight by the funeral director to convince the family to avoid cremation and choose a funeral and burial service instead.
How Cremation Can Cost As Much As Burial
To add to the distress that families of deceased loved ones can experience when working with a funeral director on the issue of cremation is the fact that, with the popularity of cremation expected to exceed more than half of all deaths in just a few years, funeral homes have developed a lot of tricks in recent years to bring cremation service profits in line with those of funeral and burial services. So, it is exceedingly likely that a family not carefully prepared and armed against such tactics will find itself spending thousands of dollars more than originally intended on a cremation service ordered from a funeral home. Among other things funeral directors have become adept at doing is to offer high-end cremation urns that, percentage wise, can be as profitable for the the funeral home as a traditional casket. And there are many other add ons, too. Cremation jewelry, keepsake urns are always an potentially expensive addition to the final cremation bill from the funeral home, as are rental caskets and embalming services that are designed to serve those who desire a traditional funeral, complete with a traditional viewing ceremony, just before a cremation. And, still further, many families choose to have a small pre-cremation ceremony at the crematory itself, and, in many cases, family members are allowed to view the cremation procedure through glass windows as workers move the body along a conveyer belt into the crematory oven. All of these services are added to the final bill of course.
Many families find themselves shocked to realize that their total cost for a cremation service – something that had originally assumed would be much less expensive than a traditional funeral and burial service – is just as expensive – or in some cases even more expensive than they had planned. Rest assured, many a blogger has documented speeches and seminars conducted by funeral home industry consultants at industry conventions and meetings in which funeral directors are trained to achieve exactly those results for their company. It’s not usually by accident that a cremation service ordered from a funeral home can end up costing far more than a family had originally intended. It’s almost always a result of great salesmanship artfully employed by a talented, if slightly unscrupulous, funeral director.
Getting Only What You Need for Cremation
So families wanting to get an inexpensive cremation service for their loved one who has passed away would do well to be prepared with a few tricks of their own when they go in to their first meeting with a funeral director. One of the best tricks that funeral consumer advocates recommend is simply being prepared with prices, collected from outside resources, for the various add-on products that families may need. While most funeral homes that offer cremation also offer a wide variety of cremation urns, cremation jewelry, keepsake urns and plenty of other similar products, it is also true that these products are typically offered via catalogs – as opposed to being available directly in the funeral home as one might expect in a retail outlet. Many families also look into Cremation Memorials to create a meaningful tribute. For guidance on selecting the correct size, see Cremation Urn Size Guide: Finding the Right Capacity. And, if the products are offered via catalogs, that means they are usually offered – with an even greater variety in many cases – also on websites that have much lower overhead costs than a funeral home and, therefore, can offer much lower prices for identical – or even higher quality– products.
The bottom line is that, with a little preparation and research, and a little resolve to not spend more money than in necessary – no matter what a funeral director may say – cremation can, in fact, be far less expensive than traditional funeral home services. Customers need to remember, however, that, if they end up with a low bill, the folks at the funeral home are likely (if secretly) not their family’s biggest fans.