This is when I really won’t care
Selbst im Bestattungsgewerbe ist man nicht mehr vor Abzockerei sicher.
ADVANCED
Most people don’t want to talk about being dead, but I do. The reason I want to talk about this is because I’m being driven crazy by all the television commercials aimed at us oldies to buy prepaid funerals or organize insurance to cover the cost. The typical theme is that we should not trouble our kids with this stuff.
Well, why not? It’ll help take their minds off the pain of my passing. And who cares if they have to dig into their own pockets while the ungrateful buggers wait to collect their inheritance? Besides, most of the funeral plans are a bloody great rip-off.
I can speak with some authority on this subject — not because I’ve been dead, but because I’ve seen lots of them — and I mean lots of dead people. In my teens and early twenties, I had to help out in the family funeral business with my brothers. They used to joke that my father would be the last person to let you down.
Some of the dead people had the most terrible, sad or painful deaths, and we boys saw things that young men probably should not have to see. But something we never saw was anybody going broke paying a funeral bill. Sure, we buried a lot of poor people, but there’s government money that helps cover the basic costs and keep it all dignified and respectful. My dad seemed to think that the poorest people paid most quickly, and that seems to be true in general.
Back in those days, the bill for a funeral or cremation was a few hundred dollars. A recent Sydney University study showed that Australians are now paying A$ 6,000 on average, whereas the basic cost could be as little as A$ 1,200. Funeral parlours are pocketing most of the difference, with the actual coffins and burial or cremation services accounting for less than 45 per cent of the total bill.
Equally worrying is that one giant company here controls about a third of the Australian funeral market, even though that is hard to attack, because it trades under nearly 40 different brand names. They are, however, on the radar of the powerful watchdog Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which is monitoring the industry.
The same is true of the funeral insurance business, which also targets seniors with ever increasing premiums that could see them paying twice the price for the service. There is a wonderfully dry Australian expression used when you are having a really good, satisfying experience: “Wouldn’t be dead for quids.” This means that you would not want to die for any amount of money. But when you do, there will be plenty of people out there waiting to cash in. Does anybody need a super-chic coffin, lots of flowers and multiple black limousines?
Me? I don’t care if they bury me or burn me, or whether they use a bag or a cardboard box. Why? Because after you’re dead, you won’t give a shit.