Should all funeral homes be required to post prices online?

The median cost of a full funeral with burial was $7,640 in 2019

The coronavirus pandemic may help push the funeral business into the internet age.

Funeral homes must give a detailed price list to anyone who requests one in person, but they aren’t required to post prices on their websites.

Consumer advocates and members of the public are urging the Federal Trade Commission, which is reviewing its 1984 funeral rule, to make online pricing mandatory. They’re also seeking other updates, such as rewriting language used in the price lists, to clarify when embalming is required by law; in many cases, it isn’t.

The rule, adopted to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive practices, also requires funeral homes to answer questions about prices over the phone.

“Had it been written in the internet era, online pricing would have been mandated,” said Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit group that promotes price transparency.

About 18% of the 90 funeral homes inspected since 2018 failed to disclose “timely itemized pricing information,” the FTC reported in mid-june. The inspections covered 13 homes in Georgia, 20 in Louisiana, 23 in Nevada, 11 in New Jersey and 23 in Texas.

The failure rate was about the same in 2012 but rose to as high as 27% over the next few years before falling back again, according to the FTC.

The agency is also examining how to address new alternatives to cremation and traditional burial, such as alkaline hydrolysis, sometimes called “flameless” cremation.

The rule is “showing its age” and needs updating to protect “uniquely vulnerable” consumers, an FTC commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, said in a statement about the review.

An itemized list can help consumers choose services, Slocum said. For example, families often don’t know that they don’t have to hold a formal viewing or can choose a less expensive coffin bought elsewhere. A minister in Kentucky, for instance, wrote to the FTC describing how she helped a young man save $3,000 by directing him to Costco to buy a coffin for his deceased mother instead of buying one through the funeral home.

Visiting funeral homes for price lists was burdensome even before the coronavirus outbreak, but it has put the need for change in sharp relief, Slocum said. Online pricing, he said, would allow families to consider options and compare prices in the safety of their homes without feeling pressured.

The median cost of a full funeral with burial was $7,640 in 2019, according to the National Funeral Directors Association; cremation, which is increasingly popular, can be thousands less.

Prices vary widely, however. In their letter, the attorneys general cited a 2017 survey of funeral homes in the District of Columbia, which found a price range of $5,795 to $125,000 for the most expensive coffins.

But the industry opposes mandatory online pricing and said the decisions should be left to individual businesses. California is the lone state that requires online price disclosure, but loopholes allow some funeral homes to avoid doing so, according to the alliance.