There is good news for the Funeral Consumer. The Federal Trade commission has clarified discounts on the funeral homes basic service fee. This is useful to the consumer in coming in under the average cost of a funeral.
The Federal Trade Commission issued an advisory ruling on November 24th 2009. In the ruling the Federal Trade Commission stated that the consumer can receive a discount to the Funeral Directors basic service fee.
Specific alternative services were mentioned. These services are forwarding remains, receiving remains, direct cremations and immediate burials.
Snippet from the NFDA
“…the [Funeral] Rule permits funeral providers to reduce their basic services fees for forwarding remains, receiving remains, direct cremations, and immediate burials, in order to reflect the proportionate reduction in facilities overhead and services of funeral director and staff required to provide them.”
This FTC Staff Advisory Opinion is important because it finally puts to rest the question of whether a funeral home’s prices for these four alternate services must be greater than the funeral home’s basic services fee. The answer is that it does not. When pricing the services of forwarding remains, receiving remains, immediate burial, and direct cremation, a funeral home may include only a portion of its basic services fee; it does not have to incorporate the entire amount of the fee into the price of those services.
via www.nfda.org
Many Funeral Directors will tell you that you cannot discount the basic service fee or the charges for funeral director and staff- on what is known as the general price list(GPL). Now you can simply tell the funeral director they can be discounted, to lower your funeral cost.
By using alternative services consumers across the United States have lowered the cost of their family funerals.
Funeral Industry|Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy
