Exposé on the funeral industry

If there is one thing that we can all learn from a recent CBC Marketplace program which did an exposé on the funeral industry is that you should be weary of the following:

• Free Planning / Will Kits – This is your classic bait and hook technique. This method enables a funeral provider sales person to receive your personal information which leads to unrelenting, unsolicited aggressive harassment.
• Cold calls – This is an unsolicited call from an aggressive commissioned sales person working for a funeral provider. They will do their utmost to try to get into your home. Once there they will apply high pressured sales techniques causing you to pay double if not triple what you should normally pay for services.
• Advertisement – Sometimes in even the most sanctified of places such as a cemetery where you wouldn’t normally expect to see solicitation of services. You will now often times see signs along the roadway promoting their wares such as, free will kits and preplanning. Further to this, some companies go as far as having stickers placed on top of the front page of the newspaper. Many people find this form of advertising distasteful, but again this is another example of bait and hook, used to gain personal information leading to unnecessary solicitation.

Just as the Marketplace program suggested “buyer beware.” I would highly recommend that you do your research before preplanning or allowing a funeral home into your home. “Educate yourself today for peace of mind tomorrow.”