With Issues No. 10 through 15 of the FTC’s Funeral Rule notice, the agency begins inquiries on how to ensure the online shopper has access to all of the funeral home’s price lists before making any selections.  Would it be sufficient to require the funeral home’s website to provide links for downloading the GPL (and casket price list and the outer burial container price list), or should the rule require the funeral home to email the prices lists?  The FTC is pondering whether online availability of the price lists is sufficient.  We could see where the FTC may be leaning towards a requirement that email delivery be used, with the funeral home being required to maintain copies of the email transmissions as proof of compliance.

If the FTC should opt for email delivery and confirmation, it would seem burdensome to also require posting of price lists in a downloadable format.  It would seem that the burden should be on the shopper to make a request for the price lists by providing their name, address and valid email address.  To reduce the burden on the funeral home, the email delivery requirement would apply only to residents within their service area.