The next-to-last section of the Funeral Rule notice (Issues 32-36) deals with what the FTC calls Price List Readability. This seemed to us as a very nebulous phrase, and so we searched “Price List Readability” in the context of the Consumer Funeral Alliance, and lo and behold, the CFA has guidelines for what it
general price list
Funeral Rule Revisions: Incidental Costs Disclosure
By Bill Stalter on
Posted in Compliance
For this post we are focused on Issues 18 through 21of the FTC’s Notice to revise the Funeral Rule. With these issues the FTC is responding to consumer advocates assertions that the GPL does not adequately disclose incidental costs associated with direct cremations or immediate burials. With regard to immediate burials, advocates do not…
The FTC’s Seven Areas of Concern: Funeral Rule Revisions
By Bill Stalter on
Posted in Compliance, Consumer Advocates
As discussed in our prior post, the FTC’s rulemaking notice for amending the Funeral Rule requests public comment on 40 Issues. Those 40 issues are grouped by the FTC in the following 7 categories of potential amendments:
- Electronic price disclosure – whether and how funeral providers should be required to display or distribute price information
…
FTC’s “Forty Issues” and the Funeral Rule Comment Period: Time to Get Serious
By Bill Stalter on
By a posting made November 1, the Federal Trade Commission gave formal notice of its intent to revise the Funeral Rule and opened a 60 day comment period. The notice is quite lengthy and signals that that the FTC wants major revisions to the Funeral Rule that go well beyond whether to require the posting…
Funeral Planning in the COVID-19 Era: Access to GPLs
By Bill Stalter on
While COVID-19 reminds the most vulnerable of our population of the need for funeral planning, safety concerns may preclude following advice given by both the Death Care industry and the Federal Trade Commission: visit multiple funeral homes and request their general price lists. The FTC mandated ‘general price list’ provides an itemized description of the…
Competing Mortuaries and Cemeteries: when everyone loses
By Bill Stalter on
Posted in Cemeteries
Mortuary Management recently ran a short editorial criticizing cemeteries, stating “we can only conclude that cemeteries will, in the long run, be the losers”, and “it may be time for a reevaluation of standards and staunch principles of the past”. The editorial is nothing more than a handful of comments from anonymous funeral directors about…
KC Funeral Consumer Alliance: Cemetery Survey
By Bill Stalter on
The funeral industry may grumble about the FTC’s Funeral Rule, but two disclosures required by that law play important roles in the preneed transaction. The general price list is often used by funeral homes as a tool for comparing prices with the competition. And when a prearranged funeral is performed, the statement of goods and services…
A General Price List nightmare?
By Bill Stalter on
Posted in Funeral
The Scarborough Council just announced increases in their funeral, cremation and burial prices. There are going to be nearly 80 different levels of charging Some of the charges depend on whether they involve cremation, burial, the times when funerals take place, the use of the service chapel and scattering the remains and whether the remains…