
Ever Loved’s funeral marketplace undercuts undertakers - jseliger
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/12/casket-prices-ever-loved
======
jcims
This isn’t a sympathy grab, just a present anecdote. My wife died 27 hours ago
after a long bout with cancer.

I’m going to pay probably upwards of $15k for her funeral because i didn’t
plan ahead and there’s no time after the fact. I’m fortunately in a position
to do so and am paying for what i want knowing that I’m being taken advantage
of. Lesson learned.

If you are planning to go an alternate route i would _strongly_ advise making
complete arrangements while you are healthy. You're going to be dealing with
heavily entrenched local practitioners and it could be an uphill battle.

~~~
technoplato
I usually don’t like the sappy stuff online but I am very sorry for your loss.
I absolutely cannot imagine the pain and hurt you must be experiencing. I hope
you can find some kind of peace in the special bound you two share.

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_wldu
Federal law prohibits funeral homes from not accepting caskets from another
supplier, or charging more for services if you bring your own. FTC... The
Funeral Rule. There are lots of other restrictions on the industry as well
(due to past misdeeds)

[https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/com...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/complying-funeral-rule)

~~~
rahimnathwani
That link you sent says that they _can_ charge more if you bring your own
casket. One of the options explicitly offered there is for the funeral home to
inform potential customers:

"Please note that a fee of (specify dollar amount) for the use of our basic
services and overhead is included in the price of our caskets. This same fee
shall be added to the total cost of your funeral arrangements if you provide
the casket. Our services include (specify)."

It doesn't sound like you can negotiate a price including a casket, but later
say you'll make your own casket, saving the bulk of the fee.

~~~
red-indian
> "Please note that a fee of (specify dollar amount) for the use of our basic
> services and overhead is included in the price of our caskets. This same fee
> shall be added to the total cost of your funeral arrangements if you provide
> the casket."

Correct, and if your casket fee is $7000, then $6500 is "basic services".
Casket is only $500.

So you say, hey I just want that mahogany and silk casket, no services. Then
they say "Oh sorry, that's not a bundle we offer."

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honkycat
My family owned and ran a number of funeral homes for ALMOST 100 years. We
sold JUST BEFORE the 100 year mark. We are glad we got out when we did, which
was 10 years too late in my opinion.

The bottom dropped out of the industry, people don't want to pay for funerals
anymore ( very rationally in my opinion ). My family's funeral home and a few
other local funeral homes were fighting for scraps. Just like the local shoe
store, the funeral home is going the way of the dinosaur. Things were getting
desperate. The industry is stodgy and old. My father didn't get into the
business to be a fucking overpriced casket salesman.

This seems like a great idea. Not even the funeral homes like having to gouge
on caskets.

It is a weird industry and not one I am going to attempt to defend. I will say
that almost every culture has some sort of burial ritual, and having elaborate
funerals was a sign of respect and a very old practice.

~~~
mprev
Why do funeral homes _have_ to gouge on caskets? Which part of the service is
not met by the amount charged for it?

~~~
james_s_tayler
I'm guessing it's a volume thing? The point of market entry for a casket is
literally someones death. It's not you can run facebook ads to boost sales of
caskets...

~~~
mprev
That doesn't tell the whole story, though. The cost of preparing and burying a
body is, presumably, fixed in normal circumstances. Fancier caskets are a
discretionary addition.

Unless the body prep/burial is offered as a free complimentary service when
you buy a casket, then presumably the bill for those services covers their
cost.

Perhaps competition has set an expectation of a certain price for the service
aspect, which is a loss-leader, and then providers make up the loss on casket
sales.

If the funeral homes were selling only a casket, I could see it being a volume
thing. But I'd expect the fixed costs of the business to be covered by the
service fee, hence my question.

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irjustin
Wow, I love this. Easily overlooked market that is ripe for disruption.

It's not a word I use lightly in 2020. Everyone wants to disrupt some sector,
but rarely realistic today in the mainstream segments. This is one of the more
forgotten areas that have high margins and that take advantage of grieving by
less scrupulous people.

My family has been through the ringer of upselling during a grieving process.
Thankfully lot of the process was planned and paid for before the actual death
while it is easier to have ones wits about them. We were largely immune, but
they still tried.

It may be morbid, but if you can, plan for your or a loved one's passing in
advance. Set it all up and the transition will be incredibly smooth allowing
everyone to focus on the grieving instead of whether they should buy the
marble or granite headstone.

~~~
Benjammer
"easily overlooked market ripe for disruption"

How do you figure? The article says this:

>Still, it’s a tough business. Startups like HaloLife, Clarity and After I Go
have all shut down. Most others merely offer memorial sites, or funeral home
search engines.

~~~
jandrese
One tough part about breaking into this market is that most of the customers
are older people who are less comfortable with disruptive tech companies like
this.

~~~
benburleson
Yet retirement account startups are going gangbusters. They have similar
challenges: older people have much more to invest and are hesitant to put it
in newer tech.

So, it really just seems like a marketing issue.

~~~
jjeaff
Younger people are the target market for retirement accounts. Older people are
either already drawing on it or close enough to retirement that it makes
little sense to move things.

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red-indian
If any one is interested, we bury our own in my family on our ancestral land.
We use a plain wooden casket and dig the grave ourselves. If a backhoe from a
friend is available it's a bonus.

I support the right to self bury, as most states have done for centuries.

There's a weird idea that government needs to get involved in this and protect
funeral home gouging.

In any case total burial, funeral and wake cost can be around $800, if you
want.

~~~
wayneftw
I wanna get buried in one of these biodegradable bags and feed a tree [1].

My dad wants to get turned into a diamond [2]. I’m in charge of that.

[1] [https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/03/world/eco-solutions-
capsula-m...](https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/03/world/eco-solutions-capsula-
mundi/index.html)

[2] [https://www.npr.org/2014/01/19/263128098/swiss-company-
compr...](https://www.npr.org/2014/01/19/263128098/swiss-company-compresses-
cremation-ashes-into-diamonds)

~~~
x__x
I'd prefer a "Sky Burial" (look it up) where you're fed to the birds, bones
and all

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redis_mlc
Ya emotions take a toll on the wallet at funerals.

Here's a cautionary tale if you're involved in estate planning ...

One relative of mine was not sentimental about death and had decades to plan
for a cheap funeral. No visitors were expected aside from the wife and
daughter. Cremation was fine with him, if no cheaper option was available.
"Scatter the ashes on the lake."

What actually happened?

The widow blew so much on his funeral that she won't even admit the amount
(think 5 figures.)

"Well we can afford it."

~~~
telesilla
That sounds like a case of death being for the living.

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Zelphyr
I learned last week when a family member died how important it is to educate
yourself on this subject. It was a relatively sudden death and that family
member had only verbally told someone how he wanted to be buried but was
somewhat vague about even that. The night he died the undertaker asked us to
sign for having him embalmed. The next day, when the subject of having him
cremated came up at the funeral home someone asked, “But didn’t we have him
embalmed?” Had we chosen cremation we would have wasted nearly $900 in
embalming. Even then, I question whether it was a necessary expense given it’s
not legally required in this jurisdiction.

Ultimately we went with the more expensive option of casket burial because we
truly felt that’s what this family member wanted. But I do find it interesting
that the night he died, the undertaker all but forced us to sign for
embalming. I wonder how often that one act pushes families towards a more
expensive option? In our case, the total cost was $10,000 with one of the
cheapest caskets they offered and that doesn’t include plot or grave marker.

------
dsalzman
"That means Ever Loved’s biggest competitors, beyond the standard just
accepting the local mortuary’s prices, are Google and Amazon. Often they
surface the same prices as Ever Loved with comparable shipping, though Google
could sometimes find a slight discount by buying straight from the
manufacturer, while Amazon was missing some top brands. Costco and Walmart
sell funeral products too."

------
alanbernstein
There's been a slow wave of real-world "X 2.0" over the last 10-15 years, e.g.
top golf as a better driving range. I had the idea of "funeral home 2.0", but
immediately dismissed it as half-baked, good only for a joke. I see I was
wrong.

~~~
lotsofpulp
My 2.0 version of that is to tie a weight on my body and toss it into a body
of water.

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analognoise
This is the most dystopian thing I've read all week.

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stevenwliao
(YC S19)

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cm2012
The next Casper, etc. DTC FB ads are going to be huge for them.

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Gatsky
Is this a tech company? I don’t get it.

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cletus
Honestly I don't understand this obsession people have with where their corpse
goes.

I mean, you're dead. If you're buried, cremated, buried at sea or whatever it
certainly doesn't matter to you, faith systems notwithstanding.

Perhaps your family will have some psychological attachment to being able to
visit your grave but your body doesn't actually have to be there for any of
this.

In some places space isn't an issue but in lots of places it is such that
there are long waiting times, it's expensive, you only rent your grave spot or
some combination of these.

I mean at some point doesn't the Earth become a giant graveyard, assuming
death can outpace subduction.

Here's the areas where I have a real problem with the emotional attachment to
your corpse: organ donation. Refusal to allow your dead body to literally save
other people's lives is the very height of illogical selfishness.

Some religions even prohibit organ donation (or just make it practically
impossible). I hope those who holds that view are consistent enough to refuse
organ donations.

~~~
clay_the_ripper
Humans have longstanding traditions of handling death and dead bodies with
reverence and care.

I don’t think it’s fair to characterize these things as “psychological
attachments”.

Rituals, traditions and emotions are important for human beings, and appear
across cultures for thousands of years and will continue to do so as long as
humans are human.

We aren’t robots. We don’t do “logical” things al the time. And that’s for the
good.

~~~
lotsofpulp
>We aren’t robots. We don’t do “logical” things al the time. And that’s for
the good.

Some might consider spending considerable amounts of society's resources after
people no longer alive at the expense of the living and future people to not
be good.

There's paying respects to one's loved ones, but sometimes it seems to cross
into ornate displays of consumption.

~~~
Zelphyr
Many (most?) people aren’t altogether rational when they’re grieving the loss
of a loved one and it’s made worse by the fact that we often make these
decisions at the height of our grief, hours or days after that person has
died.

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jojobas
Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to Uber Digs.

