Column: Death is certain, but funeral home pricing often isn’t

ATLANTA -- There’s a new scam that has been sweeping the nation.

Crooks search funeral notices to identify people who have recently lost a loved one. After waiting enough time for funeral arrangements to be made, these unscrupulous folks call family or friends pretending to be the funeral home, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Then, the scammers ask for more money and threaten to cancel the funeral if it isn’t sent immediately.

That’s low-down.

But I fully expect criminals to commit criminal acts. I don’t necessarily expect funeral providers to blatantly prey on their grieving customers.

Last year, the FTC brought its first complaint in almost a decade against a cremation-service provider. The agency accused the company of misrepresenting itself as a local business in various states. The company, Heritage Cremation Provider, would then contract with third-party service providers that were sometimes located hours away, the FTC says. Customers complained about being forced to travel long distances to pick up their loved one’s remains.

The company also routinely charged more than the prices it posted and didn’t provide tallies of the total cost, according to the complaint. If families balked at paying these previously undisclosed higher prices, the company threatened to withhold their loved one’s remains, the agency said.

Holding a deceased loved one hostage? What in the name of the Funeral Rule is going on?

Yes, there is a Funeral Rule, a 40-year-old FTC regulation that requires funeral homes to disclose prices and other information to their customers. But it was last updated in 1994, and a lot has changed.

Many consumers look for pricing and other information online, though most funeral homes don’t list prices online. When they do, it’s couched in such...