One deputy remarked, “Well, I guess now we have to include you in the count.”
“No, thanks,” I replied, and simply removed the old farmer’s body and left.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I realized years ago that the death-care industry needed to change. But unlike the electronics and automobile industries, where explosive updates tend to take place regularly, the funeral business moves with glacier-like slowness, if at all. Although more funeral homes are now modern one-floor facilities, most are still converted two- or three-story residences where business takes place downstairs and the owner and his family live upstairs. Baby boomers in particular have grown tired of those older homes with too many steps leading to the entrances, threadbare “movie theater” carpeting, tiny chapel areas, minimal parking, and staff not open to anything but solemn and predictable services. I have worked at places with no handicap accessibility and with lots so small that visitors were forced to return later when the crowd had diminished or risk parking in a dark alley. I know these things are important, because I actually receive calls in advance to inquire about such things.
A major change, however, in the death-care industry is the corporate buyout. The funeral industry was ripe for such takeovers. Undertakers once handed their businesses to their sons or daughters or transferred ownership through bank loans to trusted employees. Those days are gone. Owners and their families now realize the cash cows they are sitting on. Even grown children who don’t want to follow in their parents’ footsteps still want to see them get top dollar. A suitcase full of cash can be a powerful persuader.
In the late 1960s, a Texas funeral home owner decided to buy out his city’s other two big-volume homes, become top dog, and stop worrying about competition. The plan in its original form was sound: pool the expensive vehicles, retain current employees for continuity’s sake, and keep the original names of the two newly acquired businesses so the public wouldn’t see any change. Sudden acquisitions usually work well in large cities, where people feel no loyalty and couldn’t care less who the owners are. Small towns and suburbs are different. People are far more concerned about who is caring for their deceased loved ones. They want to deal with someone they know from church or Rotary Club—perhaps even a former classmate. They want to see the funeral directors themselves, or at least their kids, when making arrangements. They also want the funeral director at the visitation, and they want him or her to drive Grandma to the cemetery.
But this owner was not happy with just three funeral homes. He soon began acquiring the largest ones in several neighboring cities as well, often overpaying owners to entice them to sell. Enter the carpetbagger concept. Carpetbagger is the word we funeral directors use to describe opportunists who have infiltrated our territory. It has a historical relevance; during post–Civil War Reconstruction, Northerners intent on making personal gain headed South and carried their belongings in carpet-covered satchels.
How can you tell when carpetbaggers have invaded your area? First, a marketing staff at the conglomerate’s faraway home office bombards the affected community with direct-mail pieces aimed at homeowners in the demographic of age forty-five and up. Letters begin something like this: “We need your help! Please take a few moments of your time to assist us in determining what is important to you, the consumer, by answering the following questions: Do you currently own cemetery property? If so, where? How much do your funerals cost? Do you prefer cremation? Do you currently have life insurance?” At the bottom of the form is a perforated card for the addressee to return postage free. The direct-mail piece is also emblazoned with the recently purchased funeral home’s address so that people assume it comes from a familiar business in town.
Responses are followed by phone calls to set up appointments with the corporate funeral home’s eager staff of “grief counselors” to sell prepaid insurance policies. Whether or not people return responses, all targeted consumers receive cold calls from hard-sell telephone solicitors (usually at dinnertime), thus reducing the funeral home’s credibility equal to that of telemarketers who hawk replacement windows.
Conglomerates have also trolled for potential customers by calling everyone who attends a visitation and has signed the register book. I met a woman who was responsible for deciphering sloppy handwriting, looking up names in the telephone directory, and then calling them to say, “Since you were just at a visitation at our Big Corporation Funeral Home, I’m sure you enjoyed our facility and would probably like to have your own funeral here someday. Perhaps one of our fine counselors can set an appointment time to come to your home, so you can prepay for your funeral.”
When a widow is making arrangements for her recently deceased spouse, the conglomerate “counselor” is also trained to “advise” her: “We will draw up the necessary paperwork to duplicate these services, so you’ll have a prepaid funeral plan in place for yourself. That way, when your time comes, no one in your family will need to make any hasty decisions under the duress of grief. Sign right here.” Since most folks are in the dark about the funeral industry anyway, this ploy usually works, and the still-sobbing widow probably doesn’t even realize what she has agreed to.
After a carpetbagger comes to town, the company usually signs a contract with a major casket supplier, such as Batesville or Aurora, and then happily offers a volume discount. Since carpetbaggers purchase far more caskets than family-owned operations, they rightfully receive the discount. However, they don’t pass on the savings to consumers. Even the company that I personally feel is a scourge on society, Wal-Mart, passes on savings through their immense buying power. All corporately owned funeral homes and cemeteries in America should probably be discount houses, since they enjoy a tremendous rebate from the suppliers of their most expensive products—caskets.
As I discussed in chapter 11, with an increase in cremation and a decrease in traditional funerals, major casket companies are losing market share. Batesville Casket Company has always told funeral directors that we are much like car dealerships. Consumers must come to us rather than visit an assembly line, and any authorized dealer will do. So once Batesville ascertains the best distribution and storage plan, you will likely see caskets being marketed and sold through Wal-Mart, Costco, or even a stand-alone specialty store.
Right now, however, consumers are learning the hard way that certain purchases are better made from the local funeral home. Corporate-owned cemeteries have increased the price of grave spaces and opening and closing fees to the point of causing an upward spike in the already-increasing number of cremations. Cemetery operators are cutting their own throats with exorbitant fees, and so decreasing the amount of casketed burials. To make up for the loss of income, conglomerate cemeteries have stepped up their attempts to sell caskets, which for years was considered an untouchable product, the sale of which was exclusively a funeral home lock.
Cemeteries could probably pull this off were it not for the unbelievable, unmitigated greed involved. Cemeteries in my area are charging consumers three, four, and even five times the wholesale cost for an item that traditional funeral homes usually charge at most two times wholesale.
One morning a gentleman called, and his first question to me was, “How much is your cheapest steel casket?” I replied $600, and he asked if he could come in right away and see it. After he viewed the inexpensive box, he informed me that he had just left a corporate-owned cemetery and showed me the paperwork for his purchase of the exact same item for $2,650. The casket in question was the exact same casket I had just showed him, and it was from the same manufacturer, which means the cemetery and I paid the same wholesale price: $316. The gentleman was livid at being blatantly overcharged, so I offered to call the cemetery on his behalf and ask about their pricing structure.